[Infowarrior] - Adobe Pushes DRM for Flash

[Richard Forno]

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/02/adobe-pushes-drm-flash

February 20th, 2008
Adobe Pushes DRM for Flash
Related Issues
Digital Video issue overview, blog postsDRM issue overview, blog posts
Posted by Seth Schoen

The immense popularity of sites like YouTube has unexpectedly turned Flash
Video (FLV) into one of the de facto standards for Internet video. The
proliferation of sites using FLV has been a boon for remix culture, as
creators made their own versions of posted videos. And thus far there has
been no widespread DRM standard for Flash or Flash Video formats; indeed,
most sites that use these formats simply serve standalone, unencrypted files
via ordinary web servers.

Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that
with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player
and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software. Instead of an ordinary web
download, these programs can use a proprietary, secret Adobe protocol to
talk to each other, encrypting the communication and locking out non-Adobe
software players and video tools. We imagine that Adobe has no illusions
that this will stop copyright infringement -- any more than dozens of other
DRM systems have done so -- but the introduction of encryption does give
Adobe and its customers a powerful new legal weapon against competitors and
ordinary users through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Recall that the DMCA sets out a blanket ban on tools that help "circumvent"
any DRM system (as well as the act of circumvention itself). When Flash
Video files are simply hosted on a web site with no encryption, it's
unlikely that tools to download, edit, or remix them are illegal. But when
encryption enters the picture, entertainment companies argue that fair use
is no excuse; Adobe, or customers using Flash Media Server 3, can try to
shut down users who break the encryption without having to prove that the
users are doing anything copyright-infringing. Even if users aren't targeted
directly, technology developers may be threatened and the technologies the
users need driven underground.

Users may also have to upgrade their Flash Player software (and open source
alternatives like Gnash, which has been making rapid progress, may be unable
to play the encrypted streams at all). Third-party software that can
download Flash Video, like the most recent RealPlayer, will also break. But
Adobe now has an incentive to push the use of DRM: it's only available to
sites that use Flash Media Server 3 software, which starts at over $4,000
(with extra fees depending on the number of simultaneous streams).

Furthermore, the prospect of widespread adoption of DRM restrictions on
Flash threatens to squash a growing tradition of expressive fair use of
online video -- a practice effectively in its infancy that, left unfettered,
would be a dynamic solution to our failing effort to teach media literacy.
Before we understand how to read media messages, we must first learn how to
speak their language -- and we learn that language by playing with and
remixing the efforts of others. DRM, by restricting the remixing of Flash
videos, stands to bankrupt a rich store of educational value by foreclosing
the ability of students and teachers to "echo others" by remixing videos
posted online.

Take the example of "A Vision of Students Today" vs. "(Re)Visions of
Students Today". The first "Vision" YouTube video is an artful critique of
higher education's failure to come up with new models of instruction that
engage the modern student; the second "(Re)Vision" YouTube video is an
incisive observation of higher education's crisis in diversity (summarily
expressed by the lack of diversity in the original "Vision" video). The
original and the remix support each other to instruct with an influence
above and beyond the power of either video alone.

Outside the halls of academia, we can see that the ability to openly
download and remix video is part of a new ecosystem of amateur entertainment
-- watch Drama Prairie Dog and its countless responses:

    * "Dramatic Prairie Dog vs. Kung Fu Baby (Best Remix Ever)"
    * "Hollywood Zombies Dramatic Prarire Dog"
    * "Dramatic Look Bond Remix"
    * Drama Prairie Dog - Zoolander
    * "Drama Prairie Dog -- Kill Bill"
    * (an obligatory Star Wars-related remix) "Darthmatic Chipmunk"

As we noted above, remixers who find and use tools that break the Flash
Video encryption could be sued, even if their transformative creations would
otherwise have been fair use.

Finally, there's a classic suite of arguments against DRM that will be as
true for online video as they were for music. DRM doesn't move additional
product. DRM is grief for honest end-users. And there's no reason to imagine
that new DRM systems will stop copyright infringement any more effectively
than previous systems.