I would like to read something more on the vision for DRM support in Openreader. This with the understanding that you are not the biggest fan of DRM.

I personally believe that DRM (or TPM) by its very nature will always be customer hostile regardless of the technology behind it.. The details are too long to go into — I keep thinking that I should write something up in an article form at some point.

The fundamental contradictions are, however, first that there is no programmatic method to evaluate fair use (to be fair, some uses require a court decision),
and secondly, there is not (and I believe CANNOT BE due to the fundamental computer science theorums, eg – halting problem) any method for determining if any arbitrary code respects the DRM policy. This means that only code known about by the system’s owner can be considered trusted, and revocation capabilities are needed… this eliminates modifiable code and open platforms.

Even topics like proof carrying code can’t help here. There is no programmaticly detectable difference between a new display driver that is implementing Cleartype (tm/whatever) versus a display driver that is encoding the data into an on-screen barcode for maximal machine readibility and error correction.

From what little i can find so far of DReaM – Sun is not attempting to address this, they appear to be focusing on the specification of “rights”. I predict that the code to actually ensure these rights will not be included.

Yes, there will be leaks. But if nothing else, let’s work to make the technology more convenient for consumers. What’s more, there may yet be technological fixes to the problems you’ve suggested, such as through cooperation with makers of devices used by disabled people. Standardization could help. Anyway thanks for your valuable feedback! Keep it coming. These questions need to be raised. – David

Open Source DRM means either
(a) a set of “rights management” primitives (like XrML tried to be), with the actually “Technical Protection Mechanisms” left to the individual implementor and definitely NOT open source.

(b) the code is nominally “open source”, but the compiled versions are digital signed. Only trusted implementors actually get to write software (in exchange for the appropriate fee), and on properly branded hardware.

Neither way allows the benefits of open source in fixing bugs, improving usability (especially for the visually impaired), to port to new hardware, and so forth.

If OpenReader wants to support the modifications that I mention in the last paragraph, DRM would not be an option because modifications to support a Braile output device or audio reader would allow the content to be rewritten to an unprotected file.

I am willing to be surprised if Sun’s approach is somehow different…