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What really happened with Google Premium Video — Part one: DRM killed the files
As Daniel pointed out on Tuesday (Another Example of Access Bad, Ownership Good), when Google shut down its premium video service on August 15, it was able to prevent customers who had bought and paid for videos from Google from ever watching those videos again. But there is a bit more to the story -- and it has implications for how government information is distributed.
In this, Part One of a two part look at the issues, we examine how Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies and proprietary software allowed Google to make it impossible for users to watch videos that they had bought from Google even though they had downloaded the video files onto their own computers. In Part Two we examine why this story is important for government information specialists and Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) librarians.
While it wasn't obvious from the initial news stories about this, Google used DRM and proprietary software to deny access to files users had paid for and downloaded. Although the Government Printing Office (GPO) has not used identical techniques, it has experimented with similar ones and has never explicitly rejected use of techniques that could provide government a way to deny access to information even if users have copies of files on their own computers. More on that below.
Google's premium video-purchase-and-download service overlapped with with Google's YouTube-like service, Google Video, which offers streaming video without charge and some free downloads. But in early 2006, Google announced a service as part of Google Video that would allow users to pay to rent or buy certain videos (such as NBA basketball games and TV shows such as CSI) and it is that service that changed this week and those videos that people purchased that they no longer can watch.
YouTube and Google Video use "streaming" video technology so that you watch the stream of video as it comes to you. It is also possible to download videos in some cases. But the Google premium video service allowed users to pay for videos, download them, keep the video files, and watch them without streaming or re-streaming the content. Customers had the files on their own computers and could copy them and put them on different machines as if they really did "own" them. But there was a catch.
Actually, there were three catches. First, users of this service had to download and install the proprietary "Google Player" software. (The software was originally downloadable from http://video.google.com/playerdownload but even the Google cache of that page disappeared this week.) It served a similar function to Windows Media Player or Quicktime or other media players, but it used its own proprietary format (".gvi"). Only the Google Player could play Google Videos.
Second, you could watch the proprietary format using the proprietary player only if you were connected to the internet and authenticated yourself as the purchaser.
Since the Google Player was the only player that could read the files one purchased, users were locked-in to the DRM of authentication-over-the-internet (sometimes called the "phone home" feature). So, even if you paid for a video and "owned" the file you downloaded, you couldn't watch it unless Google allowed you to do so -- every time you watched it. This week Google simply turned off the ability for users to authenticate. Presumably, this is the way the Google rental service operated from the start: after 24 hours, you no longer had permission to view the file you downloaded. It turned out that the "purchase" program was just a temporary service as well.
This is why The Guardian described the situation this way:
Google handed opponents of digital rights management (DRM) a huge weapon this week when it announced that DRM-protected videos bought from its online video store will no longer work, and that customers will not be reimbursed.
-- Kiss goodbye to your DRM-protected Google Video clips, by Charles Arthur The Guardian, August 16 2007
And that brings us to the third catch: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Although there are hacks, work-arounds, and other technical tricks that allow one to circumvent the Google phone-home DRM, they are against the law. Again, The Guardian saw the implication of this for libraries:
But the fact that thousands of purchased files will cease working will give pause to organisations charged with creating public archives of published information - such as the British Library and, in the US, the Library of Congress. The latter in particular was anyway considering whether any redrafting is needed on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA): the idea of offering a loophole to circumvent DRM on products that no longer work properly was rejected in its last consideration. Google's decision might lead to a reversal in thinking.
There is more about this story and its implications for FDLP libraries in Part Two.
More information:
- Google Video robs customers of the videos they "own", BoingBoing August 10, 2007
- Google Video service to go black by Dawn C. Chmielewski and Alex Pham Los Angeles Times, August 11, 2007
- Google's permanent video sales less-than-permanent by Cade Metz, The Register, August 11, 2007
- Google Video DRM: Why is Hollywood more important than users? by Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, February 14, 2006
- More On Google Copy Protection by Mike Masnick, TechDirt, Mon, Jan 9th 2006
- Google's Copy Protection: Supplying The Tools For Others To Be Evil by Mike Masnick, TechDirt, Fri, Jan 6th 2006
- Google Video (beta) by Troy Dreier, CNet, 2/7/06
- Google Video Player Terms and Conditions Google Video
- Good Uses for DRM Jimmy Palmer, DRM Blog (September 2. 2005) [good description of "phone home" DRM]
More bad news about DRM
Once again, DRM is in the news and the news is bad. Very Bad.
- AACS DRM tentacles reach far into operating systems, by Ken Fisher, Ars Technica (August 12, 2007)
AACS is the "Advanced Access Content System" set up by IMB, Intel, Microsoft, Panasonic, Sony, toshiba, Disney, and Warner Brothers. It is Digital Rights Management (DRM) for the next generation of content including high-definition optical discs. (For more see: Overview : AACS - Advanced Access Content System.) There has been a fair amount written about how Microsoft is embedding DRM/AACS technology into Windows and how hardware manufacturers are supporting it as well (see Strategy to Thwart Movie Copying Could Frustrate Innocent Users and How Windows Vista Will Affect Government Information and Microsoft Vista takes control). But this article in Ars Technica says that "...the bigger story here is the technical nightmare created by AACS and how its tentacles are reaching into the consumer technology we all use daily."
"The biggest trick the devil ever pulled was in getting folks to blame someone other than Hollywood for video DRM."
--not Keyser Soeze
AACS and DRM is not just about Microsoft and PCs and Windows. "Apple will also have to adopt a strict DRM regimen at the most fundamental levels of Mac OS X in order to be able to (legally) play back AACS-protected Blu-ray or HD DVD discs (e.g., most commercial discs in those formats)... The same would be true for Linux, except that AACS won't be licensed for Linux desktop use. There's no way to securely implement it since desktop Linux is an open environment, and AACS requires keeping secrets."
Government information does not exist in a vacuum. Any digital government information, whether packaged by the government itself or re-packaged by the private sector, will have to conform to standards that Hollywood is designing to protect content. This means that, potentially, some government information will be unavailable on some platforms (e.g., Linux) that refuse to conform to Hollywood DRM. It means that content that does conform to these standards will be locked by its constraints.
Users should be outraged at these developments, but directing that outrage at Microsoft (or Apple) misses the point. The movie industry's fear of fair use and casual piracy is so great that it uses its considerable weight to influence innovation in personal computing. They can create a technology (AACS) and a license for that technology without ever having to prove its utility or safety for consumers. The situation is made more deplorable by the fact that AACS seems to be nothing more than a stab in the dark at the problem: it has already been cracked! AACS is unproven technology with amazingly complex demands. And it's being rolled into operating systems essentially unproven and with little care for how much havoc it wreaks.Continue reading
Big News! NARA says no to DRM software!
- NARA says no to DRM software, by Jason Miller, FCW, June 18, 2007.
Officials at the National Archives and Records Administration have growing concerns about the effect of digital rights management software on federal records. Allen Weinstein, the nation's archivist, has issued a new policy stating that NARA will not accept electronic records that include such software.
- NARA Bulletin 2007-02 April 30, 2007; TO: Heads of Federal agencies; SUBJECT: Guidance concerning the use of Enterprise Rights Management (ERM) and other encryption-related software on Federal records
The NARA bulletin refers to "ERM" this way:
Enterprise rights management (ERM) software manages and enforces information access policies and use rights of electronic documents within an enterprise; its development has been predicated on digital rights management (DRM) technology.
Although the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) bulletin says that it will scan electronic records during accessioning and reject those that contain "ERM protection" and return them to the originating agency for removal of the ERM protection, NARA also gives advice to agencies that still want to use ERM.
NARA suggests agencies choosing to deploy ERM or encryption technologies take steps to evaluate the effect that this will have on records management practices and consider instituting policies and procedures that will minimize adverse consequences.
Thanks to Patrice McDermott and GovInfo News (7-6-2007)!
Continue readingStrategy to Thwart Movie Copying Could Frustrate Innocent Users
Digital Rights Management (DRM) tools are ostensibly aimed at preventing "piracy" of commercial movies and music recordings, but the DRM tools are being embedded in the hardware that we use to access all information. That can be disastrous for legitimate access to public information.
There has been a lot in the press in the last few months about one particular technology called "key revocation" that is aimed at limiting access to Blu-ray and HD DVD disks. The Wall Street Journal today describes how it is designed to work: "Anyone who pops one of the new discs into their personal computer without installing a software upgrade will find that it destroys the computer's ability to play any high-definition DVD at all.
- Consumers May Get Caught in Piracy War [subscription required] Keith Winstein. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). Jul 5, 2007. pg. B.3. (no registration required here)
We at FGI have been urging for a long time that the Government Printing Office (GPO) and all government agencies explicitly refuse to use DRM technologies, but they have not yet done so. Unfortunately, technologies like these that change the way the hardware works may endanger access to government information regardless of what GPO does. Librarians should be fighting against these technologies at the policy, regulation, and law level. Don't be confused by industry rhetoric that equates these technologies with private property protection and protection against illegal "piracy." They are, in fact, bad ideas that will harm information use.
More links about the technology and recent background:
- AACS Key Revocation: The Future of DRM? EFF Deep Links, April 11, 2007 ("Because this "revoke and blacklist" approach is a standard feature of next-generation DRM systems, legitimate consumers are increasingly going to have something to fear from "upgrades" and "blacklists" hidden in the media they legitimately purchase")
- Hackers v Hollywood, Round 2, by Jon Healey, Los Angeles Times, April 09, 2007.
- First AACS Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Key Revoked ("pretty much confirms that the key revocation has already taken place for all newly released Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs.")
- AACS hacked to expose Volume ID: WinDVD patch irrelevant, by Thomas Ricker, Engadget, Apr 10th 2007.
What really happened with Google Premium Video — Part Two: Why Google Video story should scare you
August 18, 2007 / Leave a comment
In Part One we examined how Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies and proprietary software allowed Google to make it impossible for users to watch videos that they had bought from Google even though they had downloaded the video files onto their own computers. In this part we examine why this story is important for government information specialists and Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) librarians.
There are two connections between this story about commercial content -- like TV shows being sold for profit -- and non-copyrighted government information that is supposed to be freely available:
First, the government may want to restrict access to information and may welcome tools that make this easier. Certainly with the removal of government information from the web, the re-classification of previously declassified information, and the removal of information that was once available in the National Archives, government agencies have demonstrated an increasing willingness to control access to information -- even after its release to the public. (See "More Information" below for links to stories about these events.)
We are seeing the evolution of this most publicly with the Foreign Relations of the United States series. In 2001, the CIA wanted to cease distribution of a volume that was already printed and sent to depository libraries but, in the end, the volumes were distributed because "Destroying them would be a huge public relations disaster for the U.S. government.... Book burning is definitely not a politically correct thing to do." (State Dept Mulls "Book Burning", Secrecy News, September 21, 2001). By 2006, we saw an example of the next stage in this evolutionary process of control of public information: long delays in the release of documents as an attempt to avoid the embarrassing situation of recalling documents. A volume had been nearly ready for publication for over seven years, but intelligence screeners would not permit the release because of a handful of documents (Controversial FRUS volume release -- with a caveat...). This leads us to ask how long it will be before the government starts "releasing" documents that they can "recall" technologically without the embarrassing problem of gathering books and burning them -- without even having to notify FDLP librarians and asking them to withdraw something. And, in the Google Video premium service story, we can see a real-life example of existing technology that allows this to be done.
Second, whether the government intends to restrict access to its information or not, policies change, budgets constrict, and intentions evolve. As Daniel pointed out "...Google didn't start up the service with the intention of shutting it down..." Nevertheless, in the end, they did shut it down. In addition, when the government relies on commercial tools for digital information distribution, those tools can impose the rules for distribution and use of information that the government cannot change. We have seen how government cannot always afford to do things in an open way and is forced by costs to do things that restrict access (e.g., FEMA requires Internet Explorer and What the Copyright Office / Internet Explorer rule tells us about government information and GPO's Budget and Priorities). Lawrence Lessig has documented the process of how technology can all too easily supersede good intentions and even the law in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.
How hypothetical is this? So far, we have been pretty lucky that the government has not explicitly implemented these kinds of technological information control. But we have seen precursors. In 2004, The Government Printing Office (GPO) released its own annual report using a proprietary reader that requires registration, includes DRM, and has built in "audit controls" (Annual Report 2004 Zinio Interactive Version (Registration Required) -> Get the GPO 2004 Annual Report in digital form now!). Most recently, we have seen GPO use proprietary software with the "call home" feature to authenticate documents in its Authenticated Public and Private Laws, Beta Release. With this system "Users must be connected to the Internet in order to have the ability to validate a digital signature on a PDF document." While the document is still readable if a user is not connected to the Internet, the user cannot validate the document. While the document is readable using software other than Adobe Acrobat or Reader version 7 or later, validation does not work without this proprietary software.
In summary, Google video used proprietary software with phone-home DRM to deny access to files that users had legally paid for and downloaded. GPO has used and is using proprietary software for distribution of government information and it is using DRM "phone home" features in its attempt to technologically "authenticate" government documents. While GPO certainly is not claiming that it wants to withdraw access to distributed publications, the technology is there for it to do so and it is experimenting with it.
Think of the Google Video premium service story as a useful cautionary tale -- a warning of how information can be withdrawn even if digital files were deposited with FDLP libraries or downloaded by conscientious librarians and digital preservation projects. This is something that government information specialists, FDLP librarians, and citizens should be watching closely. I urge you to write your Congressional delegation and the copyright office and suggest an explicit government document exemption to the DMCA. And write GPO and ask for an explicit, written policy rejecting the use of DRM and proprietary software and proprietary formats.
More information
- Homefront Confidential Prepared by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, SIXTH EDITION, September 2005, "How the War on Terrorism Affects Access to Information and the Public's Right to Know"
- Chronology of Disappearing Government Information (Data collected through May 8, 2002) Compiled by Barbara Miller for ALA/GODORT Education Committee With special assistance of Karrie Peterson
- Secret reclassification of US documents by Michele McGinnis, (2006-02-21)
- Secret Agreement Reveals Covert Program to Hide Reclassification from Public by James R. Jacobs (2006-04-20)
- The Technical is Political by James A. Jacobs and Karrie Peterson, Of Significance... 3(1) 2001, p.25-35. Association of Public Data Users. (Full text PDF file)
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