Year in review: Copy protection goes mainstream

Digital rights management took significant strides toward being accepted by mainstream consumers and businesses in 2003, but hackers and critics maintained their attacks on the technology in the name of fair use and information freedom.

The year started out with a minor hack of Microsoft's e-Book copy protection, but the company quickly made more news by releasing toolkits that would help pre-load Windows Media files on a new generation of copy-protected CDs. Sunncomm Technologies and Macrovision, the leaders in the CD pirate-proofing business, quickly struck partnerships with the software giant.

Not long afterwards, Linux founder and Microsoft nemesis Linus Torvalds sent a missive to the open-source community stating that he believed digital rights management was compatible with the open-computing philosophy, sparking considerable debate.

The biggest move toward consumer acceptance of music rights management technology came with the release of Apple Computer's iTunes music store in April. Songs distributed by Apple were wrapped in a new, proprietary copy-protection technology, called FairPlay, that worked seamlessly with the company's iPods and Macintosh computers. Millions of songs were soon downloaded, with fewer complaints from consumers than typically had been heard over antipiracy protections.

Microsoft, meanwhile, continues work on its rights management technology for portable devices, which--once released--is expected to allow much more flexibility in using MP3 players in conjunction with Windows-based digital music subscription services.

Judges and legislators had their say over copy protection throughout the summer. A U.S. senator introduced a bill that would put limits on the use of copy-protection technologies on entertainment products, while a San Francisco judge heard Hollywood arguments that DVD-copying software should be illegal, because it evaded movie studios' digital rights management attempts.

Microsoft lost a key--if preliminary--ruling in a long-running patent case, in which smaller company InterTrust Technologies claimed that virtually all of the software company's major products, including Windows, Office and the Windows Media Player, infringed on its copy-protection patents. Later in the year, however, rival Macrovision said it had a prior claim on parts of InterTrust's patents, muddying the legal waters even further.

More tangible steps for digital rights management came soon afterwards. Microsoft announced details and later released its new Office suite of software, which includes strong digital rights management for documents, preventing unauthorized distribution of e-mail or Word files.

BMG Entertainment released the first copy-protected CD using the newest generation of technology, created by SunnComm. However, a Princeton University student quickly showed how to disable the protections using nothing more sophisticated than holding down the computer's Shift key. SunnComm threatened to sue the student, but quickly backed away from the plan.

By the end of the year, the lack of standards in the business--and Microsoft's inexorable steps forward across the field--was prompting many calls for open standards and interoperability in digital rights management, including from longtime antagonist Sun Microsystems.

Hackers were back in the news, too. The Norwegian programmer who originally distributed the DeCSS software that broke through DVD protections posted a program online that showed how to evade Apple's FairPlay rights management technology. But just days later, he was back in court in his home country, facing Hollywood studios in a second round of court appearances over his original DVD program.

--John Borland