There has been a lot of criticism of DRM, but in the process, a lot of people have missed the details on Microsoft’s MTP. I advocated using the older USB Media Storage Class (MSC) connection method because it’s compatible out-of-the-box with Mac and Linux as well as Windows. But I did note that MTP isn’t itself “DRM,” since many of its features are unrelated to music, let alone music DRM. That launched a semi-interesting debate with Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow, and in the process we learned many of you really can’t stand Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow.

The best way to learn something about a technology, though, is to talk to someone who actually develops it. Dave McLauchlan from the Windows Media Devices Group at Microsoft wrote me privately to rebut some of what I said, make some corrections, and set the record straight on the Windows Media devices and specifically MTP. Dave is himself a musician — see his music site, and note that even though he works for Microsoft, his music is available on iTunes via CDBaby and in non-DRMed MP3 downloads. His response isn’t the one-sided DRM advocacy you might expect, though he has some pragmatic points to make about DRM, as well. Most interesting to me is some of the insight he provides on how these technologies are evolving for music use. I stand by my claim that musicians should consider sidestepping labels and selling non-DRMed music direct to their listeners. But there’s plenty to be learned here.

Dave writes:

Microsoft’s MTP vs. USB Mass Storage Class

I’m not sure where “UMS” as an acronym came from – certainly not from any of the official sources, and definitely not from the USB-IF Device Working Group where it was conceived (and is still recognized as) MSC – or Mass Storage Class.

Ed: Note that the original article was referring to iRiver, who in fact refer to this in their support documentation as “UMS”. I picked it up from them. But if anyone knows what it’s properly called, Dave would, and in fact the USB-IF Device Working Group also calls it MSC, not UMS. Correct your acronym use accordingly. -PK

Anyhow, DRM can be implemented on MSC devices. In 1999 Microsoft developed “Portable Devices DRM” or PD-DRM as part of our Windows Media DRM 1 package. PD-DRM worked on MSC devices, and was specifically for the scenario of downloading music. The problem with PD-DRM was that it didn’t allow for a bunch of scenarios that content owners and download stores wanted – namely subscription support, limited number of playbacks, mobile phone support, direct and indirect license acquisition, DVD players, set-top boxes, silent licensing, pre-delivery of licenses, backup and restore of licenses, network device support, and so on. The list was extensive.

In order to implement all these new features, there needed to be a protocol that tied music objects on a storage volume with the license nodes that govern the use of that content. Actually, it is better to consider it this way – MSC presented a storage volume as just that – a disk drive. Objects on the drive were “files” and were discrete and unrelated entities. There was no mechanism to “tie” one object to another. In fact, MSC at its core is just a protocol that provides a means to read out sectors on a drive. The fact that MSC has become ubiquitous in OS’s is more related to the fact that FAT has become ubiquitously supported.

Anyhow, with no relation between files on a volume in MSC, there needed to be a protocol that supported relations between objects. PTP already existed in the camera world and so Microsoft set about developing MTP to support all media devices – not just cameras. PTP/MTP considers objects to be entities with properties and upon which operations can be performed. That allows for a WMA file to have associated DRM licenses on the volume – but which are separate objects (or files in the FAT world).

MTP as a Cross-Platform Standard

MTP is currently under submission and evolution in the USB Implementers Forum. Microsoft has committed to giving the USB-IF the MTP specification gratis and a sub-group called the MTP Working Group working under the Device Work Group is presently working that specification through to a v1.0 candidate. When that occurs, the Board of Directors of the USB-IF will vote and hopefully install our specification as USB-IF MTP v1.0. The work group that is chartered with that effort is made up of 17 companies, and is chaired by Microsoft (specifically by me).

There are currently MTP implementations on PC, Mac, Linux, PalmOS, Unix and so on. Given that the vast majority of MTP devices today are music players, it comes as no surprise that Apple has not implemented MTP on OS X. However, there is no reason they couldn’t in the future if they so desired. You might draw a conclusion that such non-PC implementations may flourish upon the publication of MTP as a USB-IF standard – there has been that speculation, I guess we’ll just have to see. But, there isn’t a reason for the scarcity of those implementations today – aside from the business justification and market demand.

Until the USB-IF ratifies the MTP v1.0 specification we’re developing in that forum, MTP can be downloaded freely from MSDN:
MTP Specification @ MSDN

Microsoft absolutely is advocating MTP as a standard. We hope it has an impact on the marketplace – and the reasons for us doing this are clear. Firstly, we never charged $$ for MTP specifications, so it wasn’t ever a money-spinner for us. Secondly, we want to do everything to encourage device vendors to adopt MTP since, for each device that supports MTP, that is one less driver we have to ship in the box. If all devices could work with the MTP class drivers that ship with Vista, then we’ll approach the panacea of broad device support with high quality inbox drivers.

Given the vast majority of what were once “blue screens” were attributable to bugs in third party drivers – reducing the customer’s dependency on these drivers is crucial to building a more stable system.

On why MTP isn’t implemented on Mac:

I see very little motivation to develop an MTP implementation on the Mac while the iPod still commands such a market presence and of course doesn’t support MTP. Now that MTP digital cameras are shipping (and MTP/IP wi-fi cameras) you may start to see a breadth of support developing.

Apple wouldn’t have to implement MTP in iPhoto to support cameras – MTP is forwards and backwards compatible with PTP – but… plugging an MTP camera into an OS that supports only PTP limits the user experience to what we have today. With MTP, we introduced significant performance enhancements for large files/large numbers of files, media extensions, etc… which applications won’t be able to take advantage of without MTP support. However, basic connectivity will still work.

Ed: I still dream of a day when device makers go after the Mac market as a way to combat iPod, for real competition in this space, but I know there are a number of reasons why this is an unrealistic expectation. Zune for Mac? Hey, it’s still possible. In the meantime, I’m happily shuttling my iRiver U10 between my two Windows PCs and two Macs. -PK

[Digital Rights Management]

Contrary to your article, Windows Media DRM has been very broadly adopted, particularly with the announcements by Motorola and Nokia that they’ll be supporting MTP and DRM in their media phones. We expect that adoption to grow rapidly.

Ed: For the record, and since I had to look it up to recall what I originally said, here’s my original statement: “very few companies want to pay a license fee for this technology because Apple’s dominance means there’s no market.” In fact, quite a few do, so technically this was unfair, though I believe I was trying to refer to the lack of Linux- and Mac-based players. But Dave has a point here, one I don’t argue with. -PK

Digital Rights Management

But, that doesn’t really address the crux of the issue, which is that:

1) DRM is a tool, most people confuse their frustration/unhappiness with protected content as being a function of the DRM when it really is a function of the business rules the content owners decide upon when they encode their content. The same Windows Media DRM was implemented by the folks behind “Weed” (www.weedshare.com) which enabled the sharing of media on Kazaa, BitTorrent, etc… The flexibility is absolutely there – provided the major record labels decide that is the way they want to go.

2) People confuse digitally downloaded content with CDs. People assume they have the same rights to use digitally downloaded content as they do CDs. In fact, in many countries it is still technically against the rules to rip CDs for playback on devices. Digital downloads come with a very different set of conditions which most people ignore when they install their player, or purchase the content. While I wish digital downloads were more flexible in usage just like the rest of us – I acknowledge the right of the content owner to dictate the usage rules.

Bottom line – and the point I’ll make in my rebuttal is simply that as musicians we probably all believe in the right of the owner of content to decide how that content should be sold. As a muso, I have some of my own content available on my website for free download – I’m cool with that. However, the owners of the mainstream music that we like to listen to have decided that they want to play by different rules. And that is fair enough – as consumers it is our responsibility to decide whether those rules are going to work for us or not. If not, go buy a CD or if so, download to your hearts content on some subscription site.

But… in neither case is it really fair to blame the DRM mechanism for simply enforcing rules laid down by another party.

Musicians, Choice, and DRM Alternatives

Ed: The above prompted me to suggest that musicians might want to consider selling directly to consumers. -PK

I completely understand your point about musicians and electing not to go the route of DRM. There really is no reason why someone couldn’t open a store selling un-DRM’d independent content. You could still sell in WMA format, but give 99% of income back to the artist and not wrap the tracks in DRM.

Or… you could wrap them in DRM, but allow infinite transfers, burns, copies, etc… with no license expiration.

So far the major online stores haven’t seen the value in this, but the opportunity still exists. I for one would be willing to try it with my music…

Ed.: The major online stores would be happy not to do this and take a sizable cut for the privelage; I think it’ll be musicians doing their own sales and pocketing the change. Dave, if you try it, I’ll put my money where my mouth is! But regardless, there’s nothing stopping you from listening to non-DRMed WMA — or OGG or MP3 — on your Windows Media-based iRiver clix. -PK

There’s plenty to debate on all sides, but it’s nice to have discussion that’s open and based on accurate information. I really appreciate the time Dave took to talk about these issues so thoughtfully and in such detail.

What this comes down to is some subtler points on which we disagree, and whether iRiver is really changing their stance. He quotes my original story, so I’ve excerpted it here so we can follow this. Philosophical debates aside, one point worth making is that there’s nothing stopping you at the present moment for using this hardware and software without the DRM features, whatever Microsoft and the manufacturers intended. Readers noted in comments on the previous story that you’re not restricted to DRMed music on iTunes, and can even get around iTunes entirely with third-party software. Just as I thought Boing Boing shouldn’t conflate DRM with the underlying pipe, readers have suggested that software that’s simply proprietary (like iTunes) shouldn’t be conflated with software designed to actively manage DRM licenses (like Apple’s FairPlay), even if the latter depends on the former.

In the future, you may not be able to ignore DRM, but now you can, and that’s important because it means consumers can still choose to avoid some of these broken technologies. I think that was part of Cory Doctorow’s original point on Boing Boing, so I may be splitting hairs, but it is important to break down these issues. Mr. Doctorow spends a lot more time thinking about these things than I do, so it’s interesting to read his arguments here.

Italicized text from the original story.

PK — MTP is proprietary to Windows: Not exactly. Microsoft did develop MTP, so it is technically a proprietary format; it’s actually extended from the protocol used to connect digital cameras. But unlike Microsoft’s DRM technology, for which Microsoft charges a license fee, MTP is freely-licensed.

CD responds: Peter, “proprietary” means that you aren’t allowed to implement this unless MSFT says you can. License fees are only one way that a program or interface can be proprietary; more important are things like “compliance and robustness,” particularly the latter, which requires that implementations be designed to resist user-modification, which effectively eliminates open source/free software implementations. Moreover, since these systems can be construed as “effective means of access control” under the DMCA, building technology that interoperates with them without taking on the license and its compliance and robustness rules is also unlawful. By adding the veneer of DRM to these technologies, vendors like Microsoft create a new kind of copyright: the right to control who may make an interoperable product.

PK: I don’t disagree with any of these arguments in a broader sense. However, whatever the situation on the hardware side (and there’s plenty in most electronics hardware that’s not open source, for better or for worse), there are already open source/free implementations of the MTP protocol. Maybe the open source implementations of MTP support on Mac and Linux violate Microsoft’s license terms, but from what I can tell from the Microsoft developer site, they don’t — at least, not under the current terms.

MTP is DRM: Totally wrong. MTP just happens to be a protocol that supports DRMed music. You can use it to transfer non-DRMed music if you really want to, and it actually does support drag-and-drop in Windows; if you drop an OGG file on an iRiver U10 or clix through Windows Explorer, that’s exactly what you’re doing. So DRM and MTP are two different things, even if they’re both part of Microsoft’s PlaysForSure specification.

CD responds: MTP is DRM in the sense that a DRM needs a “secure” channel to use for establishing a “chain of trust” between devices. MTP is designed and used as part of the DRM system that makes up PlaysForSure.

Absolutely, MTP is part of the overall DRM scheme. And no hardware vendor is likely to implement MTP for any other reason than to support Microsoft’s DRM certification process. Whatever Microsoft may say, the ability to play Windows Media files with DRM is the major incentive for adding MTP.

But I think it’s best not to conflate a delivery mechanism, which supports content with and without DRM licenses, with DRM content that can only be played on DRM-enabled devices and software. MTP is the pipe, whereas the other element — the Windows Media Rights Manager software that restricts whether or not you play content — is what I think is actually getting on people’s nerves. MTP may be a prerequisite to DRM certification for certain kinds of content (like subscriptions), but just because you have a device with MTP doesn’t mean you have to use DRM. It’s a channel; it’s the pipe between your computer and your player. You could send non-DRMed OGG files of Creative Commons-licensed music down that pipe and nothing else, using Linux and an open source player, if you really wanted to.

And while license fees per se don’t define whether something is open or proprietary, they certainly do define whether something can be broadly implemented. Implementing Windows DRM means sending money to Microsoft; implementing MTP doesn’t.

Of course, I still think as Cory does that MTP is a really bad idea, and replaces something that’s open and broadly implemented (USB Mass Storage) with something that’s currently only fully implemented out of the box on Windows XP. It also replaces the controlling body; UMS is controlled by the USB Implementers’ Forum which represents a wide body of vendors (including Microsoft), in much the same way that the MIDI Manufacturers’ Association controls the MIDI spec, whereas MTP is entirely the creation of Microsoft. Furthermore, the fact that the only real reason for reinventing the wheel in this way is to allow for more Windows DRM is equally disturbing.

But as far as Microsoft’s “chain of trust”, while MTP is part of the overall DRM scheme, you don’t have to use it that way and it is a freely-available protocol spec — at least for the moment. Breaking the Windows Media Rights Management software (or FairPlay on the Apple side) violates the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, breaks the law, and (let’s face it) is pretty difficult to do anyway. MTP, on the other hand, you can use however you see fit, if you wanted to use it.

That’s a pretty big difference. And it means people who read the Boing Boing story who own MTP devices might think they have to use Windows Media Player to transfer music, or (even worse) that they have to use DRMed music. They don’t.

PK — iRiver released a firmware update because they saw the error of their ways and want to start a revolution: No, sorry, totally wrong. This is effectively what Boing Boing claimed in their article. In Cory Doctorow’s version of events, hackers made the iRiver players work with UMS instead of MTP to get around broken DRM technology, iRiver â€Å“took the hint,â€Â? and came to our rescue by throwing away its PlaysForSure specification and releasing an update to liberate its players so they work with UMS again. An interesting story â€â€? except it’s not true. There are two versions of the firmware (UMS and MTP) so that iRiver can sell to different markets, including Asian markets where people could care less about MTP because they have no reason to use it â€â€? i.e. they don’t have a Windows Media subscription store online. Yes, iRiver did give users a choice to switch back to UMS on the U10. But Boing Boing’s timing was off: they ran their story May 26, just as iRiver was pushing its updated version of the U10, the clix, which has zero UMS support, is entirely dependent on MTP for all transfers, DRMed subscription and otherwise, and even includes Windows Media Player 11 with a special version of MTV’s Urge service. Does that sound like a company gone rogue, sticking it to the Man by rejecting Microsoft’s DRM? Uh, no.

CD: The users were already hacking their players to support UMS when iRiver released its UMS switcher; they changed their position from “Switching to UMS voids your warranty” to “UMS is an officially sanctioned and supported activity.”

Yes, and that’s great. But I guess I’m just not as optimistic on this particular case study. I’d like to believe that DRM is failing in the marketplace, and that companies are backpedaling as a result. But here’s the other evidence in the iRiver case:

1. The update doesn’t support all players and all sizes; on the contrary, it supports only a small subset. Most notably, the clix which is now iRiver’s most-hyped device can’t be switched to UMS mode. Given that the clix appears to be exactly the same hardware as the U10 it replaces (different storage size, but same internal chips), and the U10 supports this firmware switch while the clix does not, I’d say iRiver is going Microsoft’s way, not the user’s.


2. The update is available only on iRiver’s global site. The first thing you see when you go to iriver.com is a page asking for your country. If you choose North America or Europe, you won’t even be able to download the firmware update that lets you switch between MTP and UMS. Only via the global support site can you even read up on the difference between UMS and MTP or get access to the UMS firmware. There’s no “beware of the leopard” sign; maybe we’ll leave that to Apple. (Sorry, Douglas Adams joke.)


3. iRiver continues to advocate PlaysForSure. Whereas previous devices were loaded up with non-DRMed eMusic MP3 files, the clix now ships with a CD containing Windows Media Player 11 and pushing the DRM subscription-based Urge (MTV) music service.

The only thing likely to keep UMS alive on iRiver devices is that iRiver’s own jukebox software requires it. (So much for MTP implementations, I know.) But what seems to be happening is that iRiver is shipping UMS and their (admittedly horrendous) proprietary jukebox software for Asia, while limiting the US market increasingly to MTP and Windows Media Player. And it sounds like the newer the iRiver device, the more likely it is to be dependent on Windows Media Player. So you have to compare a single software update on their global support site to their entire hardware channel push in North America. Which do you think is more important?

Microsoft is, of course, rumored to be coming up with their own music player hardware, which could change the whole ballgame. This would provide further evidence that MS and Apple want total control over how we listen to music, and it would not only anger customers, but Microsoft’s vendors, as well. That is, if this happens at all.

This is a lot further into this than I originally intended to go, but Cory’s thoughts were provocative enough that I think they merited investigation. I don’t want to pretend to be an expert on these issues; I’m not. But I certainly am happy to get the opportunity to discuss them, so keep the comments coming.

I’ll close with this comment from reader Mies van der Robot on my last story, which I think really makes clear the difference between the loading mechanism and pipe (which in Microsoft’s case would be Windows Media Player and MTP) and the DRM software:

Your first paragraph is conflating two separate issues: the issue of proprietary loading mechanisms (e.g. iTunes the player, not to be confused with iTunes the store) with the more odious issue of players that lock out non-DRM music completely. The iPod/iTunes combination still works just fine with independently distributed music (in MP3, AAC, ALE, AIFF, or WAV format).

My iPod is filled with tunes purchased from Bleep.com, Kompakt.de, emusic.com, and other independent sites distributing DRM-free MP3s. Those tracks number in the hundreds. Number of iTunes Store tracks: 5.

Apple may not be actively promoting independent distribution, but they’re also not locking it out of the hardware. Yes, you’re dependent on iTunes as the â€Å“driverâ€Â? software, but lots of hardware uses proprietary single-vendor drivers. As long as the hardware’s driver permits you to load and listen to non-DRM music, I consider that to be open to independent distribution.

As several noted, Apple is actually slightly worse than Microsoft; MTP connection or no, in Windows at least you can still use the file system to add music to a player, and Microsoft is at least allowing greater vendor diversity on both the DRM and the connection. But the important point is that, until players start locking out non-DRM’ed music (at which point we will be in the streets, of course), you have a whole lot of options for how to get music onto your iPod or Windows Media player. And I think that’s a positive solution you can use for your own music and advocate to friends.