DRM fails disgracefully

By Ashok Argent-Katwala

After reporting that some people were seeing harsh restrictions on their TiVo for HBO's new (fantastic) John Adams mini-series, Molly Wood has a response from TiVo. It was all a mistake, apparently.

This highlights how it is very hard to make DRM fail gracefully, certainly from the end-user's perspective.

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Good engineering should work well, but also fail well.

We've already seen cases where people get random failures when hooking an HD box up to their HD television. Sometimes they are random, and sporadic; sometimes it 'just' degrades the quality of the output. I'm sure some pairs of devices just don't get along when they try and speak HDCP.

That the common 'solution' to sporadic HDCP problems is to unplug and replug the cable or to reboot one or both boxes is a worrying sign. Whenever you get to the 'have you tried turning it off and on again' stage, it is because something funky is happening that an engineer hasn't accounted for. It doesn't mean the engineer was an idiot, probably just that the complexity of the task was overwhelming. We avoid that by reducing complexity, aiming for a simpler thing that works reliably.

What's critical here is that we use technology to improve the user experience. Molly puts it well:

So, to be clear, TiVo says this was, indeed, a mistake. Sadly, it's the kind of mistake that ends up leveling all the same old accusations against DRM in the first place: inevitably, it interferes with the consumer experience. I'm sure TiVo's stuck between a rock and a hard place with this Macrovision DRM situation, and I appreciate the difficulty in trying to toe the line. I only wish the rights-holders who insist on this sort of DRM in the first place would take the lesson once and for all.

As an engineer, I want to spend my efforts improving the user's lot. As a user, I'll pick a system that acts on my behalf. That's why I'm working towards a box that's really a computer, and trying to make it play all the content it can get hold of through a very simple interface that your grannie could use.

The DRM camp can't have it both ways, of course. TiVo are in a sticky place because they have been compelled to build all of this anti-user stuff into the boxes. I assume they aren't allowed to include a sanity-check that the limit for a recording is a reasonable amount of time. That inevitably means that when something odd happens, it is going to bite the user before the content distributor, by design.

Sometimes turning it off and on again won't do the trick. We'll eventually need to excise the whacky restrictions so we have boxes that offer a compelling user experience. Some of us will do with or without the content-owners' approval, but it will be much more fun (and profitable) for all, if rights-holders are along for the ride.