My long article analysing Steve Jobs open letter included a contrast between DRM and the security that banks use. I have also tried to clarify the usage of terms like DRM. For any technical person who wasn't sure why I included this obvious fact, please read the following in The Independent from John Kennedy, head of the music industry body IFPI.
Mr Kennedy disagreed. "It should be neither impossible, nor unreasonably burdensome, to implement interoperability whilst maintaining the security of DRM," he said. He noted that banks have interoperable cash machine systems that use DRM, while mobile phones use DRM for voice and billing services without compromising the security of services.
Mr. Kennedy is not alone with this confusion, with the article also quoting William Cook, another lawyer falsely claiming that it is possible to have interoperable "copy protection". While it is true that the same file formats can be used, at the end of the day there needs to be secret keys whose purpose is to restrict interoperability between content and devices to those who have made specific business arrangements. DRM requires a restriction on interoperability, and there is absolutely no other way to create a DRM system.
Cash machines do not use anything remotely similar to a DRM system. Cash machines use cryptography to ensure that third parties are not able to intercept and interpret communications, but are not using cryptography to limit interoperability. In both the bank and mobile phone situation it is third parties which are the threat that the technology is protecting against, not the owner of the device.
It is critically important that we challenge this comparison as DRM and legitimate uses of cryptography are not at all related, and the controversy with DRM is based on an illegitimate use of technology. Cryptography isn't the problem: the attempt to abuse cryptography to treat the destination of the message, the owner of the technology, as the threat is the problem.