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"Squishy" DRM?
lhouk281 writes "There's an article on
Wired about squishy DRM. Apparently some companies are trying to find a happy medium in implementing DRM between the consumer and the RIAA. Good luck..."
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Sugar-coat it all you want. It's just as bad.
Just my dos centavos.
Insert offensive troll-style sig here. Please mod or respond appropriately.
Forget DRM, let market forces dictate the business model for business.
the consumers is happy, and the business that can adapt are happy.
the rest will die.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Because people will find the restrictions easier to swallow. They'll accept it since its, say, 20% painful instead of 100% painful.
And then in another year, after our collective memory has faded.... it'll be 40% painful.... then 60%... then soon you'll find a coin slot next to your 3 gig floppy drive to pay for copywritten letters that make up the emails you are reading.
Once down the slippery slope, the only way to stop is to either dig in or hit the bottom.
All it will take, and I am sure it is inevitable, is for someone to write a virus/worm/trojan that will make all data on the victims computer DRM controlled and expired.
Trillions of dollars in damage to protect a billion dollar industry.
The real problem with the whole DRM debate is that people steal music. The words download or p2p and the phrase fair use have no place in the same breath.
I am all for ripping CD's to put all my music on my computer, so I can shake up all my CD's, make my own playlists, and the like. This is fair use.
Unfortunately, the people that only do this are in the minority. The majority, even giving them the benefit of the doubt, steal music. Sure they may have never bought it before, but that doesn't make it right. Sure they might have protected themselves from buying a whole disk just for one song, but did they delete the song they did like when they decided not to buy the music?
These types of arguments do make a reasonable argument for consumer rights and advocacy, but are still stealing and don't fall under the purview of fair use.
Until we can argue against DRM without bringing up these types of arguments, redefining fair use to what we'd like it to be, then we as a downloading, file sharing community will have a hard time being taken seriously, let alone winning the argument.
what about old mp3's? I'm happy with them and their hhorrible evil insane and unamerican lack of DRM. Or how about OGG?
If you can control what people see and hear and USE then you can control it... but guess what.. they cant.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
- Palladium style DRM - The hardware/software prevents you from making copies even if they would be legitimate ones.
- Squishy DRM - No restrictions on copying but copies can be traced back to the source so that people who make illegal copies can be prosecuted.
So we basically haveEven the IP industry admits that DRM methods restrict access that otherwise may be legal. The consumer electronics industry is right when it says you can't encode intent and all possible uses into software.
So who's going to win? The IP industry getting the legal defintion of Fair Use restricted even more or the electronics industry who can't give the majority of its customers what they truly want? There can't be any compromise or solution until the legal defintions of acceptable legal use are able to be encoded in software.
Are there any Open Source projects thinking about DRM? I dont know how it would work but it must be possible.
Reality does not require that it be possible. Palladium is coming around precisely because nobody's thought of a way to make guaranteed software DRM and few expect such ways to ever be discovered. DRM that's not trivially beatable when you have unlimited abilities to use and modify both code and data is pretty widely believed to be impossible.
Be careful with the word 'must'.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
No - you're just not explaining to them like a human.
"You know, Grandma, how i used to send you pictures on the internet that i made with my camera? Well, i won't be able to do that any more unless i pay someone some money to make sure that it can't be stolen..."
"Mom, i used to send you DVD's full of video that we'd make of the new baby... we'd use our video camera and iMovie and then use iDVD and make those for you? Well, now that Apple is gone because they tried to survive the legal assaults on them for iMovie 3 - i have a Windows computer now since computers that could copy DVD's without protection were made illegal - and the DVD's i burn in that machine won't work in your Microsoft Media Center/HDTV setup unless i pay a license fee to Microsoft..."
"Aunt Mary, why are you calling me that your computer won't start up? Did you pay your computer-use bill to Microsoft this month? You did? Well.. hm.... Oh - i see, you installed a new hard drive because the old one went bad, and the 800 number has had you on hold for an hour?...."
"The new Michael Bolton CD won't play in your old CD walkman i got you a few years ago, cousin Sally. you're going to have to buy a new CD player that only plays only the new CDs. No, i know you're not a studio artist, so they won't sound any better.. but you're going to just have to keep 2 players around until next year unless you pay to migrate your old CD's to the new protected format..."
"I know, dad, you like to record Matlock when its on during the day - but unless you pay $5 a month for the right to record the show, you're just going to have to come up with something else..."
give them real examples of what's going to happen - then point out to them that its already happened with their new Windows computer at home.
Did you know that you've already given Microsoft the right to access your computer and modify your system without letting you know? And that they may pick and choose which software you can run on it?
this isn't hard - you fscking nerds just don't can't explain shimple shit.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
I glad to see that there is some effort being put into a compromise on this DRM thing. As much as I'd like the hardware/software companies to "just say no", it's not in their best interest to do that. For every company out there that says no, there are 3 others that can't wait to get in bed with DRM and profit from it.
I'm not so sure that voting does any good these days, with politicians being easily bought, but we can be heard with our dollars! Just Don't Buy It! We may be a minority in this but out dollars do count! The consumers should not have to comprimise to the products; the companies producing these products should be comprimising to the consumers' demands.
This idea has acquired a, somewhat, more positive reception than most other DRM methodologies. However you must keep something in mind: Consumers aren't behind the wheel on this bus.
We all know the RIAA has been getting what they want when it comes to anything related to intellectual property.
So how will it be recieved amongst them? Well I'll let you decide for yourself. However, allow me a chance to display the facts.
The Recording Industry Association of America is an interesting animal. It deviates from our usual assumptions in the way that most corporations work. It is usually assumed that a large corporation wants money, that money is the bottom line. This is not the case with the RIAA. The RIAA wants control. The end result is still money but control is the most effective means to get money.
I've explained this situation before, but for the sake of clarity I'll explain it again. They don't want control just because they're the multinational, multibillion-dollar, multi-million employing incarnation of pure satanic force. They want control because in the entertainment industry, more than any other, this is how you make the most money.
The (literally) billion dollar question is "why?" The answer is simple. Cost and risk. More than any other industry there's more money spent at a higher risk in entertainment (save, possibly, stock trading). Unlike other industries with development processes, the entertainment industry does not gaurantee that a large amount of time and money will produce large profits. So what must they do? They must assure that they are the only sources for their product. They must make it as difficult as possible for users to get music other than theirs.
That's half the reason the RIAA exists, to remove competition between high profiting companies and instead force it upon the rest of the world, including start-ups and independant businesses. I'm getting ahead of myself, however.
So what do they do with this control? They bring on a finite number of artists, have them produce as many CDs as possible, while diluding the mainstream public with as much related advertising as possible.
So you say, "why not hire more artists and make more CDs? Then you'll make more profit!" That's the traditional way of looking at it, but it's altogether untrue. They'll make more money, yes, but they certainly will not make more profit. Albums sold would increase but the cost of developing this music, signing the band, advertising for the band, buying radio play, and everything else associated with music production would increase at a higher rate than their sales.
So you see, keeping a small number of artists (a full CD store doesn't appear to be a small number of artists but when you consider that the RIAA only signs approximately 1000 artists annually you begin to see the situation with clarity) is quite beneficial to them. Making sure that these are the only artists you ever see, hear, or talk about is even more beneficial to them. It's the real reason P2P is under attack.
Given this super short, abridged, and summarized synopsis of the situation let's look at this DRM approach again. This "Squishy DRM" would allow P2P to continue. It would assure that people could not illegally acquire music. Yet, it would also allow consumers to venture with their music taste, and try smaller, less advertised artists/bands/genres. This DRM method would still compromise their control, and thus, their profits. How do you think they will recieve this idea?
The industry isn't worried about "losing money" because they mostly know that they aren't really losing sales right now.
They are thinking about DRM in terms of increasing future revenue.
If you look at enough of these studies, music file trading doesn't generally cause fewer music cd sales. People with disposable income get exposed to more music, and buy more music. People without disposable income get access to music they wouldn't have paid for anyway. And, yes, some people with poor ethics take music they could pay for but just don't want to.
But this isn't about current sales, and the known-to-be-false belief that the record industry is losing sales. It isn't, really, even about preventing loss of revenue in the future.
This is about future control, and increasing revenue in the future.
As to workable forms of DRM... Loaning a physical music CD to a friend is perfectly acceptable and completely legal. The digital equivalent would be to "loan" a copy of a computer audio file to your friend, where your friend gets a copy of the music and you lose the ability to play that music until your friend returns or deletes his copy, or buys/licenses his own copy.
Now, this introduces a few problems.
If your music license server doesn't allow loaning, then, personally, you have a broken system, and I won't use it. But this is really a minor thing.
I have a larger issue with this. How do you support loaning in a digital environment? I backup my computer, "loan" a computer audio file to my friend, my local license is disabled until it is "returned" from my friend... and then I restore from my backup... I just got my license back, and my friend has it too.
To get around this, you either need an OS that doesn't let you backup/restore licenses, or a central server that controls and validates license backup/restores, or simply a central license server that you have to connect to periodically.
None of these are good solutions for the consumer, for a number of reasons. My OS on my computer should do what I say. If it doesn't do what I say, then the person/company that does control it should pay for my computer, because it obviously isn't mine.
But further than that... No central server, and no company, has any right no know what I'm listening to, or how often I'm listening to it. This is a privacy concern. This is one of the major reasons I hated Divx. (Circuit City's Divx, not the codec.)
DRM has major problems working in a way that supports privacy rights. This is *one* of the reasons why I don't now, and probably never will, support it.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Don't forget that A) people tend to reject and discount the patently absurd, and B) we're the minority here.
"You know, Grandma, how i used to send you pictures on the internet that i made with my camera? Well, i won't be able to do that any more unless i pay someone some money to make sure that it can't be stolen..."
"Who would want to steal your pictures? They're not worth anything to anyone else! They wouldn't really make you pay for that, that law is to stop criminals."
"Mom, i used to send you DVD's full of video that we'd make of the new baby... we'd use our video camera and iMovie and then use iDVD and make those for you? Well, now that Apple is gone because they tried to survive the legal assaults on them for iMovie 3 - i have a Windows computer now since computers that could copy DVD's without protection were made illegal - and the DVD's i burn in that machine won't work in your Microsoft Media Center/HDTV setup unless i pay a license fee to Microsoft..."
"I don't understand all that technical stuff. Why can't you make DVDs I can play? My friend Bob at work says his niece just sent him a DVD of her wedding, and he has the same setup I have. Why can't you do that?"
"I know, dad, you like to record Matlock when its on during the day - but unless you pay $5 a month for the right to record the show, you're just going to have to come up with something else..."
"Oh, I'm not paying $5 for that, I'm paying $5 for these great new features that I couldn't get a few years ago. I could never figure out how to program my old VCR, that thing was such a pain. This is so much easier!"
etc.
Try it. You'll find I'm right.
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