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Movielink Snubs DRM-less Macs
mcwetboy writes "CNET reports that the Macintosh is being shut out of online movie services like Movielink, and connects it to the Mac's lack of digital-rights management. From the article: '[Apple VP] Schiller says Apple has not released much in the way of protective technology ... because effective techniques for securing content without interfering with the experience of consumers have not yet been invented.' A consumer-friendly attitude towards DRM may be a double-edged sword (content may not be made available for that platform), but if the content is locked out of the Mac for that reason, do I really want it anyway?" In other news, the USSR provided free bread only to the poor people.
There's going to be a lot more of this type of thing.
Paladium, here we come.
I dont watch movies on my G4 anyway. If I want to watch a movie, I watch it on my TV where I can be comfortable. But I do enjoy the lack of DRM on my mac.
As Steve Jobs has pointed out is that DRM's dirty little secret is that it does not work and will always be hackable.
The answer is to make reliable, quality, fairly price downloads available. Don't assume your customers want to be criminals.
The correct quote is "Effect techniques for securing content have not yet been invented."
``if the content is locked out of the Mac for that reason, do I really want it anyway?''
Maybe not if you're an idealist. The vast majority wants the content for the content, not because it does or doesn't work on Macs.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
This whole Movielink thing suffers one point: digital video will (probably) always be either a) large, or b) low quality. Broadband has caught on to a large degree, but not as large as anyone thought it would, and certainly not enough for the huge streaming video boom that was supposed to happen. This means that while I'm not exactly sure which choice Movielink will make, either it will take 80% US users a day and a half to download a movie, or it will be so poor quality that their is no motivation not to go rent from Hollywood Video down the road. The only people who can't drive under 15 minutes to a local video rental store are almost certainly operating on 56k or less (except for those towns offering their own DSL ;-)). In either case, fine. I'll be just happy going to Mom & Pop's Video Store down the road and renting the new LOTR DVD to watch on my PowerBook.
--- What
They do not support DRM, they support the right of artists to get paid for their work. Judging by what we have seen so far Apple promotes fair use but expects people to not steal things.
This is industry propaganda - they "want" to support the Macintosh, but they "can't" due to the "limited availability of Mac software".
Or, perhaps we could re-phrase their double-speak:
"We don't like Apple's attitude. Therefore, we're going to hose their customers... not by saying that Apple is wrong, but by saying that the Mac platform is poorly supported by the software industry! Heh, that'll learn them".
Again, the customers are in the middle.... between the computer industry, which has a disdain for controlling their customers and industry self-overregulation, and the "DRM" industry, whose only purpose is to control customers.
Since Apple was technically correct in their claims, the DRM folk could only counter by kicking Apple between the legs.
Let's read this article and it's topic as it should be - a power-play by the DRM industry, against Apple's ideal of fully supporting it's customer base.
Who knows, but I expect some people will try and figure out a way around it anyway. Look at how much effort has been put into cracking QuickTime in order to allow Linux users to watch .... adverts? Trailors and Apple ads basically. So I guess the answer is whether people want content or not isn't really related to the technology used.
No. Apple supports the idea of not stealing or infringing copyright. However, unlike everyone else, they are not willing to pursue this goal at the expense of existing functionality and their customer's rights.
Erm, hm. That's a strange interpretation.
I think what Schiller is saying is 'Apple supports the idea that artists should get paid for their works. Apple recognizes that no one has figured out an effective way to do this yet.'
This is basically the line in the sand where we see if Apple really has balls. If content (with demand, mind you - Movielink is a bad joke) starts to appear regularly with DRM embedded, we'll see if Apple sticks to their guns. It may save them in the end if they do.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Secondly (and much more important), the "user experience" you mention is actually synonymous with a user's fair use rights. Apple finds the idea of protecting artists' work a good one, but not at the expense of fair use rights. Apple sells the iPod. Apple sells Apple-branded Superdrives. But at the bottom of all those commercials are the words "Don't Steal Music." Apple has never taken a friendly stance toward piracy. They are friendly towards consumers, however.
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
...as long as Sony, AOL/Time Warner, etc will allow it to...
Well this fits with Apple's Switch campaign. After all when Ellen Feiss is inspired (by whatever means) to combine her DVD of The Wizard of Oz with a particular Pink Floyd score she has on CD. She won't be pleased when her Mac beeps at her telling her that Sony won't let her rip the CD, and Time Warner won't let her copy their film...
After all if your whole marketing ploy is that people can use your computer to do what they think they should be able to do and do it easily; then you would want them to be able to exercize their "Fair Use" rights.
credo quia absurdum
shutting them out of a legit service will fight p2p how? ;/
"We didn't want to go through all of the waste of creating compatiblity with a minority of users running Apple (or Linux for that matter). So, we will use this as an opportunity to forward our own issues and blame it on a lack of suitable DRM. So, we'll deflect the issue, and advance one of our own goals at the same time."
also from the article: But Mac choices for file swapping are severely limited compared to options for the PC. Two of the most popular services--Kazaa and Morpheus--do not support the Mac in their latest versions.
so the article is saying that there will be no movies for mac because there's no DRM on mac, and people could copy the movies, burn them to DVDs, upload them onto a windows machine, and put them on P2P networks??
silly hollywood.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
The problem with DRM is that both parties do not necessarily want to keep it (the movie, song, etc) a secret. DRM technology attempts to create a high enough incentive for the customer to want to keep it a secret. So far nothing has been able to do this.
Stuart Eichert
DRM is only effective at keeping good, computer-confused citizens from using their computers to their full potentials.
Good IP thiefs will remain good IP thiefs indefinately.
Want to copy a DRM'd song? Wire the speaker-out to the line-in on another computer and record it as a Wav, then MP3 it. Want to copy a DRM'd video? Use a camcorder. Or better yet. Use one of those video cards that sends it to a VCR, DVD-R, or HI-8, and record the video output from the screen. Seriously, DRM will not work against pirates, and only serves to prevent legitimate users from using to their full potential.
And I spend months of my life prostituting myself working on this bunk..........
Karma: Not Particularly Funny.
The USSR only gave away bread to the people who needed it. There was no government handout waiting for those who could afford to buy their own.
Yet here, MovieLink (which is another word for "a group the major content owners") is bypassing Macintosh users because Apple refuses to develop a DRM technology because all DRM would do is limit the functionaility of their products in ways that are unfavorable to the people who buy their products. This, instead of say, MovieLink hiring tech staff to create its own DRM solution... bearing the costs of doing so themselves instead of trying to stick Apple with the bill.
BTW... who's working on the DRM technology so MovieLink will see fit to offer their services to users of Linux. Anybody? Anybody at all?
Audible did it right by apple - you can buy their files from audible.com (and they're CHEAP ;), download 'em to your Mac and (get this): play them anywhere! You can play 'em on an iPod (or other MP3 player), play 'em on your mac or even burn 'em to CDs. You can make backups. You can transfer to different media. It's a proprietary audio format, sure, but one so transparent that the only thing it prevents you from doing is filesharing it. I mean, you can, but it won't work without your login and password. It seems like the perfect system to me: You wouldn't think of sharing it because it won't work anyway, but what's the point when what you want is cheap, easy to get and freely portable?
DRM can work for all concerned, in a way that doesn't violate anyone's rights and stil pays the artists. Why hasn't anyone else tried this?
Triv
Wait til Palladium. When the rest of the world snubs your platform/OS... then what are you going to do?
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
According to the Terms of Use you need to download the Movielink Manager Software to use the service. Is there any reason why they couldn't just port this software for Mac, without breaking their DRM schema? Does the Windows operating system offer any inherent advantage to DRM over Apple, or is this just a political statement?
Furthermore, Apple supports artists who want to use their Macs to create content that is of a quality that competes with the major publishers. iMovie isn't the world's greatest video editing program, but it beats Nothing which is the video creation program you get free with Windows.
1) Listen to what customers want 2) Create a product around their customers' desires 3) ????? 4) PROFIT!!!!!
Now all we need are stickers to put on guns which read, "Don't shoot people" and then we can get rid of all that pesky gun control legislation. (note: I'm in favor of all that pesky gun control legislation)
Crimes fall where honest people are armed, because criminals fear for their lives. Gun control legislation only makes it safer for criminals to go about their business, as they can be confident their victims are unarmed.
If they ignore laws about rape, murder, or assualt, what makes you think they'll obey gun control laws any more than a stupid sticker?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
"without interfering with the experience of consumers have not yet been invented".
...etc...). Right now there isn't a foolproof method of DRM, that doesn't affect a user's fair use of copyrighted material.
Amen! Thank god a computer manufacturer is finally thinking of the consumers that use it's products, rather then trying to make alliances with the *AA crowd (RIAA/MPAA, movielink,
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Please stop mindlessly repeating the PR party line of movie studios. This isn't about artists, this is about the profits of big corporations.
Judging by what we have seen so far Apple promotes fair use but expects people to not steal things.
What about consumer rights? If I pay for a piece of copyrighted content, I have a right to fair use of that content. DRM keeps me from that.
This is all rather besides the point. Even if Apple doesn't provide system-level DRM, application-level DRM works just fine in the formats MovieLink is using (RealMedia and Windows Media). And Windows, while they talk about system-level DRM eventually with Palladium, doesn't have it either today.
So, whatever MovieLink might claim is their reason, they aren't technical. They probably don't want to do it for marketshare reasons, and are using Apple's DRM statements (which are really rather mild) as an excuse/flogging horse.
My video compression blog
"We don't like Apple's attitude. Therefore, we're going to hose their customers... not by saying that Apple is wrong, but by saying that the Mac platform is poorly supported by the software industry! Heh, that'll learn them".
A more likely interpretation, in my opinion:
"We don't have the technical competence to even attempt to support macintosh users, and we can't be bothered or can't afford to spend even a nominal sum on researching how this would be done, so we're going to pretend this is apple's fault somehow."
It's the same principle as when a cat runs headlong into a wall and then walks off nonchalantly in an attempt to pretend that it did that on purpose, and it is very common in the world of macintosh software ports. See also "half-life".
(My first guess at an interpretation was going to be "We locked ourselves in to a propeitary, windows-only solution for streaming our movies, and we're going to pretend that it's apple's fault that we're short-sighted and don't care about marginal markets.", but that apparently isn' the case as they're using WMP and RealPlayer, both of which are available for the mac!)
Seriously, if apple's were the only TCPA free platform, that's exactly what I'd be using.
So, of course, it wasn't mp3, or mpeg, or realaudio. It was the Liquid Audio format...
I downloaded and installed the player, which runs under classic a-ok, until you actually try to play the files. Upon searching, it is explicitly incompatible with MacOS X, as are the RealPlayer plugins to listen to the files as well. There are no alternative players. In reading a bit more, I also found that Microsoft bought all of the intellectual property rights from the creators of Liquid Audio in September, so now the task of writing a player for MacOS X falls into their lap...
Fair use rights...? What are those? I paid money for this song, and can't listen to it. In speaking to cdnow's customer service, they informed me that I needed to get the proper player for my operating system. This was in reply to my saying "There isn't a player for OS X."
So, Mac users, linux users, BSD users, and the rest of the gang unfortunately get it up the poop chute when it comes to DRM-based media. I paid for a song and couldn't listen to it, as the DRM won't let me! I'd be more bitter about my lack-of-refund if I didn't get the song 10 minutes afterwards from my local friendly P2P clients... at a much higher bitrate, too... If getting things LEGALLY were as easy as getting them pirated, maybe people wouldn't be stealing so much music, eh?
-agent oranje.
If Apple includes DRM, they lose sales (especially the 'Alpha Geek' crowd who are flocking to Macs for OSX, and more importantly, *me*). If they don't include it, moronic sites like this try to block Macs as a whiny political protest against Apple's free will.
If the customer has to go against his ethical code to own some movie he could just buy at the corner store anyway, is it really worth it? I've always bought all my media stuff in 'real' versions, and I'll keep doing that. Downloading movies ain't really practical on a 33.6 faxmodem... And watching them on a computer screen, even the superfine TiBook LCD, just can't beat my Sony bigscreen, and pisses off the missus to no end.
This is merely another example of Windows-based coders ignoring the rest of the world, just with a politically-correct excuse this time. I'm still waiting for Counterstrike on the Mac, btw. Not gonna happen? Fine. I don't plonk, I boycott. Me and my friends present our 'boycott list' to each other every week and then try to kill sales. Good fun, and plotting goes great with chicken wings and beer.
And when Movielink fails in 6 months, as it probably will, the studios will inevitably find a scapegoat besides their own stubborn stupidity. Probably piracy, hackers, or muslim terrorists, despite the fact that they've been refusing customers and have a bad dotcom-like business plan. Stupid.
And this article tries very hard to make the Macs' nearly complete lack of DRM sound like *A Very Bad Thing*. AS IF. Nice spin, Big Brother. Freedom is Slavery. Good is evil, evil is good. Trust Big Brother.
BlackBolt
What liberties? You must be joking. Free speech in your precious USA was done in by Wee-Willy Clinton back in '98 and your privacy left last year when the Trade Center collapsed. Sorry to be the first to tell ya son.
"Apple invented the best DRM scheme to date. It's a transparent sticker aposed on all iPods. It's says :
Don't steal the music."
That's a great idea, I think. I very much support Apple on this. They're really saying that theft of music is a social problem, whereas the (RI|MP)AA tends to think it's a technology problem.
Look, if I _WANT_ to steal (books|music|movies|software), I'm going to steal them. When I first ripped my own MP3s, I actually played back the CD on my computer and recorded it to a wave (and got some ambient noise from the microphone, to my dismay). I then ran an MP3 encoder over each wave file. In retrospect, this was an extraordinary amount of work; at the time, however, it was well worth it - I didn't have to switch CDs every time I wanted to listen to Everlong.
There will always be a way to crack the high-tech (or low-tech in high-tech clothing), even if the solution results in loss of quality. I can always setup a microphone to record the sound from my speakers. The question is, how much of this crap will people put up with before they stop supporting these Draconian conglomerates? I haven't bought a new CD in at least two years because of this crap.
Do YOU vote with your wallet?
This is precisely why I should support the platform which does without silly DRM garbage. When it starts being imbedded in hardware I will do my utmost to NOT use the features. The last time I watched a movie (not even on a computer) has been several months hence all this is hogwash. The quality of films has to go up before I even think of trading my computing freedoms for some movie flick.
Please stop this DRM misinformation. DRM does not stand for "Digital Rights Management" it stands for "Digital Restriction Mechanisms". This mistake has been circulating around the internet for several years now and its about time its corrected. People's opinions are being tainted by this blunder as "Rights Management" sounds like a good idea. If you don't want people to accuse you of spreading RIAA FUD please stop propagating this name.
Apple computers feature DRM-free environments, Palladium is a non-DRM free environment. which sounds better?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Get it together. Are we already so besotted with the dreck this industry calls entertainment that we cannot imagine saying no?
illegitimii non ingravare
My computer is in the home office, although I sometimes pop my laptop open on the couch. I got two couches and a chair around the home theater. I watch DVDs, because there isn't enough easily accessible HD Content, but DVDs are decent. DivX is unwatchable, sorry. I think its great that you love you 21"/23" monitor, whatever.
I had an HTPC hooked up to my system, wasn't worth the trouble. However, your computer can't compare to a reasonable home theater system.
Projectors can be powered via computer, terrific. If you are blowing it up on a projector, you're NOT going to want DivX or other crap. You're going to want a MINIMUM of DVD quality, to minimize the MPEG artifacts.
An HTPC can power a projector quite nicely (there was a Yamaha that I fell in love with at Tweeter, but can't justify dropping $10k on it...), scaling video from DVDs up to 720p, etc., but it doesn't change the fact that you are customizing a computer to serve as AV equipment.
Sorry, but a cheap 27" television, w/ mediocre DVD player, and a low-low-low end surround sound system (we're talking $500 total) is going to blow away watching a computer monitor with "AWESOME" computer speakers.
A reasonable HT system ($5k-$10k, so midrange) really blows it away, and the good systems are even more impressive.
Alex
If I pay for a piece of copyrighted content, I have a right to fair use of that content. DRM keeps me from that.
Which is exactly what Apple is talking about with their "user experience" line. If someone can come up with a rights management system that doesn't interfere with fair use, I'm sure that Apple (and some of the folks around here) will be all for it. The question is : is this a technological problem, or a social one?
Now, if you buy something and agree to a supplemental limitation of rights, than you in fact have no non-explicit rights (ie, not defined in the contract). [...] You buy DRM'd content and you agree in fact to waive your fair use, first sale, and other consumer rights. Its basic contract law.
It's not supposed to work like that for copyrights, and for good reason: publishers would collude to eliminate fair use if they could. For books, we warded off that threat, but for on-line movies, it is happening.
More generally, you cannot waive arbitrary rights in contracts; many rights are guaranteed to you no matter what the contract says. Fair use has traditionally been such a right, and it should continue to be for digital media.
If DRM bugs you though, the obvious answer is not to buy into it.
That's a free market argument. The problem is that there is no free, competitive market in movies. I don't have a wide choice of sellers for equivalent products and I can't negotiate conditions with individual sellers. It's a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.
You can justify any monopoly with your kinds of libertarian platitudes. But the fact is that if we want a free market, we need to regulate things like copyright and fair use carefully.
This is most likely some attempt on a joke by the
original poster. All it shows is his total lack of understanding how USSR worked though.
They have never given bread for free to the "poor" because there weren't any "poor". Or, rather, everybody was equally poor. As to the bread, it was freely available from the bread
stores for a symbolic price, same as other life
necessities (basic foods, housing, energy).
This is just the latest example of the challenges facing Apple in its battle to dominate digital media and other niche markets.
They have it backwards. Apple is dominating the digital media market when "[m]any--if not most--production studios use Apple's top-rated QuickTime Final Cut Pro content-creation and video-editing tools." Apple is being dominated when they add Digital Restriction Mechanisms to their software and hardware, to tempt movie moguls into providing video services for their customers.
It's important to remember that DRM does not enable digital content to be delivered online. DRM hog-ties consumers which makes them an attractive and helpless market for digital content. Big difference.
Movielink also snubs non-US based users by IP address! That's right. I live in Japan, and I get an error screen saying 'sorry, Movielink is only offered to customers within the US' when I go to their webpage. When going through a proxy w/ a US based IP address, I go to the front page no problem...
I'm sure they have several reasons for doing this (most importantly because they don't want to hear from people who have slow download speeds complaining) but it is discrimination regardless...
That's the wrong analogy. Illegally copying copyrighted materials is already against the law, just like illegally entering a house is. The DMCA would be comparable to a law that says "you cannot make, own or use (even for legal purposes) any object that could be used to break into a house." That would be plainly ridiculous and unacceptable, and it goes to show how low the political and judicial systems of the US have sunk for actually allowing such a ridiculous law to be purchased...
Microsoft and the copyright cartels have monopolies that prevent the people from having such a choice. Microsoft's monopoly may be ill-gotten, and perhaps a more lawful Justice Department, free from the stain of presidential bribes, might have brought it into check, but the copyright cartels are granted monopolies by government fiat, and sustained by a regime of copyright law designed expressly for that purpose.
The Founding Fathers didn't give a rat's ass about whether you can get a weekly free beer at a bar. Their freedom of speech was to ensure that political speech wouldn't be silenced.
The constitution does not limit freedom of speech to political speech. It is clearly written and intended to protect all speech. As for the founding father's "giving a rats ass" I suggest you take a remidial course in basic US history.
You demonstrate the achilles heel of the Libertarian philosophy, namely their inability to differentiate between individual freedom, which the constitution was designed and intended to protect, and corporate freedom to run roughshod over those same individuals, which the founding fathers were nearly unanimous in opposing and even fearing. That they could never have forseen the corporate fascism to which our once great democracy has degenerated, and the willful attempt of Microsoft and Hollywood (through Palladium and DRM, as well as other measures) to usurp governance responsibilities (such as policing and enforcing the law) from its rightful authorities, namely a democractically elected government of, by, and for the people, is hardly their fault, but implying that the would have endorsed such a thing is an insult both to them and to the intellegence of anyone reading your post.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy