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UK Government Advised to Promote and Adopt DRM
aking137 writes "From ZDNet, the UK Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG) are recommending '...actively promoting the development and spread of global DRM-related standards' on the grounds that 'The UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy'. Also in the article: 'The massive popularity of peer-to-peer networks also needs to be urgently addressed, the BSG said.'" The report (pdf) is online.
The fact that DRM doesn't actually solve anything doesn't seem to phase these people?
Sure you can make *your* software DRM but free open source multimedia applications already exist. The cat is out of the bag [so to speak].
If there are any psych majors in the crowd could you please explain to me the appeal of seeking out the "latest 3 letter fad" regardless of any the predictable outcomes [e.g. DRM techniques always fail because the problem has no solution].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Fast downloads of MP3s are why people sign up for the first place. Stopping that would discourage my John Thomas from signing up for broadband. How can they say that "digital piracy" slows adoption of broadband? That just makes out with me.
This is probably true. I work in an organisation that requires content from the people that Slashdot love and then hate on an almost daily basis.
They have made it abundantly clear that if we don't support DRM, they will not give us any content. There is no room for negotiation.
As much as I hate DRM and some of the ideas behind it, I realise that when companies make that kind of demand there is nothing we can do about it. Sure, we could say "push off, we don't want you" but then that would be a monumentally dumb move and in the end, if we kept that stance up, we'd have nothing to sell. Plus, before you start - we are a big company. This is not a case of us verses the big guys.
When every single company you work with is starting to make those demands, you have no chance but to comply.
So in that sense, I think they're probably right. If content providers see that the UK is making no effort towards adopting DRM, then they simply won't sell there. Again, there is no room for negotiation - like it, or lump it.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Broadband what?
Large parts of the UK can't get broadband and these clowns are coming up with DRM recommendations?
Piracy is a problem, but with all the factors put together is it any wonder people are saving money copying music? house prices are very high (£125,000 average UK house price), council taxes have soared, NI contributions have gone up, fuel prices are slightly higher. The average UK citizen has between £2000 and £3000 worth of credit debt.
I think the point is that broadband could do with more killer apps. Currently companies are unwilling to let their content loose on the net due to piracy concerns, whereas if there was a pervasive, fairly reliable DRM system, a lot more companies would make use of broadband, which in turn would make people more likely to buy it.
Sure, you may say, why would people pay for what they can get *now* for free?
a) It's still not that easy to get. Sure, you can use kazaa, but it's not really reliable or quick
b) Legal systems would get marketed. I'm sure this makes a lot of difference. If people were getting ads on TV all the time advertising on-demand movies, streaming music etc, they'd be a lot more tempted to get broadband.
One of the recurring themes with Media providers is that they need a way to make more money of the sam variety of product with each new inovation.
Examples from the RIAA include the fact that a lp record would cost $8, and a casette tape of the same recording would be sold for $9. When CD's came out they upped the price immediately to $10, then over the next 15 years ramped it up to $15 per album. As they realized they could add features onto the CD, such as data tracks with atrax compressed editions of the music, and possibly video clips in mpeg format, they bumped the prices up to $18-$20 for an Album. (More if they could find a way to make it multi-disk.)
Similarly going from vhs, (which I realize the movie industry did not want to use at all initially) where a movie would cost between $5.99 and $20, (at a time when the same movie was shown 6 or more months previously in theaters for $4.00, $2.50 Matinee) to DVD, the Movie industry generally bumped the price up to between $9 and $29 depending upon the features they decided to include, and their take on the potential market for that movie.
Broadband is their next target. They want to sell you the option of watching any of most of their library of videos. However they do not trust the existing platform because it is altogether too easy to pirate the videos that they would like to provide for you to watch.
Yes the current boom is largely due to piracy of one sort or another. Whether it is MP3 audio, or Divix video, is only peripherally important. They believe that there is a much larger market for them if they can get to the vast majority of customers who will not pirate their material.
If they can charge $4.99 to ppv a movie they released last year, and $2.99 for a movie from 5 years or more ago, or $.50 to p4p an audio track from the last year, and $.25 for more than 5 years ago, they think that they could be making significantly more money. They may even be willing to sell you a copy of the same movie for 3 times the ppv, or an audio track for 4 times the p4p cost.
The disadvantage for them is that they need an even larger potential customer base than they can get from the current broadband customers. They realize that they are not going to be able to charge those prices to people who can get copies of their material free for the download from some pirate site or network.
Since they believe that their ability to provide content is what will continue the boom in sales of broadband, they think that they have a serious voice when it comes to what the users of that network should be restricted to attaching to the network.
I am not saying I agree with them. Just giving the logic behind it. I happen to think that there is a sufficient market for broadband without video or audio on demand from the members of the MPAA and RIAA, and their equivalents in other countries.
Then again, I have been known to be wrong.
-Rusty
You never know...
File sharing technologies which facilitate the direct infringement of copyright have the potential to destroy important areas of creative, cultural activity: shrinking rosters of creative talent in the music industry bear compelling witness to this fact.
Notice that last line there: shrinking rosters of creative talent in the music industry bear compelling witness to this fact. - This is the only 'fact' it seems in the document which isn't backed up by various statistics. Its worrying how government documents can make hard statements like this with no presented evidence (I'll be contacting them on Monday to ask for some).
Notable the evidence involving statistics is geared up to attack the file-sharing networks ie: Kazaa currently running at 2.5m downloads/week.
I believe that the BSG is a Government advisory group started by Patricia Hewitt, I'm worndering, being as they 'advise', what gives this group so much expertise in the matter?
The report is Authored by Nick Garnett of the Simkins Partnership (Media&Entertainment Lawyers) - He reveales few if any sources of information in the document so we have to assume that he is the oracle of all things P2P and Internet.
I dislike the way our govenment tries to 'Blind with statistics' especially when only the statistics of convenience are shown. Clearly the government is attempting to scare the UK broadband stakeholders into co-operation.
They have scheduled September 2003 for initial talks; I'm yet to discover if any discussions will be public. I would suggest that if there are public talks, members of the general UK IT community should be in attendance before we get our legs cut out from under us by DRM side-effects.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
If you want to know what the problem with DRM is then you should read this story by one of the leading minds of the GPL/GNU, Richard Stallman:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It's an article in which reading is outlawed, made possible by Microsoft's DRM, and corporations' ideas of what copyright should be.
He also has many other essays too.
Okay, probably not the internet, but MSNet (or something similar). This will be like the internet but more business friendly and it will be cheap for users, probably free with new computer and console purchases. Companies will pay to be on MSNet because all machines must be DRM-enabled AND consumers will want it because the speed will be measured in gigabits and be able to access the latest music, movies, etc. Of course, for a consumer to be on MSNet, you need an MSBank account that allows for simple and quick purchases.
Once MSNet is up, the internet will go back to the geeks and the universities and MSNet will be the choice for consumers and media companies!
Come join MSNet, Secure, fast surfing without the geeks :)
It's coming, as soon as the DRM hardware is available - look for an announcement by 2005.