Cory Doctorow on Digital Rights Management

VerdeRana writes "I just heard the EFF's Cory Doctorow give this fantastic argument critiquing DRM. He makes a great case for why DRM is bad for society, business, and artists, why it simply don't work, and why Microsoft (the audience for this talk) should not invest in it. Broadcast this far and wide, and maybe someone will listen."

Comments

DRM

[mirko]

The problem with DRM is that it's got a name that people might consider making it the only right-management-related concept, now, DRM is not alone in its category and there'll be other to take care about, like DVD region locking, etc...

Re:DRM

[makomk]

DRM is moral because it does not restrict the licensee from any usage to which he has not already agreed through the implicit acceptance of federal copyright law.

Not neccesarily true. DRM scemes often add extra restrictions beyond those of federal copyright law. For example, they block one or more of the types of copying allowed by fair use, many tie protected files to one computer, etc, etc...

Besides, If I've legally bought a CD, I don't see any moral reson that I shouldn't copy it to a computer/MP3 player/other more convenient form, for my own use, no matter what the law says or the DRM restrictions are.

Re:DRM

[pnuema]

If you had read the article, you would realize that though you might be pissed, he doesn't need your permission. This portion of copyright law dates back to the player piano days, where it was ruled that a flat fee is paid to the artist being "covered". You don't need permission to sample music, you just need to pay the fee.

You can't blame them for trying

[Kombat]

Companies dealing in intellectual property have never before faced this level of onslaught of piracy and infringement. This isn't something that happened overnight - it's been building up for years (although in recent years, it has accelerated greatly). While a lot of people criticise the methods they're employing to try and protect their assets, few can offer insightful solutions that have solid financial reasoning behind them. We all just seem to assume that if you offered your property for $1/track, that piracy would vanish. Well, they took us up on that challenge, and piracy hasn't vanished.

These people/companies are getting desperate. Sure, I don't think DRM is a silver bullet either, but it is at least slowing the problem until they can figure out a better, long-term solution.

The real thing we should be worrying about in all this is the laws they're passing in the meantime, like the DMCA. While the companies themselves will evolve through this, the rights-stripping provisions enshrined in legislation will be much, much harder to phase out. Laws are rarely repealed, and THAT is what should concern us.

Re:You can't blame them for trying

[bhmit1]

We all just seem to assume that if you offered your property for $1/track, that piracy would vanish. Well, they took us up on that challenge, and piracy hasn't vanished. Actually, if I could find the bands I enjoy for $1/track as an mp3, then sure, I'd pay it, even if there was an inaudible watermark in the file. But $1/track for some DRM'd file that I can't play on any device I own isn't going to change anything.

Re:You can't blame them for trying

[wkitchen]

We all just seem to assume that if you offered your property for $1/track, that piracy would vanish. Well, they took us up on that challenge, and piracy hasn't vanished.

No, they didn't. What they're offering for $1/track is a product grossly inferior to what we were getting for a similar price on old-fashioned CD's (before they started screwing those up with copy protection). How can there be any hope of a new product catching on when it's significantly worse than what people are already accustomed to?

There are lots of songs I'd happily pay a buck for if it had the same quality and versatility as what I'm used to from CD's. And that means lossless compression and no DRM. And I'd happily buy songs with a lossy compression but at a good bitrate and with no DRM for .50/track. But the DRM infested garbage they're selling now? That's worth exactly 0$ to me.

Raiders of the Lost Art

[Knight2K]

Last weekend I went to the Fanzilla Fan Film Convention to see the absolutely brilliant Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. For anyone who doesn't know, this movie was the work of three junior high kids back in the 1980's, that were so moved by seeing the actual film, that they decided to remake it shot-for-shot.

At the screening, they informed us that security guards would be monitoring the audience to make sure none of us were taping the film to distribute it across the net, since it is a reproduction of the original film. As I was watching the grainy film of a 13 year old adventurer mock fighting 13 year olds wearing turbins in the streets of Gulfport, MS, a security guard walked up the aisle scanning with a night vision scope to make sure nobody had any naughty cameras.

The whole situation just seemed so ludicrous. Nobody was going to mistake this film for the actual Raiders. The point of watching this film was not to be entertained by the movie's plot (though it does hold up well in the re-telling), but in seeing how these kids with limited resources managed to pull off outrageous stunts and ingeniuously improvise set pieces to make a film that actually held together.

They succeeded bigger and better than you would think. But Industrial Light and Magic doesn't have to worry about their jobs. I still bought the Indiana Jones Trilogy DVD set. In fact, I watched the real Raiders that night when I got home because the kids did such a good job that I felt like seeing the original.

That fan film may not be creative in the sense of creating a new work from whole cloth. But it was extremely creative in execution, and inspired a few of the kids involved to become a part of the movie business. Ironically, one of them works for a DVD production house.

I wish more people could see this film; it is truly inspirational. I felt like running out and making my own movie. Why can't it be out there on the 'Net if nobody is going to make money from it? Would it really cut into LucasFilm's profits if someone did make some money on it?

One of the producers of the film introduced it at the festival and said that they occasionally show it for educational purposes. What kind of message does it send to show kids this film, and then tell them that there are these bizarre boundaries on their creativity? Do they send security to those screenings? I've heard a lot of complaints on this site and others that kids don't do these kinds of ambitious projects anymore. Why do you think that is?