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When Would You Accept DRM?
twigles asks: "Following on the heels of Apple closing DVD Jon's end run around its DRM and a British TV station offering DRM'd downloads it seems fair to ask, what DRM would you accept as a consumer? Personally, I take the view that if a song, movie, book, etc. is DRM'd then it isn't truly mine. On the other hand, if a particular piece of digital media is priced correctly (a la' rental fee) would that be satisfactory, or do you feel that DRM in any form is ridiculous?"
Not as long as I have any alternative.
I do feel "DRM in any form is ridiculous". It's that simple.
I have no other choice, because the lemming-like "masses" have already been duped into buying all DRMed stuff, and buying/selling non-DRMed hardware is illegal, and comes with a 30 year jail sentence, and I've become nothing but a hollow shell of an old man/corporate consumer.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
I'm fine with any 'Digital Rights Management' that doesn't, in the course of said management, infringe on _my_ management of _my_ digital rights.
The problem is not that when you buy some DRMed media that you do not really own the song, the movie, or whatever. The problem is that when you take part in a DRM system, you do not really own you computer any longer. I will not buy into a system that has my computer acting against me on behalf of others - not at any price, nor for any benefit.
Computers are not like cable boxes or satellite receivers, or even DVD players. They are our most fundamental and important devices of communication. To surrender control over those devices to others is a mistake we should pay for dearly...
The first DRM I was aware of was Macrovision.
/. comments but i figure most didn't see it the first time)
I remember a call from a friend of mine who remembered that I was knowledgeable in video editing and she contacted me to help her with a problem they had with a student project. (that was back in 1994)
They were student who selected very short extracts of scenes for their project for the last 20 sleepless hours and they wondered why they couldn't make copies of many of their extracts. When I finally arrived all I could do is explaining what was happenning and tell them to find some other scenes (Macrovision had a cyclic effect in which a few seconds would be copied all right) I didn't have any video filter at that time to go around it and it was too late to go and find/build one.
CONCLUSION:
It's simple, DRM prevented those kids to express themselves correctly, it was damaging their possibility to create.
Now, with DRMs much more insinous than Macrovision nowadays just try to imagine the artists who have been prevented to express themselves, imagine also the art forms that have been crushed before their own existences by these DRMs.
DRM is bad, it is evil, it MUST be banned for the sake of the human spirit.
( it's the second time I put this story in
I can't foresee any occasion where I'd accept DRM, ever. Allow me to explain:
DRM only works if it's supported right down to the hardware, and I fundamentally object to my computer having a different agenda to mine. I will not buy hardware that I'm not in control of, and I view it as irresponsible and invasive to even try to control or artificially limit something I've paid (my) good money for.
If you don't understand this attitude, ask yourself why the government fines people for speeding but doesn't install mandatory speed-limiters in cars, or makes murder illegal but doesn't ban guns outright. Precedents both.
DRM without end-to-end hardware support is essentially impotent unless you are prohibited from cracking it by law. Legislating against technology like this is like legislating against bad weather, or against the tide - it's coming eventually whether you like it or not, and you only look stupid and/or put yourself in harm's way by trying to get between it and where it's going.
(As an aside, can anyone think of an example where a popular technology has been legislated against, and it's died there and then? I honestly can't think of one. In contrast, I can think of several cases where legal proceedings (and the attendant publicity) have launched a new piece of techology into mainstream usage, but I can't think of one counterexample. If anyone else can, please let me know...)
Short version - end-to-end DRM is fundamentally invasive and tramples on your rights as a consumer (First Sale, Fair Use, etc). Vulnerable DRM propped up by dubious lawmaking both cheapens the law and retards technology as a whole (e.g. banning P2P networks unless they pro-actively filter for copyrighted software effectively bands P2P as a useful technology).
DRM represents an attempt to graft concepts and precedent from physical property law onto digital "property". They are not alike, and this sets a false precedent which will (and is) harming both our technological and cultural development.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
"Still, the wide-open Stallmanesque idea of non-ownership for all IP eliminates any chance of someone with an appreciable level of talent in, say, music, to be able to quit their day job and be able to provide for themselves and/or families by making music."
True, but that has nothing to do with DRM. The record companies sold non-DRM vinyl LPs for over 60 years and non-DRm CDs for over 20 years. Not only did the record companies make billions in profits but a lot of musicians got very rich as well.
DRM *IS NOT* about "fight piracy". It *IS NOT* about "protecting intellectual property". The sole purpose of DRM is to fundamentally change the ownership of property that you have legitimately purchased -- "you don't own it, you've merely purchased a license to use it -- but you can only use it in the way that we dictate".
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The only reason that model worked is because the content producers had a cartel that allowed them to charge an unrealistically high price for new movies on videocassette: $100+ per copy. No home user was gonna pay that much per movie, so rental (from a middleman who swallowed the high initial cost and recouped it was the only feasible market model.
When DVD came along, Warner Bros. Home Video president Warren Lieberfarb had the vision to see that they could make a lot more money with a sales model and realistic pricing than they were through the rental model. So he led Warner to break with the cartel and push DVD as a sell-through format at the $10-20 price point. He took a lot of flak from the rest of the industry for that, but when the money started to roll in for Warner it wasn't long before the rest of the cartel followed suit.
Today, the studios make more money off Lieberfarb's model than they do at the box office on many movies, and rental behemoths like Blockbuster Inc. are seeing their value plummet. So it's pretty clear that in this example, when given a choice between rentals and reasonably priced sale copies, people prefer to buy over renting.
Read my blog.