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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?"
The Pragmatic Progammers sell the PDFs of their books with no DRM and they seem to be doing okay. That is to say, the books aren't all over Google.
http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/starter_kit/faq s/pdf_faq.html
Agile Artisans
...if a company wants to sell me something, yet wants to put restrictions on that thing, then I am not likely to buy. If you want to sell me a subscription, then do that, but don't make it so that I can't move the content from place to place in my domain (ie, living room, portable devices, computer, etc.).
As it is, most content is unbuyable now, anyway, so I don't even buy that much. (I haven't bought a CD in years, and a DVD in months.) Media companies need to start making intelligent music and shows, and then let me do what I want with it. If they want income streams, fine - sell me a subscription. But if you're going to do that, and I'm willing to buy, then don't restrict how I use it.
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
If I am purchasing music, paying per song or album, then it is MY music. I don't accept that at some date in the future my music will no longer be playable because some company went out of business or no longer supports my hardware/operating system, or because I moved all my files over to a new computer and can't get the DRM to work.
If I am renting music, for example paying $20/month for all I can listen to, then I can accept pretty much any DRM because I don't expect the music to be "mine". If something goes wrong with my DRM I would just switch to a different service and for $20/month have unlimited listening rights again.
Note that, for me, it's not worth $20/month to listen to music on my computer. I already have plenty of music I own on my computer, and there are free alternatives for radio-style listening.
But I get that it's a worthwhile proposition for some people.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
is still just as stupid. When I purchase an item I expect that it is mine to do with as I please, not to still be at the whim of whatever company made it. I certainly don't expect http://www.ragold.com/ to come by and tell me what to do with the Dilbert (tm) mints I purchased from them. I also don't expect Honda to dictate to me what to do with my Accord. Why should I let the RIAA/MPAA/Apple/etc tell me under what terms and conditions I can enjoy the music/movies I purchase?
As for Jon's end run around Apple's DRM (twice), I applaud his efforts. It certainly shows that DRM can't stand up to people who want to control the things they buy. I no more want my music to be limited to a single computer or iPod in my house than I want to be limited to what TV I can watch movies on or which DVD player I can play a DVD on.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
dave, you seem a little bitter about last night's thread, but I won't hold it against you ;) You made some good points last night.
I could live with DRM'ed content if, as the article mentions, it is priced comparatively to a rental fee. However, if physical media were to go the way of the dodo and consumers were expected to accept DRM'ed downloads in lieu of owning physical media they could (by right) copy and manipulate for personal use, I don't think that would be an acceptable outcome. Several people mentioned last night that purchasing media give the purchaser rights to resell, copy, etc. Now if an EULA explicitly restricts you from doing these things and you still accept it, that's your problem. But if the day comes that consumers are given no choice (i.e. their rights to copy for personal use are negated by the fact that the only available format for purchase removes these rights), that's when DRM will start to smell funny to me.
Just my 2cents, and FWIW it seems like I fall somewhere in between daveschroeder's opinion, and the opinion of many other slashdotters who commented on the 'DVD Jon' story last night. But like you suggested dave, I do not patronize iTMS for the specific reason that DRM is not worth circumventing if the same media can be purchased on formats that don't restrict my personal choices.
May the threads progress competently.
when it gives me rights to compensate me for the rights I have lost.
Alternatively, CRM protected works are not protected by copyrights. They can either use the quid-pro-quo that copyrights gives them or the all-or-nothing perpetual rights that DRM gives them. Not both.
Correct. The GPL is a means to an end, not the goal itself. As long as copyright and even more ridiculous restrictions on the free flow of information exist, the GPL is a way of limiting the support for propietarism. When all information is unrestricted, the GPL will have done its job. It will be obsolete then.
I wouldn't out of hand reject DRM, but it must be priced into my purchasing decision. Currently, $15 for a DVD that I know I can watch forever, play on any DVD player, backup if needed, loan to a friend, etc., is a good deal. Because of this I have purchased quite a few DVDs, and I think the DVD market has been very strong for that reason. Various forms of DRM, for example newer copy protection methods (might not play in some DVD drives), prevention of copying, possible other incursions to my anticipated fair use, all detract from the value of the disc. If the movie was a good buy at $15 with no DRM, I'll be damned if I would pay the same for something that essentially has had positive features removed. Things like convenience, freedom of use and fair use are all going to get priced into the total cost. If the only thing I can buy is a DRM'd $15 DVD, then I won't buy it. I think most consumers make also make this value decision. I think the problem will be when some of the new DRM systems are implemented, and consumers are not adequately aware or informed. Hopefully publishers will manage to keep DRM out of the user's way enough for us to keep shopping.
Mod me down, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I don't mind software that comes with a EULA. I just don't respect them. Likewise I don't mind media that has DRM, as long as I can circumvent it.
I think that is just it. I think if they make DRM that can't be broken, people won't buy it and it will die out on its own. My guess is that most people who buy from iTunes know that they can always burn a DRM-free copy. Even if they never rip it to their hard drive, they know they can if they want to. Now, if I knew that I couldn't ever get a copy free from DRM, I wouldn't buy from that service. I think that is on the mind of probably 90% of the people who buy from iTunes.
Why is it *necessary* to make money from ideas?
I work hard every day, and when I find a solution to a problem, or an insight worth sharing (this one may not count), I share it.
What puzzles me is the sense of entitlement people and companies get when they come up with something they want to share, and feel they should get paid over and over for having done something once.
I much prefer a patronage model (where content creation is underwritten) to the "double-billing" model of "intellectual 'property'" (got to get a few quotes in there before they become patented).
To respond in a general sense to multiple posts:
I'll only allow DRM on rentals, not on purchases
Reasonable - if you purchase, you have first sale right, format shifting rights, reverse engineering, etc. However, you have no right to distribute. People do distribute, however, and DRM is a reasonable way of stopping or limiting that. Another would be remove the DRM, but watermark all files with a generic tag, and have all ISPs monitor your uploads, looking for that tag - and when you do, they immediately notify the feds and shut off your stream. Would that be reasonable?
DRM is never acceptable. All ideas should be free
Which is a great idea, if ideas never cost money to implement. But, because they do (Pixar's multi-million dollar renderfarm, an author's bills as they take a year to write a novel, a programmer's Fritos and Coke as they program a new game), idea creators need to be subsidized for their ideas. Either that can be society or government subsidizing them (would you accept that? Or would that be too much like "communism" for most people?) or by charging consumers, which is our current system. DRM allows them to retain control such that consumers have to pay for use - which subsidizes the artist and pays their expenses.
Removing DRM removes their source of income which removes the incentive to create.
I know most Slashdotters will say "I don't pirate movies, software, or music. I don't distribute it" - in which case, they'll be solidly behind the first idea, right? Or, they will say "I don't want to pay for it, I just want it". In which case, they'll be solidly behind the second idea, right?
TANSTAAFL. Can't get the content if you can't pay the creator.
-T
Meh. Is it that important? I mean, special effects can hardly compare to finding a convenient planet, terraforming it to correspond to Middle Earth, genetically engineering actual orcs, elfs, ents, and so forth, building the various structures, providing sufficient technology to replicate the magic in the series, etc.
That would be pretty neat, but it would cost an unimaginable amount.
Frankly, I can be pretty happy watching good, but low budget movies, as I can be watching good, big budget movies. Crappy movies remain crappy no matter how much money you throw at them.
Plus the cost of special effects continues to drop all the time. The LoTR movies, for a given level of quality, could certainly be made less expensively now than they were at the time. And would've cost far more a few years before they were made.
In a few decades, it'll probably be something that a home computer can do in realtime. (Anyone ever see that movie "Tron," and then play the more recent "Tron 2.0" video game?)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
And if you upgrade to GNU/Linux?
when he mentioned the retail fee. We're all used to buying/renting physical items and don't get upset by it. We understand the rules.
When I pop into Blockbuster to rent a DVD for £3, I understand that I've got his film to watch for a couple of nights and then I have to return it.
People don't protest against this, I've never heard of anybody refusing to rent films as they have to return them.
We're also used to the model of buying CDs and DVDs. I go into a shop, I give them some money and they give me a piece of entertainment to take home and put on my shelf. It's mine. I can make a thousand copies of the CD and rip it to any format I want, whenever I want. In reality I can't remember the last time I copied a CD and I just rip it once to m4a - but I know I have the option to if a friend wants it, or I upgrade to a non-iPod.
The problem with DRM is that it's being offered with similar terms to physical media with additional restrictions imposed and no real advantage. I can buy an album from iTunes or a physical CD - the CD usually works out cheaper, so why on earth would I want a DRMed digital copy?
The two models I can see working for DRM are rental and subscription (or a combination of the two). Firstly we have the Real Rhapsody system up and working - I pay a fixed price and get all the music I want. This is offering me something that wouldn't have been possible with physical media. Secondly we could have a film rental system. For those days I feel lazy and can't even be bothered to leave the house, it'd be nice to be able to download and watch a film for a couple of pounds.
I think my point is that most people have nothing against DRM, it's jus that currently it's not offering us anything better or cheaper than what we currently have.
That is the key to the DRM argument.
If I am renting then I do not have a problem with DRM. If I am buying then I do. The only way to protect the consumer who buys in a DRM world is to have a disinterested third party holding the keys should the seller vanish. Even then this is not a great solution as it still means a delay.
The reason DRM exists is because too many people cannot be trusted to not give away COPIES of stuff they do not have the right to distribute copies of. Its the bad apples that make it easy for companies to justify DRM.
I would accept watermarking provided they was an absolute method to track it back to my purchase. A personal watermark that all media I buy online being tagged with would be a better solution. That key would have to be transportable between different types of hardware, have to be unique, and have to have a way I could prove its mine beyond doubt.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Kids, I'm using my real name on purpose. I want you to know who I am. First, it's monotonously obvious that IP media wants to go digital for ease of use and portability. Great. I like it too. For those of you who think that just because someone has kept you from distributing their art at your boorish whim, you might consider that your indulging in a simple-minded supposition about what is yours and what is not. That I have to explain this to you is so completely dumb, I can't hardly keep typing. If you bought the item with distribution limitations (i.e. DRM, physical mediums (like a REAL book) or what ever) it is yours. You bought it as is. So, you can't instantly make a billion copies of a physical book? Good. It isn't yours to give away. It's yours to read. It isn't yours to forget at home and upload magically to your hands on the plane. It's a book. It has purposeful limitations built in. You bought this from someone who it does belong to who wanted it to have its limitations. It's still yours. You knew the limitations. Do with it whatever you want within the purposes it was made available to you for. That excludes giving a billion copies to your newsgroups or your delightfully utopian tyrannical idiot friends. Good. Too bad. Deal with it. You snides should understand how luck you are to have access to the thing at all. You are taking this too far and taking it for granted. The same goes with music. If it has DRM on it and you bought it, it's yours. To say, it isn't really mine is foolish whining. Grow up. Those failure, idealist, socialist dolts who gave you the impression that you should be able to do anything you want with whatever you bought can meet with you in their economically depressed, stupid, little worlds and bitch about it. Have fun - get nowhere. Get this kind of drivel out of my world. The void of logic it takes to say something like "if it has DRM it's not really mine" and the lack of respect you have for the artist to take that position for itself and not for what it really means, (ie, I can send the information wherever I want), is numbing. Go write your own song, book, or movie. Then choose to give it away however you want. If you decide to attach DRM to it, great. If not, great. If you are the buyer though. Whatever you buy is yours. You knew what you were buying when your undeserving little fingers pushed your lazy mouse over the purchase button. I'm not an artist. I, however, pay my artists for their art and don't complain on principle that I can't make a billion copies with the BS principle that just because I can do with it what I want doesn't mean I'm going to distribute it. Quit fooling yourselves. I hope they make it so you can never steal another song again. I hope it makes you mad. I hope this makes you mad too. That being said, healthy competition is another matter entirely. But you socialists living within the protective bubble of capitalism JUST WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND THAT. Don't pretend you understand. You don't. You won't. You DON'T WANT TO UNDERSTAND. It's an outrage. Please be upset about this. Be real upset. Then in a few years you'll spin enough circles until you break new ground and you'll grow up - or you conspicuously won't.
Apple has placed DRM on iTunes songs. This is not a subsidy. Not a tax. It is a business model. If you don't like it, then don't support it. It's that simple. Nobody is forcing you to listen to music that you have to pay for. You can go and listen to free music. If you don't think it's as good, then maybe there's also something wrong with the business model of "giving stuff away for free".
I'm not saying that I don't want to live in a world where I can download my music for free (legally). But the way to get there isn't to bitch about capitalists trying to earn a living. The way to get there is to do something about it.
I can only truly accept digital rights management if I can own a license for the copyrighted work I have purchased until the end of my days.
For example, if I purchase a CD, I want to pay for the rights once, and thereafter only pay for the medium the work is contained on.
If I am truly buying a license to listen, read, or view the material, then I should be able to retain that license if I run over the medium with my car.
Using this framework I could buy a CD, MP3, Tape, etc. and whatever future medium is released for the price of the medium without having to pay for the license over and over and over.
-JWR
It doesn't work very well at the moment, but why on earth is it not possible to devote more resources into creating some sort of undetectable (quantum?) watermarking instead of the pointless pursuit of locking by encryption?? Watermarks, or signatures, do nothing to restrict fair-use, copying, format-shifting or whatever. However, if watermarked media is illegally released on P2P or the 'net, it's easy to determine where it came from and apply the full extent of existing legislation to the perp.
The problem currently is that re-sampling or otherwise altering a watermarked resource breaks the mark, but I would certainly go as far as to agree to allowing transcoding software (e.g. rippers and so on) to maintain the watermark whatever I do to the media (obviously, one would still be free to compile a bespoke version of OSS without such a function, which is a bit of a loophole). The reason? It doesn't restrict my use or re-use of the stuff I've bought in any way. All it means is that if I'm naughty and put it on P2P, The Man (tm) can come and get me.
It's too late for me to die young
The broken right of first sale is what killed Circuit City's implimentation even though the price was lower.
I went round after round with the managers at CC when I worked there on this. When DIVX was failing corporate put pressure on store managers to push it more. They in turn put pressure on us to push DIVX. I told my manager that I'd obey any directive that he gave me, but I wouldn't lie. So if any customer asked me if I was going to buy one, I'd have to tell them no. If they then asked WHY, I'd have to be honest about it.
My manager wisely didn't try to force me to sell them. We reached the comprimise of me asking "Have you seen our DIVX demonstration?"
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The DRM I'm willing to accept os the DRM that I won't even notice. Like the one on the iTMS seem to be.
Not even iTMS is unnoticable. I found that out yesterday, after I sent my Mac to be repaired. I copied my entire system to another (nearly identical) Powerbook, so I thought I wouldn't run into problems while my machine is gone...
Not only can I no longer play my purchased songs (of course I could authorize my replacement machine), but I just realized that since the motherboard is being replaced on my machine, I've probably permanently wasted one of my 5 allowed "authorized" machines, cause when I get it back, it won't be the "same" machine to iTunes!
Good thing I only made a small test-run with iTMS and purchased 4 songs. That doesn't hurt too much. But others will run into larger problems, that's for sure.
To me, DRM will only be acceptable as a passive measure. Indestructible watermarks are ok, if they don't impede my use of the purchased material. If files appear on the net and the company holding the rights immediately knows who leaked them and comes after that person, that's only fair. Also, that way, it will be far easier to measure the amount of damage inflicted by an individual file sharer.
That would depend on how it was implemented. Some forms of DRM can actually aid in backing up, by having the right to download it again.
So, what DRM would I accept? I'd accept something that (1) was guaranteed to work into the future and (2) allowed me to do whatever copyright law allows me to do.
Both these have problems -- under (1), when the MS Monopoly eventually collapses under its own weight, what will I do with my iTunes music?
And (2) is exceptionally hard to encode as DRM. Gross infringement is fairly easy to deal with -- the case where I take a new music CD under copyright, make a copy of it and sell the copy. But, there are a lot of cases where infringement is not as obvious. Let's say, for example, that the CD contained a mix of public domain stuff and new stuff and I just wanted to extract and copy the public domain items. Or, it was a phonebook and I wanted to copy it. (Under a SCOTUS case, Feist v. Rural, Copyright does not extend to raw collections of facts. A bunch of European countries do have a pseudo-copyright in such works.) Or, I want to make a parody. These things are legal but extremely difficult for DRM software to deal with because it would require the software to look at the intent of what I'm doing.
Rights holders are trying to replace the rules of copyright with the rules of contract -- "I'll let you listen to this music if you agree to only listen to it 10 times." And, the main enabler for this is contracts of adhesion -- those shrink-wrap/click-through agreements that nobody reads but that courts generally enforce. Getting rid of these contracts will break DRM's legal foundation.
Libraries are online for a long time now, but one cannot read the text online. When libraries could lend whole books digitally, we could all have an incredibly big chunk of knowledge available instantly, and mostly for free or a very small price.
Libraries don't do this because they are reluctant, but - in general law terms - because they are allowed to lend exactly 1 bought book to 1 person at a time, and when they would lend you a digital copy of a book, they could lend a book to 100 people at a time while only having bought 1 piece.
Now with DRM, one could devise a system where you had to "bring back your copy" before anybody else could check it out, therefore combining the digital advantage (speed, ease of use) with the library advantage (big selection, near-zero-price).
So, at least in this case, DRM can actually bring value to the people.
There's only one DRM'd item I've ever purchased that I didn't know in advance I had the tools to decrypt. That's my metric for what DRM I accept as a consumer.
I didn't buy a single iTunes track until PlayFair came out. After that, I've bought lots of music, so Apple's directly benefitted from PlayFair/Hymn's existance in my case. I know that I have my music as nice decrypted AAC streams. Even in the worst case of Apple watermarking the actual digital stream, I know I can always play my music in any number of open source players. That's good enough for me.
The only other DRM I've ever found acceptable is the one used by Palm Digital (aka PeanutPress) for their eBooks. The books are encrypted, but you can read them on an unlimited number of Palm, PocketPC, Symbian, Windows, or Mac devices. They use your full name and credit card number to encrypt a session key for the book. Once you enter your name/number, the decrypted session key is kept on your device (so your credit card number ISN'T store on your Palm!). There's no limit to the number of devices you can unlock the book on, and there's no call-home function to authorize the unlock process -- it's just straight crypto. The hook of course, is that if you want to distribute the book (without breaking the actual DRM), you need to include your name and card number. Probably not something you want to do on the Internet, and of course the leak can be tracked back to you with appropriate consequences. On the other hand, if you want to let a friend "borrow" your book, just beam it to his Palm, email it to him, etc. and enter your name and card number on his machine. He can't transfer the book to anyone else without re-keying the name/number, yet he can read the book for as long as he wants without having to worry about "losing" one of your precious authorizations. PeanutPress will even re-encrypt all your books using a new credit card number (once you use it to make a purchase), so you don't need to remember which card you used for which book -- you can always redownload all your books with your current card number.
If iTunes and others decided to go the route of PeanutPress, I probably wouldn't even bother to break the encryption. As long as the seller maintains control over me after the sale, then there's no way I'm going to buy something I can't break.
As far as a "rental" instead of a purchase, if I can't rent/burn/return, it's pretty unlikely I'd go for it. We'd have to be talking REAL cheap for me to consider it.
Would be the only real non-evil use that I can think of. The ability to do "inter-library" loans over the net would be pretty cool.
Basically a given library could buy a electronic copy of a given book and through whatever DRM scheme they can dream up allow you to borrow/return it over the net. And thinking of it it would be pretty cool to be able to "lend" somebody a copy of a book off of my Safari account. Of course there are ways to kind of do that now. But to be able to really do it would be cool. That's really about the only use that I can think of. Include in that maybe being able to rent CDs/DVDs the same way.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
There's a lot of strange people here who seem to think they "own" what's on a CD and have every right to do what ever they want with it. Well sorry, but you have the right to listen to it, whenever you want, as often as you want. And that's it. What's on it is not yours. Picture this. One copy of a CD or DVD is sold. It is shared on a filesharing network. No other copies are sold. How much would you have to charge for that CD or DVD? It would be quite expensive. This scenario is what frightened record and film companies into backing DRM. If everyone stopped filesharing tomorrow there's be no more DRM within a year. You may think filesharing is OK, but I don't see any difference at all between it and stealing CDs from Tower Records. What is the difference?
Copyright is anti-capitalism: Get used to it.
Whether or not copyright is necessary is an argument for another thread.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Because the investment market demands it, there will never be a limit to how far companies will go, tacking on additional costs. Company A does it, Companies B and C see that A didn't collapse, then they do it too. People bitch for a while, but seeing no easy alternative, eventually move on and accept it. No collusion needed - the big investors spread the word as to what is needed. Don't do it, and your market value takes a dive.
Here are a (very) few recent examples:
ATMs - when was the last time you went "off-network" and DIDN'T pay an ATM fee? ATMs, even free ones, save money for banks, who no longer have to pay tellers. But they continue to practice this blatant theft because they can get away with it. Why? Profits must rise!
Ring Tones - Want an annoying song on your phone? Pay $2 and we'll give it to you for three months. How do they get away with this? There are no alternatives. Should one arise and gain any traction, expect it to be sued/legislated out of existence.
Credit cards - Everyone knows it's evil to raise someone's interest rate quietly from 10% to 30% because that person was late on a phone bill. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for that slimy sector. And yet it continues to happen, and for some reason the "free market" hasn't stepped in to stop it. Profits must rise!
It's time we face the facts. Corporations are consumers' enemies, no matter how much they try to soothe us into believing they're not. And in that war, they have all the big guns. DRM is another cannon in the arsenal. It's hardly surprising that some choose to use guerilla tactics like P2P to fight back.
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.
Okay, so one more point for "never"?
For myself... You can put DRM on my coffin. The rest, I'll avoid if at all possible and break it if I can't avoid it.
How'd you hack your player? I would love to skip the ads and play the movie. Hell - I payed for it, didn't I? If I wanted to watch ads, I would watch TV. So, how do you hack your DVD player to skip the ads?
all others are merely bacteria trying to degrade the environment.
So, just as I buy my music and videos from local stores that give the artists a higher cut, the only DRMs I'm buying into are artist-derived, not the intermediaries.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
And just when did it change to this?? In the past, when I bought cassettes, albums...and as I knew...CD's...I was NOT buying a license to use it. I was buying a piece of media and buying my copy of the material contain upon it, to do with it as I pleased within fair use usage, and copyright restraints. Now, that you can digitially store it...they're changing it to a license? Where and when did this happen?
I don't know about you...but, I've never agreed to any license...hell, ever seen a EULA on an album or CD?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
DRM not only limits your ability to distribute (which is against the law anyway), it "forbids" you from doing what you want with the product you paid for.
there is no correlation between the GPL and DRM BECAUSE you can do whatever you want with GPL'd software, no holds barred, EXCEPT DISTRIBUTE. That's why Google et. al. can make modifications without giving up the source, because they DON'T DISTRIBUTE THE CHANGES. DRM is an entirely different beast, it restricts what you can do with your purchase aside from distribution.
making arguments of this fashion is not only side stepping the issue, it's blatantly ignoring the issue in the first place, it's misleading...
Rise up in the cafeteria and STAB them with your plastic forks!
Interesting concept. Kinda funny sounding at face value, of course, but it raises an interesting idea: the fairness of any commercial deal and the equal power of both the vendor and the consumer. Clearly, what "disturbs" a lot of people concerning DRM is that the vendor keeps the upper hand. The deal is not fair, not necessarily in terms of value-for-money (after all, it could be seen as a form of long-term rental thing, as someone pointed out), but in terms of power. It is very clear that whoever has the right to "lock" something you buy has more power than you do. Your only power is not to buy it. True, it is a significant power in your hands, but if people choose not to buy stuff, especially cultural stuff, it's the end of not only an industry but of a big part of our cultural life. Until then, and hopefully that won't happen, DRM is a form of commercial dictatorship.
If I'm renting for a limited time, I'll accept limitations, but not if I'm buying a "perpetual use" copy. When I rent a DVD at Blockbuster I don't transfer it to VHS just so I can play the tape, but if I buy the DVD I may do just that.
:(.
Of course, this assumes I have a choice in the matter. If it's something I *need* then I am behind the proverbial 8-ball and will take the information in whatever way I can get it
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Additionally, what constitues unauthorized reproduction (in reference to those ominous FBI warnings everyone is so fond of) is defined in legal code and is not the purview of a company's policy, or more applicably, the psuedo-legalmumbojumbo often seen present on retail media, or in marketing media. All that stuff is just various types of FUD, plain and simple. The biggest farce to hit the IP scene was in the form of licensing a la Microsoft. All it really is is a gentleman's agreement that they won't sue you for not buying multiple copies of their software so long as you pay up for what they deem said software to be worth (think VAR licenses). Don't get me wrong, they're useful as hell. But given the past 20 years of legal precedents, federally speaking, licensing is pure bunk. Now at the State level that's different. Some States have in fact held licenses as legally binding contracts, so YMMV in that sense.
(Devil's Advocate)In most circumstances a minor cannot enter into a legally binding contract with an adult without parental consent, so what happens in the event a minor should buy a copy of a game, software, or other Intellectual Property?(/Devil's Advocate)
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
I actually started a _small_ record label (6 active bands) for this exact reason - I was tired of seeing bands get screwed over. The general public knows nothing of what really goes on behind the scenes in production of an LP/CD or exactly how bad bands get screwed.
Perfect example: With recording, mastering, CD production, and printing - I can put out 1000 CDs @ $1.74USD each. We are as small as it gets - only 6 bands, two active people working on projects, and only 829 results on google. With only two releases under our belt we are a little nobody punkrock label that very few people outside the Tampa Bay area has ever heard of. If I can do it at $1.74USD per CD I know for a fact any "major" label can do it much cheaper. (Yes, I have factored in costs of distribution. I have world-wide distribution at my disposal, it's cheaper then you might think.)
One of the most active bands on my label decided that they wanted to sell every new CD they make for $5 each, then when they release something new they put the old CD on the net in mp3 format for free. Their fans have the option of downloading every track on the CD for free (DRM is never an option for our digital releases) and burning it OR they can pay $5 for a CD with the printed lyrics, pictures, and other info you would typically see in a CD insert.
The majority of fans choose to do both - have the music on their computer AND purchase a CD. They know the price is fair as it's easy to see we are not out to make money off the band by charging $15 to $20 for $1.74 worth of "work".
Fans generally want to support the band they like but at the same time they don't want to get ripped off. I guarantee that if you ask any member of a band on my label how they feel about working with us they will have nothing negative to say about how we do things. Music is the most important part to us, not making money - when the bands see that and the fans see that everyone is happy.
If the major record labels were to drop the CD/LP prices by 50% piracy would drop significantly. While the public might not know about the record labels and what happens to the bands, they DO know when they are getting ripped off.Any major label could do the same as I do if they were more worried about music then money, we all know that will never happen.
A justification open to abuse. People are creating rootkits, and stealing personal information. I'd be a fool to not capitalize on those actions.
That response makes absolutely no sense, so let me reiterate my point. People download music. That is, there is a demand for downloadable music. Now, are you going to sell them their downloadable music, or are you going to leave them to using other means? If the music industry decides to not sell downloadable music when DRM proves to be ineffective (and it will), they will only be shooting themselves in the foot.
From the standpoint of "benefits", there's effectively no diference between illegally downloading, and purchasing the product.
How do you come to this conclusion? When you buy something there are benefits of convenience, quality, support, dealing with a reputable vendor, etc.... The product may be the same, but there is the opportunity for added value, such as indexing services, concert ticket discounts, information about the artists, and bonus material that is not released elsewhere. Why do people buy Red Hat Linux when they can download it for free? Because Red Hat adds value to their product that people are willing to pay for and can't get anywhere else.
Why should I "convince you" that my product is desirable, when your actions send the clear message to me that it is indeed desirable?
That is exactly my point. Unhindered downloadable music is desired. So quit f**ing around and sell it. DRMed music is not desirable. Right now the only way that people can get unhindered music is from a P2P network where quality sucks and download times are abysmal. With the iTMS hack, people can *buy* quality music from a convenient store without the DRM. If you want me to buy the DRMed music, you are going to have to convince me in some way that the total of what you are offering (i.e: $0.99 price + DRM + AAC format + good bitrate + fast download) is better than getting it from a P2P network. Some people will think your offer is better, others will not. You can get more people to take your offer if you remove the DRM.
Under agreed upon social rules. Piracy is the absence of one party not playing by the rules.
No, piracy is a market reality. Companies have been dealing with the reality of piracy for a long time and still turning a profit. Rampant piracy is obviously bad, which is why federal enforcement agencies go after major infringers. But eliminating piracy altogether is impossible, and it is a waste of time to try. You are better off adding value to your product.
A civil crime. Plus you'll not going to advance anything by copying a design (patent), and marking up the cost.
Not sure what your point is here.
What the law protects isn't ideas themselves (nor is it what the founding fathers ment).
The founding fathers didn't have anything to say about intellectual property law. As for the rest, do you have any evidence of said scarcity? Or did you just copy that from a high school text book?
No, you've completely missed my point. Are you even responding to the post above you? Its not "wheww, 128kbps is great, OMG" at all... I've
never use iTMS, and I never buy hype. Heck, you've bought the hype that you need a RAID. For what? your music?
My point really coalesces at the bottom. DRM and controlling "content" is just a last scramble for table scraps using an old business model. A business model that was built around analog media that travelled household to household packaged in cardboard and plastic.
all that's irrelevant now. This is the business model used by untalented people to make money off of the talented. That's why I'm againt intellectual property. Instead we could switch to a whuffie based economy. where the talented would again prosper.