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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.
...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
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".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.