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Doctorow on DRM and Activism

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the accountability-is-dead dept.

Might E. Mouse writes "Cory Doctorow, co-editor of 'the world's most linked-to' blog, BoingBoing, spoke recently at an event in London, UK. Afterwords, he gave an interview with bit-tech discussing topics like DRM and the commercialization of podcasting. He was particularly scathing towards the BBC. From the article: 'If you're in the UK, hold the BBC to account. Why is it shipping the IMP, a DRM crippled player? Is there a point in the future where the BBC imagines that bits are going to get harder to copy? And that the IMP will solve its problem? Really, what the BBC is saying is that there's two ways you can get its content after it airs on the TV; one is that you can get it through the IMP and have a crippled experience, the other is that you can be a criminal.'"

9 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. There is no technical solution to a social problem by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No social problem ever had a technical solution. Not a single one. You can use netnanny to keep your kids from watching "bad" pages, but the kid will eventually find a way around. You can copy protect your content, but your user will sooner or later find a way around it.

    The problem is not that we enjoy being criminals. We don't do that out of spite. Not even because "content must be free" or similar rubbish. It's simply that we're used to listening to our music where we want, recording our favorite movies to watch them later, using our computers for the games we want to play, reading the news we want to read. That's what we want to do, that's what we enjoy doing.

    And if you turn this ability off, people will develop a way to do it regardless.

    Why was there a big outcry when CSS went onto Linux? Not because the CSS "encryption" was broken, but because the country codes were stripped together with it. And why were they stripped? Because we have no benefit from then, we don't want them, we don't need them, actually they did what we did NOT want to be done, so they were gone before they were implemented!

    Face it. People will do what they want to do. The question whether they will buy or copy content can only be answered by its price. Make it affordable, make the value match the price and people will rather buy than copy. Whether it's copy protected or not will only decide whether you piss off the buying customer and create another copyer, not whether you will sell or not.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. Re:Priorities by Bazman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah. Fan. Tastic.

    I'm sure boingboing used to be good, and really was a directory of wonderful things, but nowadays it just Cory talking in the third person ("Cory's New Podcast", "Cory's New SciFi Story With The Same Name As An Asimov Classic"), links to the editors' blogs (normally headed 'last week I blogged') which just look like lame efforts at self-advertising a blog entry that didnt get enough clicks to satisfy their ego, vaguely sexual stuff from Xeni, random in-joke memes (today: anagram maps), and DRM rantage recently directed at Sony.

    My rules for happy boingboing reading:

      * anything that starts 'Last week I blogged...' : skip immediately

      * any article that extends to more than one screen : skip immediately

      * anything by Xeni : check to see if its an interesting sexual perversion, otherwise skip

    Now all I need to do is write something that filters their RSS by those rules...

  3. Re:Gee, look at that Bob. by kadathseeker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ugh. How many times has the explanation been listed here?

    DRM is only a slight, tiny, itsy-bitsy inconvenience to pirates. A padlock won't stop a professional burglar. He has lockpicks and crowbars and I have no idea what else. A professional pirate has equivalents. They crack encryption and keys for fun and out of spite. A group like RAZOR 1911, the oldest game pirating group according to the DOJ, knows every trick in the book and has a goal of zero-day exploits for everything. And they regularly pull it off. They probably won't even notice the DRM. I read that DVD copy protection can be circumvented with simply applying scotch tape to the bottom of a DVD (which will cause the DRM to be unreadable and ignored, but leave the content, which has scratch and dirt protection, readable). I haven no idea if that's true, but I'm sure a pirate knows.

    DRM is a huge inconcenience to a customer who legally purchased a CD but can't legally put it on his MP3 player or convert his collection to OGG (or whatever format, let's say a Sony player that requires ATRAC). Ever have to sit through commercials on a DVD because you can't skip it or fast forward through it? These are just the simplest examples, look out for alot more here.

    --
    The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
  4. Re:Gee, look at that Bob. by paladinwannabe2 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Actually, the average consumer does need to be concerned with Digital Rights Management. If I have a legally purchased DVD (as an example) I would like to be able to:

    1. Watch the DVD on any piece of technology in my house- which may mean that I need to save the DVD electronically.

    2. Have the DVD still be watchable if I upgrade technology in the future.

    3. Be able to re-sell the DVD if I get bored of it.

    4. Allow a friend to borrow the DVD.

    DRM that stops people from doing these perfectly legal things should be of concern to the average consumer- since I want to do all of these things, I imagine the average consumer will want to do at least half of them.

    --
    You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
  5. Topic: My Barber, Sal, on Nuclear Proliferation by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...which is to say that as long as Cory Doctorow keeps buying a round at the quarterly new media circle jerk conferences he'll continue to get headline press-on-demand in the 'blogosphere.' Remember, it doesn't matter whether your 'art' is DRM'd up the yin-yang or a plaintext file, if a non-story with a link to your site doesn't periodically make it to the front page of slashdot, ain't nobody gonna know about it anyhow.

    Marketing sells. Always has. Cory has carefully nurtured a successful 'edgy-cyber-iconoclast' niche, and more power to him, but let's not get all noble and philosophical about it...

  6. Re:There is too technical solution to social probs by Crazy+Man+on+Fire · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Locks and car alarms are "good enough" solutions to prevent vehicle theft. Are they fool proof? Of course not. Am I inconvenienced by having to carry around keys and remember to lock/unlock doors? Yes. But I prefer not to have bums sleeping in my car, or people yanking anything in view simply because they can without any effort. And yes, I've had my car broken into (security defeated). It makes me want to find ways to make things more secured, not less.
    You're missing the point. I don't think anybody would argue that car locks and computer security measures are bad. These things prevent others from using your property. They don't prevent from using your own property. Your car's security system doesn't prevent it from driving on certain types of roads. Your computer security doesn't force you to pay $0.25 to log on each time you boot up. The problem with DRM is that it stops the consumer from using content that they paid for. The rights of the consumer are more important than the rights of the content providers. Unfortunately, most of the populace doesn't care or understand that they are losing out because they have their whiz-bang iPod and plasma TV.
  7. There *ARE* two ways you can get BBC content by TyrionEagle · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You can watch it in the UK by paying your TV license.

    Or you can pay for it some other way.

    The DRM in IMP is aimed at stopping people from outside the UK getting their hands on content funded by UK license payers' money, with out paying anything.

    --
    -- I like the cut of your thinking, young man. - me.
  8. Re:There are more alternatives... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Or use a VHS recorder.
    Technically not legal in the UK.
    Or buy a DVD.
    Not available until like a year later, at earliest, and if at all.
    Or use a DVD recorder.
    Again not technically legal in the UK.
    These all work for me.
    And, like Cory says, you are becoming a criminal doing them.

    Also please remember, this is the UK and the BBC we are talking about -- the funding is very different from the US. You pay for the content with your license fee -- if you have a TV, you've paid for the content. Why shouldn't you be able to get it later at a time more convenient for you without technically becoming a criminal?
  9. Re:Sicky Spot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You've hit the heart of the reason why copyright cartels want to kill the public domain. 99% of all books ever published are out of print. 99% of all copyrighted works are unprofitable. Those works aren't bringing in any money to copyright holders, but they will never stand for them entering the public domain because the public domain serves as "unfair" competition. Thus infinite copyright extensions and attacks on Google's book search.