Doctorow on DRM and Activism

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.'"

Comments

A speech he gave in 2004

[truthsearch]

Back in '04 Cory Doctorow gave an interesting speech about DRM to the Microsoft Research department. He released it into the public domain, so share it with your friends (and DRM enemies).

There is no technical solution to a social problem

[Opportunist]

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.

There are more alternatives...

[Burb]

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.

Or use a VHS recorder. Or buy a DVD. Or use a DVD recorder. These all work for me.

Re:Priorities

[Bazman]

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...

Re:There is no technical solution to a social prob

[General Alcazar]

So true. I use one of those streaming music services. They have hit the price-point that works for me. For $8 per month, I get access to their library of music, which is something like 1 million songs (I don't know, actually). Yes, I don't get to "own" this music, but I don't really care that much, since the price is pretty negligable. I never buy CDs anymore. I used to buy several CDs per month at about $15/pop, listen to them a few times each, then shelve them. Now, I am spending a fifth of that, and I have more music at my fingertips. This model doesn't necessarily fit everyone's lifestyle, but it works for me.

Technically, I can "steal" as much music as I like from the service by re-digitizing the stream once it gets to the analog phase. But, it is kind of a pain to do, so I rarely bother with it. Like the parent said, make it affordable, and I won't bother circumventing the system.

Re:Priorities

[arodland]

You're complaining about a website going downhill and posting inane shit that doesn't interest you (or anyone).

I've got a newsflash for you: You read Slashdot. You have no right to comment on this topic.

We now return to our regularly scheduled program, brought to you by Scuttlemonkey.

fuck those anagram maps!

[torpor]

put DRM on them!!!

Re:Gee, look at that Bob.

[kadathseeker]

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.

Sicky Spot

[ChiefGeneralManager]

The BBCs in a bit of a sticky spot with this. The BBCs focus is the UK, and agrees with programme makers to show programme in the UK. Where the content is made available on the web, there are no geographical restrictions, so I understand that programme makers -- and not the BBC -- are the people who mandate that a programme should not be made available outside the UK. I think it's for this reason that IMP includes DRM software.

When the BBC does own the complete rights, it seems to give it away pretty freely for non-commercial use. Examples include the MP3 of Beethoven that BBC Radio 3 gave away; and the BBCs Creative Archive

It is unfortunate that DRM is a part of the BBCs world, but the option would be to not provide content at all. Additionally some of the UK media would whip up a frenzy -- "UK licence payers foot the bill for worldwide quality internet TV". This comes about because of the disconnect between the UK licencing system and the World Wide Web.

Obscurity

[retinaburn]

I recently listened to a talk Cory gave. He discussed that the reason he started releasing his books via CreativeCommons was because of the whole Digial-Book fiasco. Where authors were attacking fans of their work who were either hacking the digital version to use in other means, or digitally copying the books.

He sums up his p.o.v., which I think every artist, be it writer or musician, or Spam carver should listen to before using DRM in their content. His greatest problem as an artist is not piracy, it's obscurity. 99.5% of all the people who never buy his books are doing so because they don't know about his work. The other .5% are people downloading his books, and not paying for them.

The important step is forming a relationship with your readers, then they are more likely to follow your work, and more likely to purchase your products.

It might have been Tim O'Reilly who had said the obscurity quote, but regardless of who says it, more people need to hear it.

Re:Gee, look at that Bob.

[paladinwannabe2]

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.

Topic: My Barber, Sal, on Nuclear Proliferation

[RobotRunAmok]

...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...

Re:There is too technical solution to social probs

[Crazy Man on Fire]

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.

Re:Priorities

[tpgp]

I'm sure boingboing used to be good,....

If there's one thing sadder then someone complaining about /, on /., it's someone complaining about some other blog on slashdot.

I guess it could have been worse - you could have been talking about the wonders of digg...

There *ARE* two ways you can get BBC content

[TyrionEagle]

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.

Re:There *ARE* two ways you can get BBC content

[pjeremyh]

And I say once *we* (the fee paying public) have paid for it and watched it - give it away! - why not give it to the rest of the world? I doubt we'd be out of pocket much and the rest of the world would have Red Dwarf. If the UK pumped out quality TV to the rest of the world it might help balance some of our less savoury outputs.

DRM... Such a waste

[WolfZombie]

DRM is such a waste of money and time for everyone. The current business models for CDs and Movies can't be hurting that much, as they can still afford to pay these individual actors/acresses millions for a single film, and make a profit. Maybe they should try the alley of not paying the performers quite so much. Not everyone in the entertainment industry needs to be a millionaire. I hate watching an artist on T.V. bitching about how piracy hurts the industry, then they get in their Bentley or Ferrari with their Rolex and 4 million dollar engagement ring and drive off. Obviously they are hurt by this industry.
What hurts is the unwillingness of those who have their hands in the honey pot at the top to reinvest in small time artists.
DRM is just a way for lawyers and a few more executives to get their hands deeper in the honey pot. Imagine how much money has been spent on legal issues that revolve just around this issue, both on the corporate side and consumer side.

Cory is something of a Hypocrite

[delire]

I've seen Cory talk at a few forums/conference and while espousing the virtues of free software and damning DRM he never seems to be able to answer a question from the floor about how he can justify giving money to Apple, a pro DRM company in a ready position to radically monopolise our rights to the music we buy and listen to.

He will however suggest economic boycott of any other company that does support and invest in restricting the rights of users. He just doesn't seem prepared to see that every time he gets up on stage with his Powerbook and in casual chat, espousing the joys of iTunes, he's contradicting his own ethics.

Many questions came from the floor and in forums after a talk he gave in Spain that he was not able to answer to this end. In one forum he claimed that OSX was an open-source OS and he considers himself a BSD user. IMO Cory can be a bit of a margin fudger at times.

Easy to say, hard to do.

[FishandChips]

I think it was brave of Doctorow to say he found Ricky Gervais extremely entertaining. Gervais has been hugely oversold and cannot hold a candle to real comic greats, from Keaton to Sellars, Cook or Cleese. Truth to tell, Gervais really isn't very funny at all.

Second, Doctorow's views on the BBC and DRM are very oversimplified. The BBC buys in many of its programs, but it buys only the right to broadcast them in its territories not the right to distribute them for free world-wide. Second, the BBC reasonably expects to make money, sometimes a great deal of money, from selling successful programs abroad and in the form of all kinds of subsidiary rights. Clearly that after-market would abruptly cease if open streams were avaliable on the net. With it would cease quite a lot of jobs and the licence fee would probably go up.

I don't like DRM either, but the BBC isn't the right place to start reforming the West's foobared intellectual property system. On the whole the BBC is a force for good, which I doubt could be said of many US media moguls with their porno factories and shady deals with Chinese state bully boys.

Re:Easy to say, hard to do.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I don't like DRM either, but the BBC isn't the right place to start reforming the West's foobared intellectual property system.

Hang on a minute. The BBC's mission is, in essence, to provide content to the British public. They can do this, based on a remarkably low licence fee, because they only have to pay for the broadcast rights in Britain for content they buy in, and because for content they produce themselves they can resell the rights for broadcast elsewhere, so that those who benefit elsewhere contribute to the cost.

It seems to me that this is exactly what the concept of copyright is designed to do: it allows the production of material where any given consumer base isn't contributing excessively just to support others. The DRM is inconvenient for those of us in the UK, but I think claiming the whole system is foobared while ignoring the way it's allowing the BBC to do exactly what it's supposed to do is rather shortsighted.

Not being able to tinker

[robolemon]

Cory Doctorow came to Olin College a couple of weeks ago. I wrote up a short summary of his talk. The take-home message I personally got from his talk was that the biggest danger comes when DRM creeps into hardware, preventing kids from being able to tinker with technology and learn about it when their minds are most open. Here is the abstract of his talk which was entitled "0wned -- how Hollywood plans on making the future subservient on the past" .