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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.'"
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.
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.
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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.
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.
.5% are people downloading his books, and not paying for them.
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
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.
...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...
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.
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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.
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.
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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.