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Explaining DRM to a Less-Experienced PC User?
An anonymous reader asks: "I have a question for Slashdot users eager for a challenge. How would one explain – at a casual level – the concept of, and problems with, DRM to someone who is competent using a computer, but with little technical knowledge?"
That is all.
"You don't get to choose when and how to use what you've paid for."
"Someone else gets to decide when and how you can play music you bought, watch the movies you're bought, play the games that you've paid for."
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
To date, I have not seen anything approaching a casual description of DRM.
I'm not sure that's necessarily so. While I use Linux and will not use encumbered media (at least none on which I can't trivially break the "locks", and even then I avoid it as much as possible) most of the less geek-oriented people I know will eventually run into trouble with it...and then they ask me for my help. At this point, you can give them a few basics (lock-in, not wanting things copied, etc.) However, what they inevitably take away from these discussions is exactly what I'd hope:
DRM is what is causing my problem.
At that point, they lump it in with all the other things which cause problems even though they don't have a full technical understanding of what they are. This particular heap also includes viruses, spyware, adware, and good things like that-exactly the classification DRM belongs in.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
It's actually not that hard. Imagine if you bought a car and the car had a key that only you could use. So if you wanted to loan the car to a friend, he couldn't use it. When you wanted to sell the car, you wouldn't be able to sell the car either because it wouldn't work for anybody else. It would work fine for you, but the moment your wife needed to drive it, too bad.
That's DRM in a nutshell. It's actually worse than that but the metaphor degrades somewhat beyond that.
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See this CD you bought? You own it. You can make backups of it. You can lend it to a friend. You can make mix CDs for your car. You can make copies for any MP3 player you buy. If your car/mp3 player/etc./and/or CD gets stolen, you can make another MP3 and you can listen to your backup. If you get sick of it you can sell it to someone else who will appreciate it.
See this Napster/Sony/Microsoft/FooDRM media file you "bought?" You do not own it. You cannot make backups. If your PC/Phone/MP3 player dies, so does your music. You cannot lend it to a friend. You cannot make mix CDs for your car. If you upgrade your MP3 player, you may have to "buy" it again. If your MP3 player/PC/etc. is stolen or dies, you also lose your music. If you get sick of the DRM'd music you "bought" you cannot resell it to someone else who will appreciate it. You "bought" nothing.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Change "you feel like you should be able to do" to "you should be able to do". There is no reason the technology should prevent you from doing any of those things. Thus, the sentence becomes:
It might be worth mentioning that it allows producers to get higher profits by selling an inferior product, if the person you're explaining it to asks why producers would want such a thing.
Imagine a bookstore that has all the books you could ever want. Now imagine that when you buy a book, it remains forever chained to a desk in that bookstore. You can come back and visit it, but you can never take it out of the bookstore. If the bookstore closes or moves, your books go away with it.
The ______ Agenda
I would use the following definition, or a variant thereof: "DRM is the name given to technology used by the people who sell you digital content to control how, when and where you view/listen, store or copy that content. It includes laws to make it illegal for you to get around those controls." Beyond that, don't bother explaining, show them what it is and how it works, read on:
In years of trying to make my girlfriend, who is a strategy consultant and all-around pretty competent 'business' PC user (i.e. knows her way around Windows reasonably well, knows end-user apps, etc.) and a very bright person, I couldn't get her to care ("I buy all my music/films".)
What'd it take for her to understand why this is important and to listen to me on how it works? Well, we're spending a year on another continent and all of a sudden, her DVDs don't work in the player in our furnished apartment. Oops. Boy, was she pissed. Boy, did she want to know how it worked, why it sucked and how to get around it all of a sudden.
Same with why Windows is broken ("but it just works for what I want to do.") Until it didn't "just work." Same with data privacy ("I don't have anything to hide") until someone stole her credit card number.
The phrase you need to remember is "show me the money" or, in consulting terminology, "where's the 'so what'?" Most people won't care or give a rat's ass until it affects them directly.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage