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The Day Against DRM
Qubit writes, "DefectiveByDesign.org, a campaign by the Free Software Foundation, is making Oct 3rd a Day Against DRM: 'Defeating DRM is all about awareness. The direct actions that we have taken are all about this. Today we are asking you to let the people around you know that DRM is bad for our society. Let's create space for the debate. Do we want handcuffs and locks on art and knowledge? As our friends at Disney recognize, if there is this debate, we will have won.'" Bayboy adds an article from eWeek mentioning that members of DefectiveByDesign.org are going to descend on flagship Apple stores in New York and London to protest the company's embrace of DRM. And Another AC writes, "In honor of the Day Against DRM, DreamHost has released a new service called Files Forever (for Dreamhost customers only during beta) This seems to be basically an iTunes Music Store that anybody can sell any sort of files through... as long as they have no DRM. Dreamhost handles all the payment processing and stores the file forever, offering unlimited re-downloads to end users who buy files through the service. When somebody buys a file they're even allowed to 'loan' it to others for free!"
Let's create space for the debate. Do we want handcuffs and locks on art and knowledge?
As a master debater, I can say that I do enjoy handcuffs and locks on at least *some* of the art. That is, if you call pr0n "art".
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
...but thanks for telling me at 22:22 hours. An hour and 38 minutes before its the 4th of October!
Jonathanjk.com
It seems kind of weird that they'd target Apple, especially when there are far worse companies out there with much more draconian DRM policies they could make an example of. (Sony, anyone?)
My guess, it's all about location and convenience, rather than actually going after some of the really bad DRM offenders. Apple just happens to be the one unfortunate enough to have stores that are visually appealing and easily recognizable to consumers.
The intentions here may be good, but the execution is nearly at hypocritical levels.
8==8 Bones 8==8
People aren't going to care until it starts costing them money. Take iTunes for example. Right now, they have DRM that's loose enough that most people won't care that their songs are DRM'ed. People who buy iTunes songs will probably buy another iPod when their old one breaks, so they won't run into a DRM problem.
There is a very good possibility that in the near future, people will start changing their music players, like the new MS Zune. When this happens on a mass scale, and people have to re-buy their music, there will be a huge number of pissed off people, and people will finally realize why DRM is bad. Until something threatens people's wallets, no one's going to care.
As much as I dislike DRM, I can't really get too worked up about these protests either. For starters, I get the idea that Apple stores are being "picked on" because they're seen as "high profile" in the mass media. In reality, I don't think Apple was all that "pro DRM" at all. They simply agreed to it in order to successfully get the whole iTunes music store off to a start with major record labels on-board.
... since to this day, they *still* offer one of the most flexible set of usage rights on the DRM'd files. (As many as 5 computers can be authorized to use one user's purchased music, and anything purchased can be burnt to audio CD format as many times as you wish - as long as you create new "playlists" of tracks every so many times first, etc.) In fact, although it's not advertised, there are several documented cases of users losing all their music due to drive crashes, and upon emailing Apple support, were granted the ability to re-download everything they lost at no charge. They also allow you to reset your computer authorizations up to once per year, in case you forget to de-authorize systems before wiping the drives on them and selling them to someone else.
Until Apple did this and proved the business model was really viable, the only other real visible options for people were illegal downloads of MP3s (of sometimes dubious encoding quality) from p2p networks like Napster.
It seems obvious to me that somewhere in the development process, Apple did some bargaining for rights of the end-users of the music
Microsoft's "Fairplay" DRM and its upcoming use in devices like the Zune seem like a much more worthy target of attack. Fairplay is used by practically all the music services BUT Apple - and is getting more and more restrictive in every update to Windows Media Player that's released. Unlike Apple, MS seems to think it's ok to keep "turning the screws" to lock it down beyond what early adopters were told the rules were.
Would some one please explain what exactly it wrong with DRM? If you have a problem with concept of copyrights in general, then I can understand. But is there anyone out there that is cool with copyrights, but thinks DRM is bad?
I'm not trying to be an apologist for the corporations. I know they don't care about the art or the artist, only money. That's given. But do they not have a right to protect their intellectual property? Are the detractors of DRM against the concept of intellectual property altogether?
The way I see it is there is nothing wrong with the concept of DRM, only with the abuse of DRM. Is this a "slippery slope" argument?
I'm serious in my plea here. Someone please fill me in on what I am missing!
... and explain to me why I would buy anything from this store rather than just download it from somebody else for free?
Same reasons you'd buy a book, rather than scan one you borrowed from the library:
- You want a non-infringing copy. (You CAN still be sued for copying outside fair use, you know.)
- You want to reward the creator and distribution channel (either out of principle or to promote creation of more stuff you like).
- It's convenient.
Content producers in a number of media have experimented with copy inhibition technologies and generally found them unnecessary and often counter-productive to good business results. Why should music be different?
(The current rash of "piracy" is, IMHO, primarily a reaction to broken distribution and pricing policies, and recording companies will do a lot better once {if?} they get over it.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The same reason that the vast majority of people currently buy their music on CD when they could just steal it from a store, or copy it from a friend, or download it online. The same reason that thousands of people buy music from independent artists online, when they could just download it.
If you're trying to assert that most people would pirate music rather than paying for it, unless they physically prevented from doing so by their own property, then you are wrong. Contrary to the RIAA's twisted statistics, piracy is not decreasing sales. At the peak of napster's popularity sales at the register were rising, not falling. The falling numbers the RIAA liked to quote were wholesale numbers. This can be traced to the stores streamlining their inventory and stocking systems as a result of the internet. At that time, music stores near colleges did have falling sales, but so did book stores near colleges, and both correlate strongly to increases in internet sales of the same item. Subsequently, the decrease in sales that have been seen, are largely in the "oldies" adult market - and yet if you look at the statistics for what types of music is being pirated, it is clear piracy is not to blame for that. The threat of piracy is overblown, and unsubstantiated.
So no, most people are not selfish assholes, just you. But hey, congratulations! It is the minority of people like you that have given the RIAA leverage to strip away the fair-use right of the rest of the people in this country, and bias the laws in favor of further consolidation of the market. You sure stuck it to The Man.
Seems like a lot of the problems people have with DRM aren't problems with DRM per se, they're problems with the DMCA and similar legislation to criminalize attempts to circumvent DRM. I agree, and so we should have a day against DMCA, not a day against DRM.
There are those who claim that DRM cannot work without legislation, but I don't think that's completely true. Yes, for music and video content you can work around DRM, but it is often difficult and the quality of the result may be inferior. And for games and software, DRM can work in theory. The new proposals for Trusted Computing could also strengthen DRM without requiring legislation.
We should work to oppose this kind of legislation as it expands into more countries, and eventually work to roll it back in the places where it has been passed. Perhaps more technically effective DRM will make it easier to remove the legislative crutch.