Slashdot Mirror
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!"
...but thanks for telling me at 22:22 hours. An hour and 38 minutes before its the 4th of October!
Jonathanjk.com
The point here is not to punish the offenders, but to make the public aware of the offense. They pick apple because everyone knows about iTunes and the iPod and all things apple. If they had gone after, say, Microsoft for DRM on the Zune or something, people would say 'thank god I have an iPod and don't have to worry about that crap'.
To (probably mis-) quote Dr. Cox (Scrubs), "If you got rid of all the porn on the Internet, there'd probably only be one site left and I'm pretty sure it would be called 'Bring back the porn'".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Well yes it is fairly simple you see, and this from a guy that is not a music lover and could really
care less about drm on music since the most I do is listen to the radio. The issue is that people only want fair
use of the product they bought. They want to be able to play it a unlimited amount of times in the device of their
choosing. Say for instance I want to listen to some tunes and I can only get it in MS DRM protected files which don't work in my car stereo or on my linux machine, you see now we got a problem.
You cannot technically DRM protect content in a way which will allow legal fair use for the purchaser of the product.....period.
Got Code?
But is there anyone out there that is cool with copyrights, but thinks DRM is bad?
Here's the problem: copyrights are a limited monopoly offered by the government as one half of a bargain with creators. The other half of the bargain lies in the creator's agreement that the protected content will become available to the public domain when the copyright term expires.
DRM allows publishers to evade their half of the copyright bargain. In particular, the DMCA anti-circumvention law in the US is unconstitutional because it does not require publishers to disable their DRM protection, or arrange for it to disable itself, upon the expiration of copyright protection. That means that the DMCA explicitly sanctions perpetual copyright protection... a clear violation of both the letter and intent of the Constitution's clause that authorizes that protection in the first place. With a combination of traditional copyright law and hypothetical DRM technology that remains unbreakable after copyright expiration, a publisher will enjoy an unlimited monopoly at the public's expense.
But do they not have a right to protect their intellectual property? Are the detractors of DRM against the concept of intellectual property altogether?
Some are against the whole concept of IP, but not being an ideologue, I can't speak for them. I do, however, believe that publishers and creators should have to choose between self-enforced protection (DRM) and government-enforced protection (copyright law). They should not be able to leverage both at the same time, because the two legal concepts of DRM and the "copyright bargain" are diametrically opposed to each other.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
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.
(1) DRM never expires. Ideally, copyright is a legal device used to enrich society, to encourage artists to create works based on the understanding that they will be able to profit from said works for a limited amount of time. After this time period expires, the creative works get released into the public domain. Unfortunately, DRM'd files don't do this- the music you bought on iTunes in 2003 will still be restricted in 3003.
(2) DRM will never work correctly without overly restrictive government controls. For example, let's assume that "Brand New Hyper DVD" format is completely uncrackable- the disks can never, EVER be decrypted and copied digitally. So what? Take your camcorder, aim it at the screen, and press record. Voila! Brand new copy without DRM. The only way to stop this would be to force all electronics manufacturers to include complicated measures to insure that they can't be used in this manner- but as we all know the next "DVD Jon" would show up in less than 2 days and crack these measures. The only way to fight this from a corporate/government standpoint would be to force all electronics capable of being used in this kind of pirating scheme to "phone home" on a regular basis to update their DRM software, and to BAN all older electronics without this "feature". See where this is going? Do you want to live in this society?
(3) DRM effectively turns your computer into a police snitch, working AGAINST you rather than for you. Just look at the Sony rootkit fiasco for an obvious example, or read up on the DMCA or broadcast flags or... you get the point.
(4) DRM adds an extra degree of complexity to playback, which constitutes another failure mode. A computer crash can often reduce a DRM'd music library to binary junk unless the user has been meticulous enough to save the mountain of data necessary to identify his/her computer as "the authorized playback device" of said music. Want to switch to a different computer, or swap out some hardware? Good luck- this will probably be interpreted as a "new computer" and your music won't play. Want to play your music on another device like your car stereo or your portable music player? You'd better hope the music vendor was "gracious" enough to bless you with that kind of "privilege".
(5) My fears of a world where DRM has taken over can best be summed up by the following short story. I'm TERRIFIED that this is exactly the type of world we will wake up to in, say, 2020 if things keep going the way they are...
I love copyright. I disagree with some of the details of implementation (In my dream world copyright would last 14 years with an optional 14 year renewal), but I love the core idea. A government granted short term monopoly seems like a good way to encourage creation.
However, I loathe DRM. A few highlights:
DRM makes media players more expensive: Adding DRM support to hardware or software isn't free. Implementating a device without DRM support would be cheaper that implementing one with. You, the consumer, pay more for a device that intentionally does less.
DRM must be combined with draconian laws to be effective: "Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet." (Bruce Schneier) You've given me the data and the software or hardware to play the data. All the pieces are in my hands. DRM must be breakable. So to make it effective, you need laws that make it illegal to distribute implementations that break DRM. This means source code that breaks DRM must be illegal. As source code is a form of speech, we have laws that try to limit free speech to protect a business model. That's never acceptable in my book.
DRM is about making things you purchase distrust you: This is inherent to the system. This is morally repugnant. Your DVD player assumes you're trying to make bootleg copies, so it applies MacroVision to the output. The new video game you installed assumes you're trying to play a bootleg copy, so it installs low-level drivers into your system to monitor what you do. I paid money for these things, why do they serve an external company more than me?
DRM must infringe on fair use: The only DRM system that doesn't infringe on fair use is Microsoft's "Please don't make illegal copies" label printed on the CDs of some of their products. Fair use is subtle and non-obvious, no piece of electronics or software can be perfectly correct. If you err on the side of freedom, you are also creating a loophole for illegal use. You can either give people the ability to legally sample short segements of high definition video for review purposes or you can make it harder to make bootleg copies. You can give people the ability to legally format shift movies and music or you can make it harder to spread copies online.
Search 2010 Gen Con events