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Is DRM Intrinsically Distasteful?
jelton writes "If digital media was available for sale at a reasonable price, but subject to a DRM scheme that allowed full legitimate usage (format shifting, time shifting, playback on different devices, etc.) and only blocked illicit usage (illegal copying), would you support the usage of such a DRM scheme? Especially if it meant a wealth of readily available compatible devices? In other words, if you object to DRM schemes, is your objection based on principled or practical concerns?"
Would this protection from "illegal copying" also prevent me from legal copying? Aka backups that are protected by fair use? If so, then I would be against it in practice and principle.
It seems to me that this is a pipe dream without a fully regulated hardware path (which I find inherently distasteful). Generally speaking, computers aren't smart enough to determine legality without something like Trusted Computing, therefore, unless a brilliant DRM breakthrough is made, yeah, I find DRM inherently distasteful.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Copyright is supposed to be imperfect and leaky. I do not want a scheme for perfectly enforcing it via architecture.
This goes for most laws. The difficulty of enforcing laws is what keeps a lot of laws from being horribly onerous burdens rather than simply being annoying inconveniences. I'm against any scheme for perfectly enforcing laws. Laws should always be tempered by human understanding.
I think Godels incompleteness theorem applies here. Laws are like a system of axioms. You cannot make a system of axioms that can in all cases separate behavior you want from behavior you don't. So making that system of axioms be enforced by the architecture is inevitably going to prevent behaviors that you don't want to prevent.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
That is a worthless mental exercise as there is no way that DRM can be there and it not be 'in the way'.
By definition DRM would cause issues with legit useage.
DRM is wrong, in any form.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I can't help it, but the way this question is asked, it sounds very "official" to me. As if somebody in a big media corporation or record label wanted to find out what the masses think, or some such... But nevertheless, here's my two cents:
I don't think there can be any such thing as "illegal copying". Copying is a fundamental operation of any computer, and the internet means we can copy world-wide, instantly, at zero cost. Any mechanism that tries to make this impossible is trying to set the clock back to before the internet age. As many DRM-opponents have pointed out, trying to control copying in such a world amounts to establishing a police-state, no less.
The consequence is that artists, and distributors (in whichever form we may still need them), need to be paid by other means, NOT by the number of copies they distribute, NOT bound to the act of copying.
One idea is voluntary payment (think Magnatune). Another idea is that musicians, in particular, can shift to other means of generating income, e.g. concerts, public performances.
The economy is going to change. It has to, because copying can no longer be controlled. Altogether, this is a good thing, but it can turn into a very bad thing if people try very badly to keep this from happening.
Sure, I support the ability to use DRM.
See, and I don't. Why? Well, first off, DRM allows for what amounts to unbound copyrights. After all, if I can't read, copy, edit, or redistribute a public-domain work, what use is it to me? Copyright is supposed to be a *bounded* contract between the copyright holder and society. DRM is just an attempt at an end-run around the rules.
Secondly, I demand my right to shift materials that I've rightfully purchased onto other media. For example, I have a MythTV installation. On it, I have my entire music collection, not to mention a mass of recorded video, and eventually I plan to have my DVD collection ripped as well. DRM means I can no longer do any of these things, which restricts my ability to enjoy the content I've purchased.
So no, I don't believe in DRM. Do I believe that artists should be compensated for their work? Absolutely. They put in significant effort creating the media I enjoy. But I don't like being treated like a criminal in my own home, and I don't like the artists wiggling out of their part of the copyright bargain.
I hate these impossible hypothetical questions. Technical solutions to social issues are inherently flawed. The problem with DRM isn't the technology - it's the corrupt legislation like the DMCA, which makes it illegal to circumvent the DRM. It's utterly impossible for technology to know the difference between legal and illegal, unless you change the laws to define what's illegal based on the technology.
It's like that stupid discussion that was going around the internet about a plane on a treadmill - at the very core it's a flawed question, and just encourages idiotic discussion about meaningless "what if"s
DRM, in whatever form, is intrinsically self-contradictory; remember the analogy with handing someone both the lock and the key and then expecting them to only use what they've been given in the approved manner. I therefore would (and do) object to it on the grounds that it is a bloody boneheaded thing to spend efforts and money on. We've got enough stupidity in the world as it is.
That's provided, of course, that we are not talking about hardware-based DRM, but the question seems to exclude that.
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
Is DRM Intrinsically Distasteful?
Would a monitor and speed regulator on your car be Intrinsically Distasteful?
Would a monitor that reports your TV viewing habits to the govt. be Intrinsically Distasteful?
Would a monitor that only allows you to buy certain foods be Intrinsically Distasteful?
Would a police force that inspects your home every day to ensure that you are not harboring criminals be Intrinsically Distasteful?
Would a monitor that ensures you don't cook microwave food on the bbq be Intrinsically Distasteful?
This list can go on for a long time...
Yes, it IS Intrinsically Distasteful?
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Unfortunately, DRM that allows for fair use and for copyright expiration isn't even theoretically possible. Also, even if the DRM rules permitted every reasonable use they could think of, some future development in technology would be sure to clash with it.
At the end of the day, if you can hear it, you can record it, and if you can see it, you can videotape it. It might not be a "perfect digital copy", but neither is a lossy format like OGG or MP3.
Besides, the lack of quality doesn't seem to bother people downloading torrents of a movie some clown recorded with a camcorder, complete with audience noise.
DRM is a waste of resources that only annoys the legal users of the media.
The real pirates will find work around. Hardware DRM? Yeah, right, because no one hacks hardware with a soldering iron.
This question is analagous to "if frogs had wings, would they still bump their butts on the ground?"
Intellectual property is an intangible construct. I don't see much point in discussing "if if if...." Ultimately there is no utopian DRM implementable. Heck, humans can't agree on value judgements...how can an algorithm do better?
first off, DRM allows for what amounts to unbound copyrights.
This is a failure of current DRM schemes, not DRM in general. It would be easy enough to design DRM so that the DRM no longer applies after a certain date.
first off, DRM allows for what amounts to unbound copyrights.
Again, this could be done with DRM, though it would require a much more robust and flexible system than will exist any time soon.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Which would require the date to be locked on the machines so I cannot defeat it by simply moving the date ahead 100 years.
Let the free market decide how to deal with copyright. It's already been shown that we don't want it.
LOL. That's exactly what's happening, except you're only one half of the free market, buddy. The people selling the music have made the opposite decision.
This space intentionally left blank.
This is a classic example of begging the question.
The ability to shift formats, shift time, play back on different devices, "etc", is indistinguishable from "illegal copying". The question is based upon the incorrect premise that the two things are distinguishable.
Consequently, my objection to DRM is based on both philosophical and practical terms.
I object on philosophical grounds because there exists no such device.
I object on practical grounds because any device that purports to "allow full legitimate usage but ... block illicit usage" is a device that does not allow full legitimate usage.
The root of your problem is the notion of "legitimate" and "illegitimate" versus "copying", "playback", and so on. The former terms are terms of law; they are defined by lawyers and enforced by men with guns. The latter terms are descriptions of functionality; they are defined by the laws of physics and mathematics, which are enforced by the universe itself.
So, would you still object?
If the system gave me full freedom to do what I wanted with the media (including play it back on systems I've built, such as my MythTV box), with the exception of distributing illegal copies, and the protection expired after the copyright ran out, I would have no problems with it.
Problem is, such a system is most probably impossible to build. Without full control of the hardware from soup to nuts, there's no way to plug the analog hole, and without that, there's always a way to distribute the material (unless you can come up with a watermarking scheme that's unbreakable). This is, of course, why HDCP was invented...
and yet who gets yelled out? the guys using DRM to protect their hard work from being freely taken? or the leeching scum who copied and distributed someone elses work knowingly?
Yup, its the content creator who gets criticised, never the pirate.
Strange.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Considering that the time period under discussion is several decades long, that would depend entirely upon a company maintaining those keys, not losing those keys and still being available to release those keys after all those years.
[sarcasm]Yeah, I don't see any problems there.[/sarcasm]
Times have changed. We have the very real possibility of putting a huge library into a tiny server now, and duplicating the entire library in hours for the cost of another $2000 server. Millions of books, audio, video, all in a tiny box.
For the law to say that we can't use this technology for good purposes is untenable. Copyright law allowed us to have public libraries where anyone could go utilize any work that the library could afford. The public library is a dead concept now, it has moved into a digital world.
To say that information should not be freely available isn't maintaining the status quo, it's a radical position advocating the elimination of free access to information that everyone enjoyed for hundreds of years. The status quo is maintaining the free access to information that has been there from the beginning.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I disagree with your analogy. Limiting a car to 65mph is a bad idea because under certain circumstances it would be unsafe. Trying to accelerate away from a 16 wheeler losing control on the freeway and failing would be, um, disappointing. This notional system (I'll get to this is a sec) for preventing anyone from *only* illegal copying is pretty hard to object to.
The question is a great example of a straw-man argument. IF you could make a DRM system that would *only* limit illegal copying and not impact you in *any* other way, would you support it? I can't imagine a sensible negative response that isn't basically "but I like getting music for free".
But the assumption in the question is fundamentally a lie. It's not possible: no-one knows how to do it without affecting fair use, or imposing a crazy authentication burden to the user, and it won't be possible any time soon.
If someone asks a question like that, you know the next step is that they offer up some scheme of theirs that they claim meets that criterion, but it's always a flawed approximation.
I don't object to Utopian DRM. That would be fine. I don't object to Utopian Communism or Utopian Freemarket Anarchists either, but they just don't work in practice.
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
There is nothing I find acceptable about DRM:
No, I can't say as I find DRM something acceptable at any implementation or level. In its most innocent and benign form it's just irritating noise, in it's most insidious manifestation (and they're going there if they can), it's rage-inducing.
I would need to know for sure that I could place the song on any player now or ever to be created.
...or a CD, or any other technology his car's player accepts.
I would need to know that I could transfer it to any media that will ever be created.
I would need to know it would never cause degradation or loss of content.
No transfer or change of use should require external access for permission.
If I drive in a friends car, I should be able to bring the song on a USB stick and play it on his player.
I must be able to transfer ownership to someone else.
I'd expect (although it could be argued against) to be able to share the song with my wife and children.
Finally, since they have a record of my ownership in order to enable the DRM rights, I'd absolutely expect replacement/reissue any time I wanted it.
Then DRM will be acceptable.
The problem is, DRM is absolutely incapable of supporting many of these uses.
So no, I don't have anything against DRM itself, but it is absolutely, inherently counter to the needs of the public.
As others have pointed out, this is a silly question. There could never be such scheme, since the boundaries between legal and illegal use are so fuzzy, and may depend on the intent of the user. What you are really trying to ask is, "Is this fair-use thing just a smoke screen, and is the real reason we all object to DRM is that it prevents you from committing obvious copyright violations?"
I suspect there's some truth to this. I'm sure plenty of people here download music/movies etc. that they don't really have the right to. I personally wouldn't care so much if I couldn't do this. (Although I won't claim that I haven't). However I do like being able to trade and copy CDs from friends. This isn't really legal either, and DRM such as you described would put a stop to this, too.
In it's current form, though, DRM makes it harder for me to do things I should legally be able to do.
One obvious example: iPods play music. iTunes software makes it really easy to tranfer the music from shiny disks I buy onto the iPod. iPods also play videos. However, there is no legal software that I'm aware of (and iTunes certainly doesn't) that allows me to transfer my movies from shiny disks I buy onto the iPod. This is solely due to the DRM on DVDs.
I think illegal trading has served a valuable pupose: I wonder if without illegal trading, we'd have iTunes today. Without any compitition, it would probably be in the music companies best interest to keep forcing us to buy music as complete CD's.
The difference is, there isn't ONE pirate to criticize, but there is just ONE artist or company that makes the decision to use DRM.
That is very frustrating and points to a practical reason why I oppose DRM totally.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Would I accept a DRM scheme that ONLY prevented illegal copying and other illegal uses? Sure.
But such a system could never be built. For me to buy into a DRM scheme they would have to allow me to back up any and all files as I wish. Watch, listen, or read such files on any equipment that would be capable of accessing such information if it wasn't DRMed, and not expire or limit my ability to access the data in the future.
The problem is that with any scheme is that both legal in illegal actions will likely look identical to the system. Let's use music as an example. I should be able to copy my song to my MP3 player, leave a copy on my computer, share the song over a network with other devices in my house, and burn as many CD's as I want as long as I only play one copy of the song at once. How would such a system be able to tell that in one case I'm burning a CD to use in my car, but in another I'm burning one for a friend?
Sure we could require special authentication along the line, but that would require the DRM exist in EVERY device I would want to use. This isn't acceptable as I'm not about to buy new CD players, DVD players, or other playback devices. It also seems to be an invasion of privacy as any scheme would require constant monitoring of everything I do.
So while such a system initially sounds great, implementing such a thing will probably never happen.
-Jthon
A DRM scheme which allows full legitimate usage is no longer a DRM scheme. DRM can only regulate technical actions, but whether or not an action is legitimate depends on human factors. If a DRM scheme allows me to change formats and move content to any device I want, then I should be able to view content on Linux, re-encode to XViD/Ogg Vorbis, put the files up on my home server, and stream them to the PCs around my apartment. I should also be able to ssh in from work or school and pull down a few songs to listen to at my desk. All of this is legal fair use, because I paid for the content in the first place. If DRM doesn't restrict these actions, then I really don't see how it can hope to restrict doing the same re-encoding and sticking the files on some P2P network.
DRM as it is today is like buying a car with a governor that keeps the speed locked below 20 miles per hour, so that no matter where you drive you'll never be speeding. It can get you around your neighborhood, but by not trusting the user, it prevents you from doing things that you really ought to be able to. If the governor were set to 70 miles per hour, I would still find it distasteful, because the system is still setting parameters on exactly what I'm able to do with it, and the parameters continue to stifle legitimate use (for example, I can drive as fast as I want on a private road).
Basically, it boils down to this: either a DRM system must lock down uses which are perfectly legal, if rare, in order to stop piracy, or the system must be so weak as to be essentially nonexistent and allow everything (including piracy). Trying to design a system which lets you have your cake and eat it too, so to speak, is like trying to design bullets that only hurt the bad people.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Yes. I bout my copy of *media* and I shouldn't be beholden to to any technological system, no matter how perfect, in that pursuit. It's a simple question, really: do we allow others to enforce their rights using methods above and beyond those provided by the system/society that everyone not in a state of rebellion accepts? DRM is a tool used by copyright holders to enforce their copyright. If we accept that as appropriate, then we imply that all sorts of other rights, that normally need to be enforced in a civil court, should be enforceable directly by the rights holders. If we need DRM, than copyrights have failed.
"In other words, if you object to DRM schemes, is your objection based on principled or practical concerns?"
This reminds me of the hacking/cracking debate in my ethics class. On one side, there isn't anything inherently wrong with a person hacking into a computer to look around, as long as they don't cause any harm within the computer or use the knowledge to cause harm in the real world (e.g. using secret information to buy stock may change the stock price and hurt a buyer or seller who doesn't have that info). On the other side, hacking/cracking is always wrong because, in practice, a hacker has no way to ensure that their actions will not cause any harm (e.g. they may cause a system slow-down, crash, release of proprietary info, etc.).
In a similar fashion, there is no way to implement DRM that is guaranteed to allow a licensed user to use a copyrighted work without hindering them and at the same time prevent unlicensed usage of the work short of a massive privacy invasion of the user. In this case, it is impossible for a "principled" DRM to even exist, so the question is moot.
science is a religion
I think you missed the nuance of the original question. If a DRM system can be created that can magically recognise the moment your use of digital content goes from legal to illegal, would you still object to DRM.
Most of us hate DRM because no one has come up with that utopian DRM system.
This is a boring sig
>>Consider that even if an artist was the last of his bloodline, owned all his copyrights, and did not will those rights to anyone, you still couldn't copy any of his works for however long Disney decided they should be extended.
l ). I personally opined that they should go into the public domain, possibly with a grace period to allow for a lost author to suddenly show up before it becomes public property*.
IANAL, but I think that'd be untrue under a couple of legal theories at least:
First, if she had no heirs at all (including parents, siblings, cousins, etc.) then her property would escheat to the State. The practical effect of which (I believe - I haven't researched it) would be to put the work in the public domain. I have no idea if anyone has done any work with this area, but it'd be fun thing to try...
Next, if the copyright is in limbo and no one seems to have any rights to it, it would probably be considered an Orphaned Work. There have been Bills recently in Congress to clarify and codify the status of such works, but none have passed yet (that I know of.) The Copyright Office was soliciting advice from the public on what should be done last year. ( http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr3739.htm
*I admit my anti-copyright bias, but I don't think this is unfair. If you want your work to be protected, you should have to put a notice of copyright within the work, as under the old system. And you should have up to a year or so to decide you want to do that (to prevent people copying your expression.) Beyond that, it's public - period.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
This is a hypothetical situation.
This mythical DRM we are talking about would do none of those things.
This becomes an arguement like "Can God make a rock so heavy He can't lift it."
There appear to be huge logical paradoxes in the idea that DRM that doesn't have the negative consequences real DRM has can exist. The whole question is equivalent to "Would you still oppose the death penalty if we could revive the criminal in the case of mistakes?". That's fundamentally not what the word Death means. Your mythical DRM is like a four sided triangle or simmilarly impossible concept.
Now DRM is fundamentally a legal issue. The original poster doubtless didn't mean to, but has just abused people, in the exact same way as putting someone on the witness stand and asking "Have you stopped beating your wife yet? please answer with a simple yes or no." is abusive. Your followthrough on this point is also personal abuse of the parent poster. Who the hell do you think you are that you have some special right to expect a logically defensable answer to a nonsensical question? I'm sure that, whatever the parent answered, you would be glad to pick logical holes in it, but you, not the parent poster, are the one putting those holes into the logical arguement. My answer to your question is, "I do not answer illogical questions from crazy-talking people who obviously want to pick a fight, and you are being a bully". (and yes, you are).
So, would you burn down an orphanage filled with cute toddlers if things were different enough that that wasn't a bad thing? Please answer quickly, so I can quote back just the part that lets me win an arguement with you and make you look bad.
Who is John Cabal?
This is an assertion made frequently by those who don't object to DRM en toto, and it is founded on an assumption that the content that has been restricted can eventually be liberated using the software tools that were initially published to control access to it.
From a preservation standpoint, the encryption of content for mass distribution is always an unsavory outcome. What we should have learned from the silent film era is that lots of copies keep stuff safe, and when you only have a few durable copies around, parts of our cultural heritage tend to disappear rapidly from the historical and archaeological record.
If there is to be any hope for the cultural output of our generation to be available to the historians, students, or anyone else, we need to ensure that the copies we are making are not worthless blobs of random noise. It's going to be hard enough to read the digitally stored works of our time using the hardware tools of the future. We should not erect a series of worthless software roadblocks which will only make preserving those works even more difficult.
The prospect of some media conglomerate making a few million more dollars today is not a compelling reason to discard the cultural artifacts of our generation from the historical record. We need as many plaintext copies around as possible, and we need to hope that enough of them survive.
Parent is not quite correct. I agree that "Principled" DRM is completely and utterly impossible, but that doesn't make the question moot, it makes the question simple to answer, because it makes the answer "I object based on principle". If DRM is inherently unprincipled, I object to DRM because it does not meet my principles.
Here's how I see the arguement. I object to DRM because its very nature goes against my principles. Unless I'm being sued or charged with a crime, for anyone to seize control (electronic or otherwise) over my media player of choice is intrinsically an invasion of my privacy. In order to secure a media player so that it will play digitally encrypted files without me being able to remove the encryption, some form of electronic control must be seized. So, I object to DRM that works (keeps me from unencrypting the files) because it doesn't meet my principles concerning privacy rights. I object to DRM that doesn't work (lets me unencrypt the files) because it doesn't meet my principles concerning stupidity.
Don't save Windows XP! http://www.petitiononline.com/jjw1xp/petition.html
DRM is me taking control of your physical property (your computer) so that I can impose my concept of "information ownership" upon you.
I don't think a content provider should have the option of taking even a little bit of an end-user's control over his own hardware away from him.
If he was just renting the computer, then perhaps the owner of the computer should be able to put some limits on what he can do with it (he cannot, for example, use it as an anchor for his raft). This makes sense, since the computer is honest-to-goodness "stuff," and making another one of it requires the expenditure of honest-to-goodness material resources.
Information is not stuff, duplicating it does not require the expenditure of material resources, and the duplication of information does not impact the provider's ability to use and duplicate it as well. Therefore it cannot be "rented," and as such the provider shouldn't expect that he has some sort of moral prerogative to control other people's property whenever it might be processing a copy of the provided information.
It seems to me that DRM contradicts the idea of copyright.
Recall the basic idea of copyright (feel free to correct me if I bungle this): to encourage and promote the creation and publication of new works of art, etc. The mechanism to provide the impetus is (or was) an ugly short-term, government-enforced monopoly on duplication. Think of it as a bargain: the public, and society, gets to enjoy the output of artists, etc, in exchange for giving those artists a limited-time monopoly on reproduction.
With DRM, it seems we have really lost sight of the whole idea of copyright. Now the producers still get their lousy monopoly, but the public are not really getting their end of the deal, because in a very real sense, DRM-protected works are not really published. They are released in encrypted form, so they may never actually make it into the public domain. If the courts were really doing their job, they should say to the producers (of DRM stuff), "Look, mate, you are not really publishing your material. You are in effect making a private contract between yourself and your customers, asking them to agree to all these extra restrictions. If you have an issue with your customers, thats your problem. Copyright doesnt apply here. Case dismissed."
Well I can dream.
My life is an open book ... up to a point.
> See, and I don't. Why? Well, first off, DRM allows for what amounts to unbound copyrights. After all, if I can't read, copy, edit, or redistribute a public-domain work, what use is it to me? Copyright is
> supposed to be a *bounded* contract between the copyright holder and society. DRM is just an attempt at an end-run around the rules.
yeah, but isn't that like saying that laws are a contract between people in their houses and criminals trying to break-in? We don't trust the laws to prevent criminals from breaking into our houses, do we? no, we put a lock on the door. DRM is the lock. Now as long as they give me control of my lock, then I have no problem.
It's hard to see how even perfect DRM could know things. If I'm copying a part of a song into the background of a political commercial, and putting it on a public web server as a campaign ad, that's illegal without specific permission. If I'm copying a part of a song into the background of a video college presentation about the presentation of 80s music in popular culture, and putting it on an educational web server for others in college class, that is legal.
Without psychic power's it's rather difficult to see how any software could find the differences in those things.
This article is literally asking 'If you could be assured that the police would only arrest criminals and use their powers in a perfect way, would you still be opposed to not having the right to a trial by jury and requiring search warrants?'. Or perhaps 'If there was no such things as death, would you object to murder?'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
DRM is plagued with problems that were never really thought out. The implementations in use today are to solve an immediate need. In most cases, they are failing badly.
I work with some Indie record labels and none of them employ DRM except for what they sell on iTunes. Their CDs are all clean. They have recently come under fire for CMT videos not playing in Firefox, Opera, Netscape, etc. To counter this Microsoft PC only issue, they have now started posting the music videos on YouTube.com also. They had to as nearly 30% of their audience couldn't watch the videos.
But, we come to an even bigger problem. Obsolesence. Labels get bought and sold. Media changes (cylinder - 78 - 45 - LP - EP - CD - SACD - Digital.....) So, it is quite likely that any mechanism employed today won't work in the future and, at the rate of technology evolution, that won't take too long. At some point, the music becomes unaccessible. You paid for it. You licensed it. But you can't listen to it.
We also have copyright issues. Lets say in 50 years the copyright expires and the music becomes public domain. How to you remove the DRM? How does one make the music available to the general public once it is in the public domain? Under DMCA you can't - even if it is for legitimate use.
Finally for historical and archive purposes one would need to keep the playback mechanisms current, licensed and capable for playing old DRM'd content. In 100 years if somebody wanted to do research and study 1990-2010 music of a particular genre, it would probably be much more difficult due to DRM'd media getting in the way. How do you play, restore and repackage the DRM's oldies?
The DRM people haven't seriously looked at the cultural and social long-term impact of DRM. They don't really care as that doesn't bring revenue to their pockets but society does care but society doesn't have a voice or lobby power that RIAA/MPAA/BMI/ASCAP and the other Performance Rights Organizations (PROs) do.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
The entertainment industry wholly gets way too much money by monopolizing content through artist contracts and vertical integration into movie theatres. I can think of about 3 recent movies worth 10 dollars and I can think of zero recent albums worth 17. This industry has been living with delusions of grandeur since the inception of media recording. The wave of novelty has crested and broke. As far as software is concerned I see no reason to integrate DRM into any data format. The CD Key/watermark system has worked fine for the kind of software I support the production of.
My objection to DRM is basic; it's an assumption of guilt. Were anyone to seriously accuse me of doing something that I didn't do, wouldn't do, and have a general distaste toward [example: my friend is mad at me because he thought I was humping his pet beagle's right nostril,] then I'm going to react with more than a brush-off. I don't care for being called a thief when I'm not taking a fraggin' thing I don't already own. I don't object to compensating the artists for their work; I just feel it's not fair to slap handcuffs on everyone for something someone MIGHT/will do. It's bad enough from our government; I'll be damned if I'll take that crap from ANY corporation.
Executive Summary: Methinks they're getting too big for their britches...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
DRM technology is harmless. DRM software is a simply pattern of bits, which by itself can do no harm.
The harm comes entirely from the legal system.
We are proceeding in a very clear legal direction: Some day, it will be illegal to use a computer that does not have the proper "trusted computing" hardware and software installed on it.
The public will accept this, too, because the politicians will convince them that it's a necessary step to "keep the Internet safe". They will exploit the public's ignorance of technology, and they will tell the public that "trusted computers" are necessary to prevent viruses, child porn, and terrorism.
And the public will applaud them for it, because it sounds like common sense if you don't think about it for more than a few seconds (which they don't). As long as they can continue to get their entertainment products, few people will object to the idea of requiring all of our computers to be trusted.
The question is fundamentally flawed.
The whole point of DRM is to prevent format-shifting, because it's indistinguishable from illegal copying.
The scenario presented in the question assumes that the Mafiaa will trust people to perform their format-shifting in a "responsible" manner. However, DRM exists specifically because people cannot be trusted. The question tries to combine these two contradictory worlds together. The resulting scenario simply cannot exist in the real world.
You don't have to postulate some magical "moral entitlement" to give creators a temporary monopoly on their works; you only have to posit that people will be more inclined to produce creative work if they have a guaranteed opportunity to profit from them. (Nothing's guaranteed; if nobody buys your CD, your rights under copyright law help you not at all.) Of course, current copyright terms are absurd, and serve to stifle creativity by locking up our culture. Still, it's based on a completely legitimate idea, and I for one don't advocate the abolition of copyright as a whole.
I'd advocate a return to Founder-era copyright terms, heavy protections for fair uses (especially noncommercial and educational ones), and something like for full protection, commercially exploited works must submit to the Library of Congress, to be held in escrow, a fully unencrypted, unencumbered version of the work. But wonky ideas don't count for much when the central question is whether copyright will go from Life+70 to Life+90 in the next few years...
Bah. I wish we had Public Domain Day in the US.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Wait a second... how is me owning my stuff communism?
I own a book, a pen, and a piece of paper. Anything I chose to do in my home with those items is my business. Not only do I have a right to copy text from my book onto my piece of paper with my pen, you don't even have a right to come onto my property to find out that I've done so - much less tell me I can't do it.
Copyright, in the sense of authors having full control over the use of their works, can't exist in a free society. In order to have an enforceable law that would prevent me from copying my book with my pen on my property, there would either have to be a restriction on pens or I'd have to be under constant surveillance in my own home. Those are clearly unacceptable, so copyright law that prevents personal copying is absurd.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.