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?"

Comments

Both.

[fyngyrz]

Sure, I support the ability to use DRM. That should be the artist's choice. But not a blanket enforcement of it. Why? Because there are some people who make audio productions who do not charge and do not restrict distribution. As long as that is still possible, and those people don't have to pay some arbitrary group for a "license" or other enabling mechanism to distribute their "stuff" for free, I'd be all for it.

But... our history is that once we close the doors, we lock people out based upon income or other arbitrary factors that really have no bearing on the subject at hand, except perhaps as prejudice or a money-making scheme. Radio station licenses are a racket. Product bar codes are a racket. Liquor licenses are a racket. Marriage licenses are a racket. The whole "top-40" thing is a racket. The list is long and depressing. My expectation is that if a DRM scheme is settled upon, the only model supported will be commercial and involve money and/or equipment that the little guy just won't be able to afford. Cynical? You bet. But based on past performance.

We've seen this begin to happen already. Vista will degrade audio that is "unsigned", meaning, created or put in place by software that hasn't got some kind of deal going with Microsoft. This is bad on every level — models like this only hurt the little person.

We're better off without DRM, I'm afraid, because the proponents of it are uniformly commercial, as are their goals... but the world is not.

Re:Both.

[Abcd1234]

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.

Re:Both.

[PFI_Optix]

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.

Re:Both.

[avalys]

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.

Re:Both.

[Abcd1234]

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...

Re:Both.

[hufter]

There has been several attemps to "DRM" media, all of them have failed. There is no indicaion that future DRM:s would work. They have only made legal fair use of the product more difficult. This will keep going on and the only ones that will benefit is the companies that sell DRM software and chips. The industry loses, the customers lose, the middle hand selling solutioons they cannot produce - wins.

Re:Both.

[BillyBlaze]

It is actually a practical impossibility to design such a DRM scheme. If I were to give you a 5 1/2" floppy right now, could you extract the data? Probably half of us could not, even if allowed hours to root through our attic for dusty old equipment. But with floppies, we have the advantage of knowing the format, and we're not at the mercy of some long-defunct website to give us decryption keys.

Copyright protection currently lasts so long that if content were to survive until it enters the public domain, it would need to be format-shifted ten or fifteen times. But the whole point of DRM is to preclude format-shifting, since that's indistinguishable from illegal copying. Tell you what: in 70+(life of author)+(RIAA campaign donations/$100M) years, if you can successfully and legally give me a copy of some 2007-vintage DRM-encumbered music, I'll eat my hat.

Re:Both.

[lupis42]

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.

Re:Both.

[maddogsparky]

"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.

Re:Both.

[FLEB]

I think it'll end up like kind of a sawtooth wave-- Copy-protection mechanisms continuously one-up until the entire industry becomes so clogged with schemes that consumers get tired of it, and the industry realizes they can generate more profit with "trust" than "trusted", so "DRM Free!" becomes a positive label... until a piracy industry starts up, and they have to add some copy-protection, then a bit more...

I might be mistaken, but isn't that kind of a theme that's been played out with disk copy protection in the past? There seem to be eras of relative openness and locked-downness.

Re:Both.

[Marillion]

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.

Re:Both.

[Artifakt]

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.

Re:Both.

[croddy]

It would be easy enough to design DRM so that the DRM no longer applies after a certain date.

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.

Re:Both.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were to give you a 5 1/2" floppy right now, could you extract the data?
Probably half of us could not, even if allowed hours to root through our attic for dusty old equipment.

5 1/4", yes, 3 1/2", yes.
Both drives are still mounted, and yes, they both work.

However... 5 1/2".... I am not really sure what that is.... You sure 50% of us are supposed to have that?

Re:Both.

[greg1104]

If I were to give you a 5 1/2" floppy right now, could you extract the data?

Depends on whether the media was still readable after I trimmed 1/4" off to fit it in a 5 1/4" floppy drive.

Re:Both.

[DavidTC]

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?'.

Re:Both.

[topical_surfactant]

This is, of course, why HDCP was invented...

In this case, I prefer the word "spawned" over "invented."

;-)

Fair Use Backups?

[SnowDeath]

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.

Re:Fair Use Backups?

[ILikeRed]

Exactly, what is the difference between the copy of a CD or DVD for my car, and the one I make to give or sell to a friend?

The answer is: Actions that can not be monitored from the computer, and sorry, but I refuse to get a **AA monitoring camera embedded into my forehead.

Re:Fair Use Backups?

[SnowDeath]

What happens when the company that sold me this unbackable music goes belly up and I can no longer download it from then?

Re:Fair Use Backups?

[Harinezumi]

Whether or not I need them is entirely irrelevant. I have a right to make them, and I take issue with any technology or legislation that takes away any of my existing rights, even ones which I choose not to exercise.

Prevent *only* illegal copying

[e4g4]

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.

Re:Prevent *only* illegal copying

[mrchaotica]

It seems to me that this is a pipe dream without a fully regulated hardware path

This is a pipe dream even with a fully regulated hardware path, because in a lot of cases the only difference between an infringing use and a non-infringing one is the human's intent.

Re:Prevent *only* illegal copying

[danpsmith]

This is a pipe dream even with a fully regulated hardware path, because in a lot of cases the only difference between an infringing use and a non-infringing one is the human's intent.

Not only this, but it doesn't take into account the fact that pirates are often not even going through DRMed channels to obtain their material. While I'm sure some on the scene do crack DRM to upload to the Internet, some of the material isn't even out of the theater yet, which shows that they are obviously _not_ getting the material from even a DVD.

Non-DRMed media will be copied and shared from its leaked source, and unless hardware makers want to attempt to make any non-corporately sponsored video not work on Windows, it will be able to be played. Given those two factors the piracy never, EVER, stops. So in the end DRM has to be about one thing if it's not preventing piracy, and that's lock-in. Pure and simple. They want it to be hard for you to rip your CDs to MP3 so they can sell you the CD and also the MP3...

No, any DRM scheme is wrong

[Omnifarious]

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.

Re:No, any DRM scheme is wrong

[Thansal]

Mkay, I am going to step away from the group think here and say I don't get it. If you odn't feel like reading my full post skip to the last line.

How and WHY is Copyright SUPPOSED to be imperfect and leaky? I thought the point of copyright was to give the creator of a work the sole right to create copies of it (and thus decide who can have a copy, and under what terms). There are a few purposfuly drilled holes in it (naimly Fairuse), but those are defined under the law (admitedly fairuse is incredibly grey, and hard to figgure out exaclt what is "fair"). I would not call something like fairuse "imperfect and leaky" (if that is even what you are reffering to).

Is it that you object to the concept of copyright at all (as other repliers have been saying)? If that is it, well then I will aggree to disagre (I personaly think that if you invent sometihng you should have the right to profit from it).

I also do not understand your grievance against laws. I don't think the soloution is to make laws hard to enforce, rather I think the soloution is to create better laws (remember, we are talking about a perfect world where pixy dust and ponies solve everything).

A rather simple direct case of what I think you are talkign about is sometihng like jay walking (somethign that as a New Yorker I am very familiar with). To me the concept of getting fined for jay walking is silly, and I tend to take the signs as a suggestion, and so do pollice for that matter (part of your tempering via human understanding?). My belife is that the law should instead state something along the lines of: "If you cross against the light and sometihng bad happens it is your own damn fault. If you cause any damage/injury to others because of this action you must make full restitution (and then some extra for beign a twit and caussing an accident)". Ofcourse it would not be worded this way, and would have all the loopholes removed, and put in clauses for extenuating circumstances (say rescuing the biker that just fell over).

Would this be an acurate paraphrase of what you said:
"Because the world is not perfect, and there are always extenuating circumstances that can not be covered by codified rules, we must then use a system of enforcment that can artifcialy create this via imperfection".?

Re:No, any DRM scheme is wrong

[hackstraw]

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.

Well said, and true, but this is the POV from a free thinking intelligent individual. This is not a shared opinion for many of those that are in power like the head of the media corps, government, etc.

The classic and humours take on this is in South Park where the balding, wimpy head of the RIAA repeatedly slicks back his hair over his bald spot with a squeak, and then shouts "I am above the law!"

This is a caricature, but its not complete fiction either.

DRM is an oxymoron, and has no value to the end user whatsoever. My first experience with DRM came when I bought my first DVD player. At the time, my TV was a TV/VCR combo where the output from my DVD player went through something that had Macrovision, and when I played a Macrovision encoded movie the picture faded in and out and looked like crap.

I did an internet search, and found out what was wrong. A USENET post said that what I was experiencing was a silly hack, DRM of sorts (although macrovision is in the analog spectrum), and the solution was that had to walk across the street, pay $20 for a macrovision defeater (which is basically a lowpass filter), and then I was allowed to view the movies on my brand new DVD player.

The thing is that the price/value ratio is wrong for digital media, but it is correct for printed media.

Let me elaborate. Books, magazines, etc are covered by the same copyright laws as CDs and DVDs. Books can be illegally copied just like a CD/DVD. The difference is that its just cheaper and easier to buy printed material or borrow it from someone or do without than to copy it.

Now, video and audio media cannot seem to get it right and provide a product to fill a market. There are tons of options here, but the current one is the sue the customer until they want to buy our product. Or using guilt/shame marketing techniques into that buying products that you don't want is morally superior to acquiring these things another way.

My take on the matter is fuck them. If you refuse to offer me goods or services that fit my lifestyle in 2007 and you have refused to do so for a decade, then you don't deserve my money. So, sue me. I don't care.

Re:No, any DRM scheme is wrong

[zippthorne]

Arbitrary enforcement of laws is itself unjust, when combined with unjust laws is intolerable. Unjust laws should be stricken, not unfairly enforced. It is the inefficiency of enforcement which undermines clamor for their repeal.

Re:No, any DRM scheme is wrong

[Speare]

How and WHY is Copyright SUPPOSED to be imperfect and leaky?

First, the why: US Copyright Law was heavily architected and influenced by a couple notable figures. The first librarian and an influential publisher of (pirated) books, Benjamin Franklin. The exemplar of libertarian "smallest government intrusion possible" politics, Thomas Jefferson. They both felt that it was the government's responsibility to encourage the sharing of inventions and expressions, not discourage it, but recognized that the best way to entice an author out of their mousehole was to give them some minor form of protection.

Second, the how: US Copyright Law has enshrined a system of "common sense" provisions instead of a set of crisp delineations. A specific codification of allowed and disallowed behaviors is exactly why the Bill of Rights was so controversial at the time: it seems to be listing the few things you can DO, instead of the few things the government could impose. Copyright Law is instead written such that there are several vague categories of defense (called the Fair Use defenses), and it's not a set of rules written such that any technology could possibly solve with 100% True Positive and 0% False Positive success. It takes thinking, and communication, and trust, and social contracts as well as legal contracts, to decide if a work infringes or does not infringe. And all this is by design.

a fantastic analogy

[ILuvRamen]

If 1 in 100 people does something bad with a gun, we all still get guns. If 1 in 100 people (probably less actually) illegaly copies and uploads or sells a movie or song, we all get super restrictive DRM. Apparently greed is more important than safety.

Re:a fantastic analogy

[ScentCone]

If 1 in 100 people does something bad with a gun, we all still get guns. If 1 in 100 people (probably less actually) illegaly copies and uploads or sells a movie or song, we all get super restrictive DRM. Apparently greed is more important than safety.

Oh, please. In the US, there are untold millions of firearms in private posession. Only a miniscule fraction of those are every use to do "something bad," and most of those are used by someone who stole it or has it illegally. As a ratio, many more people do "something bad" in their disregard for the copyrights of the artists that they claim to respect. We have untold millions of people who've ripped off their entertainment - and that's a significantly different scenario. Incidentally: if you "do something bad" with a gun, it's likely off to jail with you. If you do it frequently or badly enough, it's a lifetime there, or the end of your life. You certainly don't get to go legally owning another one once you've done your felony time.

Not really a good analogy, and not at all fantastic. The firearms industry is one of the most heavily regulated in the country. Manufacturers, dealers, repair shops, owners, shippers, airlines - they all have a myriad of laws, regs, and practices they must follow to stay legal. I'm guessing that's not part of you world, or you'd know that.

Re:a fantastic analogy

[collectivescott]

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.

Re:a fantastic analogy

[Chandon Seldon]

You realise what you are describing is communism right?

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.

Worthless question

[nurb432]

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.

Omniscient DRM?

[TheWoozle]

So, basically, you're saying that if God were DRM, would we be philosophically opposed to it?

Seeing as how this is Slashdot, I think I know the answer to that one.

And in any case, if DRM were God, if it was working right, we wouldn't even know it was working at all. ;-)

No.

[Penguinisto]

Why should consumers be forced to waste resources that they paid for?

Seriously - while most users never come near the limits of what their computer can do, I have spent a ton of time waiting for 3d renders to finish thanks to a maxed-out CPU. Since any real enforceable DRM requires a bit of 'assistance' from hardware, that's just that many more CPU cycles (or GPU cycles, or ...? depending) wasted on DRM that I could be putting to good use.

I buy computers on a price/performance measure - how much performance per dollar can I get is my metric. Why should I be forced to accept a lowered ratio because someone else decided that I (or any given user) could, in their eyes, potentially be a dirty little copyright pirate?

/P

Copying Cannot be Controlled

[Renegade Lisp]

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.

Stupid question.

[MustardMan]

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

Ver-ry distasteful, but also stupid

[Yurka]

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.

There is no "good" DRM

[rudy_wayne]

there is no way that DRM can be there and not be 'in the way'

Exactly right. There no way that DRM can magically determine the difference between "legal" and "illegal" copying.

I don't know exactly. What do you think?

[zappepcs]

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?

The question is contradictory

[Richard_J_N]

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.

Yes - DRM is ridiculous

[Red_Foreman]

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.

If Frogs Had Wings...

[MyHair]

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?

And defeated by changing the date.

[khasim]

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.

Which would require the date to be locked on the machines so I cannot defeat it by simply moving the date ahead 100 years.

Re:And defeated by changing the date.

[solinari]

Which would require the date to be locked on the machines so I cannot defeat it by simply moving the date ahead 100 years. Nobody is proposing to do DRM that depends on machine clocks. Simply releasing the decryption key after a period of time is quite easy.

Re:And defeated by changing the date.

[LordSkippy]

Isn't that what DVD John did?

Re:And defeated by changing the date.

[ewhac]

Which would require the date to be locked on the machines so I cannot defeat it by simply moving the date ahead 100 years.

Um, that's exactly what they're doing.

It's called, in that lovely NewSpeak way, a "secure clock," and it runs independently of the time-of-day clock that you're allowed to set. The "secure clock" is updated only by (more NewSpeak) "trusted" system components, and is used by defective (nee "protected") media to enforce expiration dates.

You really don't want to look deeper into this Sausage Factory -- it's revolting on more levels than you can possibly imagine.

Schwab

Re:And defeated by changing the date.

[HTH NE1]

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.

Which would require the date to be locked on the machines so I cannot defeat it by simply moving the date ahead 100 years.

No, because it would also have to be tied to an on-line service to monitor the state of the latest extensions to copyright law as well as the obituary pages.

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.

Thing is, there's no hard line between what is illegal and what is fair use. No computer DRM algorithm can independently determine whether a particular use is illegal or fair. Fair use is a defense, its validity determined by the court, not code. The only DRM necessary is the law.

Actually, that's not quite true. Fair use exists only so far as potential plaintiffs don't sue and, if they do, defendants don't settle. If copyright holders always sued and defendants couldn't afford to defend their rights, they'd be gone.

Begging the question

[Tackhead]

> "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?"

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.

DRM, and why I despise it

[Pojut]

I liken DRM to the locks on my house: they keep the honest man honest.

If someone wants to "steal" music, movies, tv shows, whatever, they will. No amount of copy protection is going to stop them.

Tapes, CD's, DVD's, Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, XP Authentication, Serial Numbers...doesn't matter. If someone wants to get something for nothing, they will find a way regardless of how much time, effort, or money you put into trying to stop them.

However, the honest man who won't do any of these things...well, what does it matter if his stuff is "locked"? I mean, after all...if someone isn't going to enter my house uninvited, then the locks on my doors and windows are meaningless.

Yes, people change, and yes everyone who "steals' media starts somewhere...but still, you get my point. The only thing DRM (and things like it) does is inflate the cost of things for people that plan on legally purchasing it anyway. The people that plan on not obtaining it legally...well, you can finish that sentance.

Galactic Civilization II is a PERFECT example. Shipped with ZERO protection on it, it still managed to sell many thousands of copies...if you perused their forums around the time of it's released, many cited the reason they bought it was SOLEY because it shipped with no copy protection, and they support that idea.

Music corporations (and movie studios, for that matter) will NEVER return to the days where they had total control over how people obtained their media and what they do with it. The honest people will do the exact same thing they did years ago, and the non-honest people will always find a way around it. A waste of time, money, and effort.

we need to do what china does

[circletimessquare]

operating under the assumption that drm is a tool for enforcing copyright, then drm should be flaunted, destroyed, ignored. on the principle that there is a better way

in china, copyright is openly flaunted. enoforcement, if it is any, seems laughably inadequate

musicians make money via advertisements or concert tickets only

no middle man at all

what crazy world is this?

whatever you call it, it's absolutely superior to the stifling copyright system in the west

the copyright system in the west has overreached. it was intended to foster innovation by rewarding content creators. that's the original point

however, in the west it is now just a tool for rewarding the middleman. he stiffs the content creator

content creators deserve financial reward: concerts and endorsements. that's their financial reward. it's not jay-z millions. but that's not the point: content creators deserve a compfortable life. but they don't deserve billions. their grandchildren don't deserve money every time someone plays happy birthday. that's patently insane (pardon the pun). and yet it is the law of land in the west. ridiculous

for content creators, i thought the point was love of music? musicians create music only to make money? i don't want to listen to any musician who does that, do you? so the creator deserves cushy upper middle class rewards from endorsements and concerts. what's wrong with that life? you still have the fame, the adoring chicks. just not jay-z millions. oh well, the golden age is over

and middlemen deserve absolutely nothing. in the age of vinyl/ cds, they controlled the means of distribution, so they got something, a lot, no matter what they actually deserved. but in the age of the internet, they've been made obsolete. so they should die

and they are dying. but like any dumb dinosaur, it doesn't realize it is dying, it's a lot of struggling surging animal flesh that takes out bystanders, and it will go out fighting. fine. just avoid the thrashing tail of the dying beast, the day will come when it thrashes no more. and soon

and it has no absolutely no meaning what laws are passed or what drm is in place. the internet was designed to route around damage due to nuclear blast. western culture, those who want music, it's poor, motivated, intelligent youth, they will find away to route around the "damage" to the internet that is drm

make all the laws you want. common sense will prevail. just like china has to honor ridiculous western notions of ridiculously long and stifling copyright for economic reasons. in the halls of beijing, they pay the bullshit lip service. but on the streets of hong kong, common sense prevails

Why I don't buy online

[direpath]

I purchased a few CDs online a year or so back. I stopped because there just wasn't anything more that interested me at the time. I then purchased a new PC. I decided to leave my old PC as a MP3 store for myself. I loaded up Winamp and dumped the entire contents of my old PC into the playlist. Lo and behold, I got DRM warnings on all of my purchased tracks. Even though I did not copy the music to my new computer (though I had thought about doing so and clearing off my old PC for a rebuild), I was restricted. So I cannot copy to another PC, I cannot listen to on another PC. Fortunately, the tracks worked in my Dell Pocket DJ I had at the time.

I understand the why behind these tracks not working on a logical level, but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. I have not bought any music online since. I have bought a small amount of CDs and ripped them to my computer. I find that the industry is trying to fill every hole that their income can leak out of and in the end they are just not impressing the consumer.

Another fine example of their efforts causing more grief to the paying consumer is this:

My friend had purchased the latest Nickelback CD. He does the same as I would, rips it to his computer and adds it to his playlist. The CD would not rip. It would not even play on his laptop. Apparently, only some CD players would play this disc as it was formatted. So now he is limited in how he can enjoy the media. Needless to say, the CD hit the trash and as a result the consumer and the artist lose. He won't buy anymore Nickelback CDs because he as a consumer remembers the artist, not the record label.

DRM was a good idea, but it was implemented horribly wrong. The consumer suffers with annoying popups and warnings and flat-out denials, while the guys who the RIAA wants to nail work around it. The RIAA and the labels are doing a damn fine job of taking their own profits away from themselves...between pushing away consumers via DRM and their rampant lawsuits, I'm wondering if the jokes of the recording industry moving towards lawsuits as a primary source of income aren't just coming true.

Again with the car analogies

[JudicatorX]

No, DRM is like a car that starts out to being speed limited to X mph, then the manufacturer of that car then dropping that limit to X-10, etc, and can't be driven on 'unapproved' roads or parked in 'unapproved' parking spaces, and can't be driven by 'unauthorized' people.

There might be an upside to any one of those restrictions (in carjackings, for example, or police chases). But what about the problems such restrictions cause? Injured/cardiac arrest/stroke and in your car? Can't rush yourself to the hospital if you're limited to the maximum posted limit? Neither could someone else necessarily drive you.

Captcha: 'paralyze'. How appropriate to the subject matter...

Fantastical DRM

[paladinwannabe2]

I've yet to see a DRM scheme that didn't interfere with legal uses and was remotely effective. If we invented a DRM scheme that only stopped illegal use without any negative side effects, then I would definitely support it. I would also support building a perpetual motion machine for everyone to fufill all our energy needs.

And quite easily avoided.

[khasim]

Nobody is proposing to do DRM that depends on machine clocks. Simply releasing the decryption key after a period of time is quite easy.

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]

Re:And quite easily avoided.

[Pharmboy]

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.

True, but...

Moore's Law takes care of that. By the time a song that is DRM/Copyrighted today is released into the Public Domain (75 years from now), the typicial cell phone could crack the encryption in a matter of minutes. Or seconds.

Re:And quite easily avoided.

[Abcd1234]

*That* is an enormous assumption. We have encryption technology today that, unless it's flawed, would make works unbreakable by anything but quantum computers. And I mean unbreakable in the sense that the universe will grow old and die before the encryption is cracked.

Re:And quite easily avoided.

[hacksoncode]

Ok, would you be happy if in order to use DRM on a commercial product and retain the copyright, the company was required to deposit the keys with the Library of Congress, which would be responsibile for releasing them when the copyright expires?

Re:And quite easily avoided.

[ShieldW0lf]

Since this is a "what's your opinion" topic...

Secrets, in principle, are an attack on the mind. They're an attempt to force others to flail about blindly in an uninformed fashion, damaging their ability to make intelligent decisions and care for themselves. They're a passive-aggressive act, and fundimentally wrong.

Aside from all that...

There existed a time in human history when people in western societies were so bogged down with the labour of survival that it was necessary for society to subsidise creations of the mind if there were to be any of them, and the machination of that subsidy was the root of intellectual property law.

That time is passed.

The time has arrived where there are many idle hands and minds in the world, and we will reap more rewards as a society in these areas by removing barriers and putting more powerful tools to create and share into the hands of the masses than we will by systematically isolating people from them by imposing barriers to entry.

Personally, I oppose DRM in every possible fashion and in every concievable use.

Re:And quite easily avoided.

[lupis42]

What if the company goes under? What about when a use determined to be fair is found to be blocked by their DRM? Why not just require the library of congress to give the keys to whoever asks, whenever they ask, and if anybody abuses it, then sue them for violation of copyright, just like you would if a publisher was publishing without permission? Better yet, why not abandon the DRM, and just use the court system for all copyright violations, not just the ones that don't involve technology?

Re:And quite easily avoided.

[rossifer]

We have encryption technology today that, unless it's flawed, would make works unbreakable by anything but quantum computers. And I mean unbreakable in the sense that the universe will grow old and die before the encryption is cracked.

I'm gonna go ahead and take advantage of the caveat at the beginning of your argument: DRM'd media's encryption scheme has to be fatally flawed for you to watch it. So cracking the whole system will usually be a fairly trivial exercise, especially when compared to trying to directly attack the cipher. In media distribution cryptosystems, the key is distributed along with the media, and the ability to extract the key is also as widely distributed as valid media players. Finally, the media must ultimately be presented to you in such a way that you can experience it.

Basically, there are many, many attack vectors into DRM'd media that are much easier than trying to directly determine the encryption key of the encrypted media stream. Even theoretically, DRM'd media doesn't meet many of the preconditions of a message that can be secured.

Regards,
Ross

Re:And quite easily avoided.

[amRadioHed]

We are assuming a flawless DRM system, so cracking it is not an option.

Re:And quite easily avoided.

[Chandon Seldon]

Given just a HD-DVD and no encryption key, assuming that AES doesn't have some horrible unexpected security hole, you're not going to get at the movie. It's true that *given a functional HD-DVD player*, getting the data is reasonably straightforward, but that's just an argument on the side of allowing circumvention today.

Re:And quite easily avoided.

[cpt kangarooski]

Meh. DRM is always flawed in that the attacker is the same person you are showing the plaintext to.

Re:What?

[GigsVT]

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.

Re:Yes

[rilister]

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.

I object on all levels

[yagu]

There is nothing I find acceptable about DRM:

• assumption of intent: while the proprietors of DRM insist this is about protecting intellectual property, that's simply a canard to hide behind for what they really want, control. Meanwhile, it's clear their "DRM" is an assumption I am trying to rip them off (I'm not).
• portability: their notion of control proscribes what should be normal fair use. Imagine the old days not being able to take your vinyl records to a friends house to listen because they wouldn't play on other people's machines. That really is insane. The only reason they are trying to restrict to that level today (and they are) is because they can.
• convenience: there are so many reasons things can go wrong. In today's and the future's DRM world if it goes as far as it seems it may, you risk all kinds of outages, from the momentary inconvenience of grabbing the wrong player (unauthorized), the the catastrophic (an entire collection wiped out because of a lost key).
• quality: I'm not convinced they can layer DRM into digital art ad nauseum without degradation and corruption, no matter how long and hard they try to convince me they can.
• trust: similar to "assumption of intent"... after I have my purchased (ummm, sorry, "licensed") digital art in my digits I resent the implication I won't and can't handle the notion of fair use appropriately. Further, I resent their blanket inference we as citizens are somehow that sleazy. The average user doesn't care about cheating and stealing, but DRM finally gives them at least a reason to consider it.
• ...

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.

You need even more impossible "IFs"

[bill_kress]

I would need to know for sure that I could place the song on any player now or ever to be created.
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. ...or a CD, or any other technology his car's player accepts.

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.

Silly Question

[Steve525]

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.

Witness what DVDs can do

[AnalogDiehard]

When I witness a DVD sending a command to my player to ignore the skip/FF buttons during ads and FBI warnings, that is a foreboding omen of things to come from DRM.

That is very frustrating and points to a practical reason why I oppose DRM totally.

Re:Copyright is intrinsically distasteful..

[QuantumG]

Regarding the sig, you'll probably find some help understanding your hostility if you google "latent homosexuality" I work in corporate America dude, all my sexuality is required to be latent at all times.

Short Answer: Yes, Long Answer: See Below

[Jthon]

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

Flawed Premise

[spoonboy42]

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.

Just so's ya know..

[CantStopDancing]

almost everybody you know != 1 in 100 people.

Unless you personally know 60 million people.

Re:Disney Extension doesn't work quite that way

[Venner]

>>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.

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.html ). 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*.

*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.

End of discussion

[wakejagr]

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.

DRM goes against copyright

[criscooil]

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.

This whole idea is based upon flawed logic

[Whuffo]

To a surprisingly large group of people, the idea that you can create technical solutions to societal problems sounds reasonable and worth pursuing. DRM is just another example of this bad idea; consider internet filters (save the children!), spam filters, etc. As attractive as the idea may be, it's doomed to failure no matter how eloquently you describe it. There's a class of problems that can be solved by technology, and there's another class of problems that can be solved by human intellect. They're not the same, and they only overlap in a very small area. Trying to use technology to solve problems that can only be described / solved by human intellect is an exercise in futility. So it's not possible to create an internet filter that'll block "illegal" material and let everything else through. It's not possible to create a spam filter that'll block all the spam and let all other email through. And it's not possible to create DRM that'll block all "illegal" actions and allow all other uses. Are those executives pushing DRM evil, or are they just ill-informed. I suspect that they really expect that DRM will do what they want it to do and just don't understand that what they expect is impossible.

DRM now and future

[BanjoBob]

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.

I'll pay for music and movies when its worth it

[crumplez]

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.

The question is inadequate

[WheelDweller]

In the 40's, the best and brightest of the German minds created the Enigma machine. These were top-level scientists...and the British broke it. No encoding scheme will ever be break-proof; it's (another) waste of time and millions trying to do it (again).

Remember the cassette tapes? Copying them was a loss of quality...and then the pirates got really good tape decks, and made more. When it came to 8-tracks, trying to keep all the recorders off the market found that these machines, too, were found on the black market. Then CDs. Most of you are young enough to remember all the attempts to make DVDs only work one way, and only from the original.

This is paralleled by the floppy market where a certain sector is damaged (and, in theory un-copyable) to keep people from making illegal copies. Pirates made copies.

Now we're told that all this money is being invested in making motherboards that won't play video without a decoder in the screen...won't output unless there's a decoder in the speakers...and when we buy music, two months later it disappears in a puff of logic, so we'll buy more. I don't cotton to that new world, with a live, grabbing hand in my pocket all day. It's a primary reason I run Linux, after all.

What the music barons need to do is find someone to sell-out to. Just get out of the market- they're not needed anymore, and there's no chance they're going to make billions-per-year on the backs of artists who have to take day jobs.

And don't get me started on how they've destroyed the music; Disco lasted (arguably) four years...for some reason, that was too much. However, Rap starts it's 16th year soon, and that's just not quite enough! No chance of a blind artist (Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles), or ecclectic artists like we had before- the barons feel the need for money, and won't dare risking a single dollar on anything that might rock the boat.

No encryption is permanent. People have GOT to stop telling them different. It's time, like the carpetbaggers, the lamplighters, and the foremen in the buggywhip factory, it's time for them to get other jobs. What they're doing to the music industry is just plain wrong.

Instead, *people* should make the music; "producing" is pretty much some time with Audacity and burning a CD. Venues have opened up for these people in the places the music is played; bars, dances, that kinda thing. When a band has recognition....on it's on merits...it will grow. And they'll get a large share of the box-office when they play in person. That's already happening now, in larger towns.

The music business is one with a bright future behind it. But it's days of free-flowing profits is coming to a middle....and they should continue to the end, without losing their shirts. Cause nothing else is gonna change.

two bits or two cents, whichever comes first....

[UncleTogie]

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...

You don't have to do that.

[Grendel Drago]

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.