Slashdot Mirror
DRM — It's Not Really About Piracy
shadowmage13 writes "Hollywood privately admits that DRM is not really about piracy. From the article: 'In a nutshell: DRM's sole purpose is to maximize revenues by minimizing your rights so that they can sell them back to you... Like all lies, there comes a point when the gig is up; the ruse is busted. For the movie studios, it's the moment they have to admit that it's not the piracy that worries them, but business models which don't squeeze every last cent out of customers.' You can take action on Digital Restrictions Management at DefectiveByDesign of the Free Software Foundation, Digital Freedom, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
It never was about piracy. It has always been about controling your customer. The industry knows that they dont lose nearly as much through piracy as they do by not controlling their consumers. Remember a consumer is a customer with no choice.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Because THAT worked wonders for release timing, content control and market restrictions, didn't it.*
*Though having a decent TV that can handle PAL and NTSC helps, in the UK they're 6 bob a throw i can tell ye!
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
... "Tobacco industry privately admits smoking actually not very healthy at all."
"Hollywood privately admits that DRM is not really about piracy. From the article:
I just read the article - there is no cited evidence that anyone from Hollywood has ever said this. It may be true, yes, and I agree with the conclusions of the article itself, but this isn't some sort of sensational scoop.
MPAA executives have never admitted that piracy isn't the motivation for DRM. The current generation will never admit that: piracy is their excuse and they will stick to it. DRM is part of their business model and it won't go anywhere until it results in a shareholder-awakening loss of money.
If people prefer to pirate stuff, that means the DRM is not restrictive enough to stop them. That is the only thing they'll ever tell you, and the only thing you'll hear from the media outlets that they own.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
It's no news that a bunch of 15yo with P2P clients and MySpace profiles are able to do a better job at promoting and distributing music than the publishing companies. The answer? Make the distribution of the digital content difficult again! That reminds me of that time when my countrymen tried to make rivers run uphill.
Oh my god! They're so right! How come nobody on slashdot ever figured any of this out? Good thing I caught this story, I'm so logging off the net right now and writing to my congressman!
no body
"His user rules just scare the heck out of us"
Now, it's entirely possible that DRM is about exactly what they say it's about. What's not true however is that Hollywood is admitting this. The article is forcing you to accept the journalists bias hoping you don't exercise your critical thinking skills and question it. Whether it's true or not - the journalist needs to get his act together and get better sources than some other journalists dodgy source.
Now somebody might argue: "well we know they're doing it, what does it matter if the journalist exaggerates a quote from an unnamed source". I think it matters a great deal. When you're right you should be able to prove it very easily. Otherwise you have to accept that no matter how you feel on the matter you may be wrong, or there's just not enough evidence to imply anything.
for the most part - it seems to me you can do just about anything that would constitute "fair use" - am I missing something here?
I'm not saying I "like" DRM - I think it's just a reality of the market (counting the RIAA suing grandmas as a "market" force). no one's (OK, almost no one) is going to sell you a pre-ripped MP3 - ready to share via limewire.
I'm playing around with some services that offer $15 / month all-you-can-eat music. this wouldn't be possible without some heavy DRM. seriously - that guy with the horns and the cape - not so bad...
DRM is meant to prevent interoperability, raise barriers for entry to markets and force "upgrades" of your media when playback devices are upgraded.
Just look at iTunes; you can burn the music to CDs and rip to mp3. This is no copy protection - only a mild barrier to make it more likely that the average customer does _not_ buy another brand of mp3 player.
As others have pointed out, the article headline is misleading. Hollywood won't admit any such thing.
O RLY?
...It wouldn't let me include the ASCII owl. :(
I Read The F***ing Articles Linked In The F***ing Article, and there is still no such admission from anyone.
I do, however, also agree with the articles conclusion that DRM isn't about piracy, if only because it's so ineffective to be laughable. It's always been, and obviously so, to make the people who do spend, spend more than they should.
Why chase people who won't buy jack, when you can shaft the people who do for more? It's less effort.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
They want to sell you the DVD version, the PSP version, the special edition, the remastered edition, the directors cut, the laser disc version, the VHS version. Next will be the HD-DVD, and Blueray versions. Followed by the hologram version, err, maybe. If anyone has been most successful at this, its George Lucas, how many of us own more than one version of the first Star Wars trilogy?
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
The real risks of DRM come into play when consumers lose control of the devices they legitimately assume will have traditional functionality. Why on earth should my cellphone, a digital communication device be unable to share MY data freely with other networks? So I have to PAY for a ringtone or PAY to upload a picture I just took? Why should my wifi-enabled Zune not be able to "squirt" MY data to any nearby Zune?
That's bad enough, but the most dangerous outcome here is when I can no longer wipe and then reinstall a free operating system onto a general purpose computing device. The people might be forced to pay the microsoft tax, but we will not give up our free software.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more customers will slip through your fingers.
To secure peace is to prepare for war
Ars Technica's Ken Fisher adds: " It's not piracy that's the concern, it's their ability to control how you use the content you purchase."
It seems to me that is a reasonable interpretation of the "unnamed executive's" comment that the DRM is "too lax", because if "piracy" were a major reason for Hollywood's wanting DRM then its relative stringency or laxity would not be such an important issue for Hollywood. However, if what they are really after is the maximum possible control over users then the relative laxity of a DRM standard *will* bother them - because, for example, they mightn't want a customer to enjoy the content on more than one device without purchasing more than one copy.
Therefore, the summary by shaowmage13 -
The comment from the "unnamed executive" _is_ as good as an admission of that, as has been shown above. The headline Slashdot used "DRM - it's not really about piracy" doesn't directly comment on what anyone has said - privately or not - but states an opinion on what DRM is "about". It's an opinion that is reasonably substantiated by the Ars Technica article.
As for the British gutter press you'd find far more offensive and dishonest articles there than at Slashdot. At least Slashdot sticks to technology and related matters and hasn't, so far as I know, been involved in concealing Stalin's purges from the reading public, as the British newspaper the Guardian was.
... would you say the story is:
- very neutral about DRM
- slightly neutral about DRM
- slightly biassed about DRM
- very biassed about DRM
Now answer again, but for slashdot as a whole.
How the movie and music industry must long for the days of vinyl records and videotapes. In those days, they could produce movies and music, sell them to their customers and after 10 to 15 years, if you used the tapes and records enough, they could sell them again to you. Was there any piracy then ? Hell yes. Records were copied on to audio cassettes and with 2 videorecorders you could easily copy any videotape. Now, with media being spread in a digital form, they lost that kind of control over their sales. And the industry is going to do whatever it takes, to try to get the tapes and vinyl back, in the form of DRM.
I think they insist on DRM simply because they're convinced that limitting the number of people who can watch something is better. But they haven't researched. They just take it as a self evident truth. It's become more of a religion than a business strategy.
You've missed the point utterly. The headline is fine, but the blurb isn't. Some Internet journalist posting completely unverifiable hearsay from an "unnamed executive" does not a Hollywood admission make.
DRM is a funny thing. It's like trying to make a Tsunami go away by yelling at it. I guess that both Hollywood and the music industry, suffer from their historical misbehaviour towards users. Take the questionable pricing as an example - regardless of manufacturing costs. I assume that it costs less to mass produce DVDs and CDs than the late VHS and vinyl records - still prices haven't dropped. DRM is all about piracy - but it's a lost battle, that ship has sailed long ago...
Locksmith
The journalist would have revealed the name to us but didn't manage to crack the DRM on it.
Imagine an idiot posts something he or she later regrets to the web. It's foreseable that some of them would wish to recall/revoke/delete what they posted to the Internet. Today there is no way to put the "genie" back inthe bottle. If there were a total artist control type of rights management this idiot could retrieve (forever extinghuish the existence) the now-regrettable work posted to the Internet.
Let's say that the audience never had ownership but simply could make micropayments (in the case of for profit works --not the stuff posted to the internet for free --that would still be free but still bound by the total rights management system) to listen or see content. That could be say for a one-off experience of for a bulk experience. What would be wrong with such a scenario? (that is if controlled by each artist themselves?) No industry to deride and loathe. Only artists with infinite control over their works. If the artist were to die then it could be had that all their content die too.
Would that be too much control in the artists' hands? It'd be like it was before technology, in the sense that the artist'd control all aspects of their fruits. Their fruits lived and died with them. the audience never had ownership of the artists' work. They only had the pleasure and priviledge to listen, see and enjoy in the moment.
I could further imagine that an artist could forgo their rights if they so desired. Or the rights to work not recalled/revoked could pass into public domain, etc. There could be a great number of permutations
an idea....Hey, I got the almighty dollar in change for a pack of twinkies once. It's a little thicker than regular dollars but otherwise doesn't look too different. I didn't know people were questing for it, I would have held on to it instead of using it to pay at the carwash.
No, sorry, I still don't see any admission there, and certainly not one by 'Hollywood'. All this 'unnamed executive' said was that he thought the DRM in the iTMS was too lax.
You can let your own agenda colour your thoughts as much as you like. I'll stick to seeing the argument from both sides, thanks.
PS Your comment about it just being the word order that's different is just icing on the cake!
"Fair use", as long as you are using their software/portable devices. If you can burn them to cd then the DRM serves to use as you can get around the DRM by ripping the cd back to mp3. I can't imagine they would want to allow that.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
"There is simply no evidence whatsoever that DRM slows piracy. In fact, all of the evidence suggests the opposite, and arguments that DRM "keeps honest people honest" are frankly insulting. If they're already honest, they don't need DRM."
Arstechnic knows this is poor logic. If people are already honest, then there's no need for ANY laws of any kind. No speeding laws because people are already honest. No embezzlement, or fraud laws because people are honest.
Also I would like to see "all of the evidence" for myself, instead of some "unamed source". This is not "Deep Throat", or "Watergate". Let's not let our standards slip because we really want the outcome to be a certain way.
n/t
In-depth studies at the Institute For The Blindingly Obvious have confirmed that large corporations may sometimes behave in ways that do not benefit the users of their products. Followup studies reveal that despite the fact that this is blindingly obvious, many people uncritically believe anything they see on TeeVee. Sometime in May 2007, we expect the release of a groundbreaking study by our sister organization, the Ric Romero University Of Things Everyone Already Knows, which will purportedly claim that music and film labels are obsolete in the Internet Era. Stay tuned for the Institute's investigative segment, where our undercover reporters hope to either confirm or dispel rumors that many executives in the entertainment business are megalomaniacs and/or control freaks.
Other stories coming up on the 11 o'clock segment: That hot girl you met in the AOL chatroom? She wasn't hot, and she was a he. This shocking story of one nerd's attempt to meet a real woman. Also, the sky is blue and bears shit in the woods.
>>> But seriously, the entire MAFIAA business model is built around controlling you (the buyer's) access to the artist's work. The Internet shatters that, and they're terrified by the realization that they are now redundant elements in a capitalist system.
Yes, that, and customer lock-in to proprietary DRM are some pieces of the DRM puzzle.
When you see Microsoft switching from their PlaysForSure DRM to Zune's own for its marketplace as that player is released without quoting security problems with the PlaysForSure tech, you know there are other things under the hood. Similarly, Apple is reluctant to opening up their FairPlay (why do they keep picking oxymorons for these techs?) standard to others because it could impair Apple's market dominance.
It's really sad that outside organizations to keep market competition, business practices, as well as user rights in check aren't more involved in this.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Since DRM allows for new and presumable unknown kinds of defects, it has to be implemented. That's because software development is about bugs. The more bugs the better.
"am I missing something here?"
Yes, you can't play them on non Apple equipment without paying again (at least for a CDR per 10 tracks, or worse an Audio CD+ cost of your time), you also can't stream them on a Sonos high end audio system, or use them on the device of your choice.
So you're saying the water is only warm, croak, and you're happy and comfortable, croak, in the warm water, croak croak....
Original iTunes let you burn 10 copies, last I looked it was 3. When the CD format ends it will be zero.
It's also put Apple in a position to milk the record companies of all their profits. Gates is unhappy because he had the idea to milk them of their profits first! How dare Apple steal his evil plan! Locking in a middleman, even Apple is a bad idea.
"I'm playing around with some services that offer $15 / month all-you-can-eat music. this wouldn't be possible without some heavy DRM."
The problem with that is it's not all you can eat, it's all you can *taste*. You can't let them eat it because then they won't continue paying. But they won't pay if it's all you can taste, so you pretend it's an all you can eat buffet. Not many people want to pay a license fee to listen to old music, and they don't know if next years music is worth paying for because they can't see into the future. Yet they know that if they stop paying, they can't listen anymore. The DRM enables a market that has no demand.
...at least in this business. Who makes you buy HD-DVD or online music? If you buy it, you're doing so because- despite DRM- it's worth it to you. Now, on the other hand, if the music industry charged you more for DRM-less media, would you be happier in the long run? (Whether or not they'd need to is debatable, but that's not the question.)
could you imagine the additional legal / licensing pains to iTunes if they wanted to "share" with Microsoft-DRM devices? and that's just in addition to Apple not wanting to do anything to help undermine their semi-monopoly.
I'm both a software author, and a libertarian.
I certainly use DRM myself - but I don't believe in trying to have government enforce it (not that they'd help in my case).
My hope is that DRM let's music companies offer music "cheaper" than free - that is it's inexpensive enough where it's not worth the pain of limewire / whatever. $15 / month is getting close. If someone could get any music they wanted for a $7.99 / month - even with DRM - would they really bother doing anything else?
"no one's (OK, almost no one) is going to sell you a pre-ripped MP3 - ready to share via limewire"
r ticle.html
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,124676-page,1/a
"The digital media watermark used in the Fraunhofer system also contains a "hash value," which creates a link between the content provider and registered purchaser. "The hash value is like a fingerprint; it contains unique information about the user," Kip says.
So they can make MP3's that embed a purchaser ID in a way difficult to remove, and as long as they don't given any tools to test if the mark as been successfully removed, the pirate has no way of knowing if they've successfully remove the ID that identifies them as the buyer.
The MP3 isn't put on limewire because it traces back to the buyer. Yet it's a regular MP3, plays on anything and free from the negatives that the DRM solution has.
Amusingly, it's why DRM schemes and this digital home thing Microsoft funnily thinks is coming will never work. The content owners want you to buy your films and music all over again, or even better, to rent your own content to you. Stop paying and you have no content. It's how a lot of Windows Media based stores work, and as soon as people realise it, they immediately stop paying.
The only DRM scheme that works is Apple's, and that's because they were clever enough not to get down on their knees in front of the studios and promise them anything, which is what Microsoft has done.
Except that statement flies in the face of the "But I'm not hurting anyone, because I never would have bought it anyway". Customers buy. Customers have a voice. You guys have neither.
is partaking in this and pushing for DRM everywhere and lose of fair rights. It use to be the dems who pushed this. But anymore these days, the neo-cons (who are the majority of the republicans) are also behind it. It seems to be that rather than fight each and every one of these initiivies, we need to cut the beast off at the knees. The only way that I can think to do that is to prevent money flow from lobbyist to congress reps. And the only way to prevent all of the is to implement Joel Hefley's ideas on corruption prevention. All in all, if we want America to be the land of the people, and by the people, and for the people, we are going to have pony up the funding of the election process. Otherwise, this will remain the land of the high bidder, of the highest bidder, and for the highest bidder.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Definitely missing something - iTunes as it currently stands will only let me play music on one of my players. It won't let me transfer to my car (unless I make a CD and re-rip, thus losing quality), to my mp3 players (none are Apple), to my home audio server or other devices. DRM does nothing but mean I have to find other sources of music
TFA - It's Not Really About What It Says In The Title
Stunned! Stunned I tell ya!
If you were to tell me that the Boy Gates has $50 billion in the bank I wouldn't be more Stunned!
Funny. That's not an issue for the piratebay crowd. Get off the "I got to buy it" bandwagon, and get onto the "I got to download it" wagon. You'll be happier, and your ISP will be happier.
Of course it's not about preventing piracy. It's just that 'digital, economic enslavement of end users' isn't as sexy of a company line.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Damnit! Another stealth upgrade from Apple? Sarbane! Oxley! Get in here!
I keep expecting them to put forth a "solution" like they did with blank tape, compact discs, etc. How would you do this with the internet you ask? Simply add a *tax* to the listed bandwith of the connection and add a tax to hard drives and flash memory for offline transfers. What you bet the MPAA starts pushing for real broadband all over the US then? Faster your connection the more you could potentially copy and the higher your *tax* will be. Oh yeah, this will include your cable and satellite tv connections as well as radio now headed for satellite broadcasting.
Anyone have any evidence that artists, actors, directors, writers, etc get any of that money from the existing copy method *taxes*?
Thanks to "piracy" movies go to DVD much faster. Before it was between 1 or 2 years for a movie to appear in DVD, now it's like 6 months or less. And not only that, we can thank "piracy" again for the fast translations of shows.
Not long ago good foreign (american) series came to Spain when they were 2 or 3 seasons old, at least. Part of that is that they had to be translated. But they are starting to translate them sooner. Heroes will start soon in Fox (satellite, in spanish), and it's still in half their first season. There are people waiting to see it instead of watching it in english. House is also on TV, and the third season has just started. Now I can decide to keep watching it in english or wait a little and do it in spanish (I probably won't wait, I prefer to practice my english). That's good for the comsumer.
So I thank all those mighty pirates, that not only force the TV companies to react faster, but also combat global warming. Or so says the mighty FSM.
Why the hell are you going to pay for a music file with DRM if you can get it for free trough P2P ? If the music studios played it nicely and gave us the ability to download music in good compression formats (or even flac uncompressed) without DRM, then well, we would have no moral excuses not to buy the music from the artist we like. But since we are paying to get some crappie format that will only play in computer X and portable player Y, then sorry guys, but I think it's moral very acceptable to just get it for free.
If music studios want to make us pay 2, 3 or even more times for the same music ... then my answer is "I'll not pay you even once!".
Where in any of the articles does "Hollywood" "admit" anything?
In the US, nails are designated in pennies. That is, a 1-inch nail is 2d, a 1.5-inch nail is 4d, etc etc. It's funny how terminology created way back in the Dark Ages perists in present day usage.
Self awareness - try it!
The guys at piratebay.org want to buy Sealand to make a copyright-free nation. Even if this is a joke, it makes you wonder.
http://buysealand.com/
It seems to me that DRM is about piracy, about pirating users' rights to sell them back to the users.
I'd say RMD is piracy, DRM is theft.
it's all the same..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Seeing as how the Doom9 folks are finding HD-DVD volume and title keys so quickly...
Unless ALL of these things come to pass, DRM is an unworkable mess and will cause the companies involved in it to fail miserably.
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
It was about real piracy, by the media industry and government, to rape human rights and pillage bank accounts of the unrepresented pitiful defenseless public.
OK more spin for US, EU, UN them; All megalomania persons in industry, government, and religion demand a semiliterate servile exploitable public or at least an oppressed fearful culture of hostages suffering with mass-hysteria Stockholm syndrome (identifying with the oppressors as good, fair, and reasonable).
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
By then inflation had devalued the rupee so much that even beggars beggin outside the temples feel insulted if you throw them even a full rupee coin as alms.
[mods, save your points. Already marked off topic by myself in the subject line and I am not using my karma bonus either.]
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Apples DRM is not to protect the Record companies it's to protect Apple. Sure the record companies insist on any music being sold online to have DRM but Apple doesn't really care about that they just want to make sure that it is very hard and expensive for you to ditch your iPod and replace it with a SanDisk or (insert favorite non iPod MP3 Player). If they were primarily concerend about protecting the record labels you wouldn't have seen them put up such a fight against the French government when they were ordered to make FairPlay work on competitors devices. At one point I believe they even threated to just stop selling in France (that part may have been internet speculation) If that's true you can see that the importance of keeping iTunes a closed system is more important than keeping the 9th largest economy.
Iraq wasn't about Saddam's WMD
The War on Terror isn't about Freedom
Cold War defense spending wasn't in response to a credible threat
We didn't win in Vietnam
Lies, all lies, friend citizen.
America is at war with Iraq. America has always been at war with Iraq. (No, we didn't sell them arms to fight Iran)
America is at war with the Taleban. America has always been at war with the Taleban. (No, We didn't train and supply them to repel the Russians)
I would like an answer to this question. Is a person purchasing a DVD or a license for to view and/or use the DVD (for that matter any other DRMed content)?
Maybe some tax laws need to be explored to answer this. IANAL, but I question who owns the DVD or and DRMed content when purchased from a store. I've always thought that ownership changed hands when the taxes were paid. In the case of purchases from a store, or for that matter any purchase that included sales tax.
If you are only purchasing a license and not ownership, why would you be paying taxes on the item. Do DVDs and/or other DRMed items tell you that you are only purchasing a license to view and/or use the material it contains?
When I purchase an item and pay the taxes on said item, I consider myself the owner of that item unless I am told prior to the purchase that I'm only getting a license to view and/or use that item rather than gaining ownership of said item. When I buy a book or magazine, I own that book or magazine when I pay it and that includes the sales tax at which time the ownership of the physical item changes hands. I also understand copyright laws and fair rights. Why do electronic formats, which have the same copyright protections as written material, have the ability to take my fair use rights away from me? The only answer I can come up with is that when purchasing electronic formats that are DRMed, I'm purchasing a license to use and not ownership.
But if I don't have ownership rights to the item, then someone else still retains ownership rights to that item. Since the item in question is only a copy, then that person that retains ownership of many copies of the item. Those items are an asset to the owner and taxes must be paid at sometime on those assets. If I'm only paying a sales tax on a license, then owner must be paying taxes on the ownership of all the copies he/she makes. Are the people that are selling licenses of DRMed material paying the taxes for ownership of those assets? Or did they pay the taxes on the materials needed to make the copies before the copies were made?
The point is, if someone else retains ownership of items they sell you, and you pay the taxes on the items, that someone is retaining ownership of assets and getting others to pay their taxes for them.
And the only way to prevent all of the is to implement Joel Hefley's ideas on corruption prevention.
Better yet, just wait to the convention (and it doesn't matter which party) and have the RIAA slap them with a violation for whatever their theme song is. Chances are they haven't secured the rights to not only use it at the convention but also play it across every television and cable station covering the convention royalty free.
Let's see, how many million viewers/listeners in aggregate times the $12 each for the loss of the CD purchase plus the punitive damages on top of it.
Works for me.
Well besides the topic being a little missleading to say the least, I thought it was clear to everyone that Hollywood/Media (refered as 'they' from now on) is there to make money , no matter what, see sony for example, DRM and copy protection mechanisms are there so that you must buy several copies of the same thing , for DVD, for your PSP and so on. One of the most absurd things ive seen is the fact that it is Forbiden to try to circunvent the DVD encryption mechanism, you own a copy but if you want to make a backup you are a criminal. The sole porpose of DRM is to sell, there is NOTHING that 'they' do that has the sole purpose of beneficting the user. You think that the platinum titles are there to benefict the poor player ? WRONG !!!! they exist for 1) ressel a overly exauthed title 2) Screw up the used market.
There's a lesson from MMS that the movie and music industry don't seem to have learned.
Large numbers of phones have had cameras in them for some time, but there hasn't been that much drive to increase the resolution of the camera. Why? Because people haven't tended to use the phone as their primary camera, but have a second (real) camera that they use for anything they really want to keep. Why? Partly because it's often so hard (and expensive) to get the photo off the phone and onto your computer because the operator wants -- in the early days the phone companies wanted to force you to use their revenue earning MMS service rather than a USB connection to move the photo. And even where it is now less restricted, there is still a lingering consumer belief that it is hard to get your photos off the phone.
The upshot of this is that for years phone operators have been moaning that MMS revenues have not taken off as much as they hoped (they're certainly large, in the billions, but historically have not been as large as was hoped). And part of the reason for that is that the "revenue increasing" restrictions caused consumers simply not to use the camera for anything they'd want to keep or trade anyway -- the restrictions hobbled the market.
The movie industry currently has a similar predicament. Most people have the choice between the official distributor and that dodgy guy down the market selling DVDs for a fiver, or even just not buying the DVD. As soon as DRM becomes complex or awkward enough that the user is worried by it, that's a seriously strong incentive for buying from the flea-market instead, or getting your entertainment elsewhere!
"But anymore these days"
Jesus fucking christ, that's not how you use the word "anymore". Where the hell did this moronic use start?
Another reason why the media corps want more DRM in more places is to further cement the position of the **AA as the "gatekeeper" of the worlds media.
A notable recent example is the new rules they want that mean that all streaming radio stations (regardless of what content they play, RIAA or otherwise) must have DRM.
Hmm... DRM now will evolve into real-time monitoring... "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU"
Looks like Orwell was right, aside from the Soviet Union... he just estimated the time too soon... Maybe instead of 1984 he should have named it 2084.
Well, here we go:
The full article is a blog? I think sometimes that the heads at slashdot have been kidnapped by forum trolls. Let's stir up some trouble with DRM and see how many days it will stay on the front page!
DRM and piracy: It's been said before, but to reiterate - DRM doesn't stop piracy. For that matter, gun laws don't stop criminals from obtaining guns, and airport security doesn't stop actual terrorists.
DRM and consumers: What a load of bull. We're not doing this to stop piracy, we're doing it to give the user more choices... yea right. What they are doing is locking down media so that they can sell more copies of it. Because hell, if you can sell someone more than one bible, you might as well try to sell them more than one copy of Star Wars. I know lots of people that have more than one copy of World of Warcraft, so that they can play the game twice at the same time. The funny thing is, of all "DRM" schemes, the MMORPG is the one that actually works - you buy the account, or you can't play. The account is verified online, and thus keygens quickly fail as duplicates can't simultaneously play, and there's no real offline/LAN game. The lesson? Some people have more money than they know what to do with - and the media giants have resorted to milking them because the media market in general is pretty well saturated.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
buy an additional DVD player. Sure, when DVD players first came out that would be prohibitivly expensive for most people but these days if you can afford to spend money om imports you can spend the additional $25-$30 to get a DVD player that will be used exclusively for the region the imports are coming from.
The only thing region encoding accomplished was putting more money in DVD manufactures' pockets.
I've also found that there's no shortage of how-tos on turning your cheap DVD player into a region 0 so it can play anything.
Work Safe Porn
The use of DRM follows basic economics. The value of your product is regulated by supply and demand. The latest single from famous artist may be in high demand but that demand is nullify by the unlimited supply cause by releasing it unencumbered. Obviously, record company want to be able to control that supply via DRM to maximize profit from the demand. This is nothing new because in the days of vinyl records they could readily control that supply. In the digital age, they can easily lose control of the supply via a ripping utility and a P2P network. In everyone's interest, they should have control of the supply in so much as to perserve the value of making music. However, that control should be balance against consumer rights. The fear is that they will wield that power without regard to consumer rights or feedback. Moreover, that fear is boosted the inclusion of Microsoft- a company infamous for using its monopoly without regard to the consumer- and its efforts to set the DRM standard. But, we as a consumer have to figure a way to assert our will in system. I think we can by just not buying the content unless the terms appeal to us. I will never by song with time limit on it or a movie that requires a special display. Maybe the content providers won't bat a eye at the lost of a single sale but, if enough people do it, then they will listen. In a way, we do vote with our wallets as evident by the success of iTunes and FairPlay DRM. Fairplay is still DRM but it does give the consumer enough flexibility to use the content within their needs. I think that might be the best balance to give content providers control of the supply and consumers the right to do whatever with the content purchased.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Someone in this thread said "trying to keep the ocean out with a broom", someone else says "trying to stop a tsunami by yelling at it". I shall say the same thing here by quoting a lyric from the late great John Lennon:
"Like trying to shovel smoke. With a pitchfork. In the wind."
He's a lot smarter and more creative than you guys and he's DEAD!
-mcgrew
Sigh. Maybe I should give up challenging people on this statement in slashdot. They just keep on repeating it, no matter that it simply isn't true.
I invite you to produce a 20 year comparison of video, record, DVD and CD prices that backs this statement up. In real terms all of these are cheaper than previously.
Saying they're selling our rights back to us or squeezing every cent they can out of customers evokes an emotional response, but it would be better if they actually explain how that happens.
For example, incorporating regional lockouts into copy protection, so it is integral to the game/DVD disc, but still allows the company to charge inflated rates in certain regions and keep people from importing from a cheaper region even if the content is the same.
The evidence against DRM is that un-DRM'd music from early napster saw the highest CD sales in the US.
When old Napster was shut down, there was a slump in CD sales they still haven't recovered from.
But that still isn't evidence that DRM slows piracy.
I (any many others)could fill the front page with previous comments I made to that effect, and If I could find them all, I would. And now, after all this time, it's just starting to sink in? When are people going to see the real purpose of IP law? Talk about your delayed reaction... Well, maybe now we can start to make the move towards abolishment. It's well past time for that.
What?
DRMs support an orderly market for facilitating efficient economic transactions between content producers and content consumers.
So, is it revealing or merely coincidental that he said "producers" and not "creators"?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The problem is that if lack of DRM would put the Media Barons out of business, they would already be long gone. 99.999% of all music being sold today can be obtained in a non-DRMed format. This has been the case for over a decade.
> squeeze every last cent out of customers
This is called "capitalism".
It's a good thing.
We're experiencing a crunch. The old way of distributing movies and music is simply not going to survive much longer, so the people who depend on that way for their paychecks are panicking. They don't have to worry about their reputation ten years from now, so they're going to squeeze the consumer for every cent.
This process increases the pressure on the inchoative industry that will replace them. The more they squeeze, the more the consumer begs for an alternative, and the more that consumer will pay for the alternative when it arrives. (A common myth is that this will make the alternative arrive faster; what actually happens is that the alternative is released earlier when it is still incomplete and unreliable. The average consumer doesn't quite know the difference, but those of us who build these technologies do.)
Over time, the consumers end up paying roughly the same amount. Individual consumers may pay more, but not much more. If the industry didn't squeeze so hard, it would keep more customers and continue making money for a longer time - but less of it. Meanwhile, the alternative would still arrive, but consumers wouldn't flock to it and it wouldn't command as high a price.
In twenty years, the result - being more or less inevitable - will be roughly the same. All the media conglomerates are doing right now is driving themselves out of business faster, and arranging for the earliest alternative technology companies to get rich. The consumer will end up with the same end result, so I tend to view the transfer of wealth to the alternative technology companies as a net win overall.
It's sort of like the alternative O/S situation we had when Red Hat got massive. People who would otherwise have bought Microsoft products bought Red Hat instead. They still spent the same amount of money overall, but the Red Hat consumers got more for their investment. Companies that wouldn't have bought anything bought Red Hat. In the end, we got the scenario we have today: Linux has pretty much gotten where it's going to go, Microsoft is still the dominant force with no signs of failure in the near future, and the Mac is slowly carving a swath out of both. In the next couple years, this will stabilise, and we'll have that O/S market for the next twenty years. Even if there had been no Red Hat, things would have ended up very much the same way. Linux was a disruptive technology, but Red Hat was not in any way disruptive - just a momentary blip on the radar.
The media know that something disruptive is about to break. They don't know what. They don't know when. They just know it's all about to fall over and die, so they're grabbing all they can carry before they have to desert the sinking ship.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
"Like using the content on different devices, making backup copies in case media gets scratched, etc."
How many here actually read their EULAs? I'm reading the one for Broderbund and their EULA allows me to make backup copies. It also asks NICELY for me not to make illegal copies. Now how many out their are going to NOT read the EULA, or disregard the friendly request and go ahead and make copies for all their friends? Bet it's about the same number who didn't read the article.
I dont think its so they can sell the rights back, I think its because of the Napster and Chinese piracy. People went hog wild file sharing at the same time consumers were hit with a recession, the internet boosted the used reselling market, video rentals boomed and consumers started cringing at the first run price of media...
We know about copyrighted material and we still file traded. We brough DRM on ourselves because we behaved irresponsibly.
The onlything bad about DRM is that its platform specific. Mac users can use MS DRM at all, while windows users can use us Apple DRM. I dont even know about Linux users.
Most people crying about Apple's refusal to license their DRM are the same fools who made game console suedo DRM (media for one platform) acceptable. You proved to media companies.
And no matter how you slice it, because of Napster and torrents, making copies of a CD for a friend is world s different than distributing 100s and millions of copies.
Media has always been about units sold and you fools are distributing units for free.
Now, I think that the media companies are over reacting but we've esencially destroyed their industry. They will soon move to DRM free distribution just because it will be cheaper in the long run.
But if we had an ounce of integrity, we wouldnt be giving away copies of our media away to the planet. We violated the personal-use rules. Now our hands are slapped.
To answer someone's question posed before: Politicians and anyone working for the govermnet would be exempt from this "purging" aspect. That is, they would not be able to retrieve/revoke things said or performed as an agent of government as that would automatically be for public domain.
Were you kidding? Politicians (and the hyper rich) would be the only ones who could have their comments revoked. Revising history and tightening the legal noose around the little guy are their favorite pastimes (we're doing it for the children) and are becoming crucial to getting elected and perpetuating (perpetrating?) their party's existence!
The utopia you describe sounds wonderful, but unfortunately most of us are stuck here on sadly corrupt Earth.
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Ed Felten had a good point about this last spring:
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1007
Private cracking and file-sharing will likely always be possible. But businesses can't operate in private - they have to offer services in public. So having the ability to sue and withhold licenses from competitors means that you have bigger shares of marketplace for whatever you're using DRM to encumber. Customers can't be stopped - but competition sure can. That's a real point, too.
This is the most bizarre rant published on /. today.
I'm going to assume the state home just got internet access?
Cool.
I'm proud to say that I've never intentionally sold a Zune. Any time somebody is interested, they get to hear about the WiFi and the 3 plays in 3 days DRM for all music, even if they recorded it themselves. The common response? "That's gay. You have any other MP3 players?"
I'm also pushing Linux on anybody asking about Vista, bit it's kinda difficult since my store doesn't sell Linux...
Any suggestions for other 'product swaps'? Any favorite music players out there? (We have Creative Zen, Sansa, Muvo, iRiver, and the new Walkman).
I'm intentionally ommiting the name of where I work, and replies should too as I don't want to affect their Google pagerank, but they have naming rights to a rather large basketball and hockey stadium in Los Angeles.
This message brought to you by Jack Schitt's Previously Shat Shit
> the ruse is busted.
I was unaware wanting to earn every last cent from your own intellectual property was a "ruse".
If making it slightly difficult for you to create backups keeps people from easily doing massive copying and distribution without permission, isn't that a fair trade-off?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Your source for this assertion, please? A brief check on Google doesn't bring up anything pertinent (except for Wikipedia, which singles out the Guardian as an example of one of the few left-wing sources that criticised Stalin.)
The Barenaked Ladies' new album (Sep 2006 I think), "Barenaked Ladies Are Me", is available on VINYL, CD, and USB THUMB DRIVE -- yup, all ready to go as non-DRM MP3s.
Cool!
If making it slightly difficult for you to create backups keeps people from easily doing massive copying and distribution without permission, isn't that a fair trade-off?
DRM doesn't prevent people from easily doing massive copying and distribution at all.
It makes it harder for the first person to "rip" that first copy, but once it's done preventing anyone else from "ripping" that copy is irrelevant.
And DRM does much much more than "making it slightly difficult for you to create backups".
It makes it impossible for you to keep a copy of a work indefinitely. Your copy is only usable as long as the company that made the DRMed document still exists. If you think this doesn't matter you need to talk to a historian.
It makes it impossible for you to view the work except through a specific application. I have precisely one DRM-protected e-book now... I recently deleted the Microsoft Reader documents I owned, because they're worthless now I don't have a Pocket PC. Oh, that's right, you want me to buy another copy for that. Why should I?
It makes it impossible for you to use a work in ways the application doesn't want you to. If I own a movie, why shouldn't I be able "enter" it by feeding captured scenes into a VR viewer? Because you want me to have to pay again for the VR version of the movie (if you ever bother making one)?
How many times should I have to buy The White Album anyway?
> squeeze every last cent out of customers
This is called "capitalism".
Nonsense. Squeezing every last cent out of consumers only works when demand is completely inelastic, and increasing the price doesn't lead to lost sales.
Yup.
As an interesting off-topic asside, they also let you buy/download the stem mixes of uncompressed un-DRMed audio for six of their tracks. You can load them into your audio editing software of choice and mix your own version of their music.
http://stems.barenakedladies.com/
Great Canadian artists, thinking progressively...
If you can burn them to cd then the DRM serves to use as you can get around the DRM by ripping the cd back to mp3. I can't imagine they would want to allow that.
You are indeed allowed to do that with iTunes' DRM. (The problem of course is that when you re-rip from CD, if you do so to a lossy format, you get even worse audio quality, since you're ripping from 128kbps AAC.)
The question is, when he says "their DRM is too lax", does he mean that...
...it's too easy to crack?
...even when used normally, it permits copying to too many devices?
...it doesn't give him the same kind of feature-level control as, say, DVD UOPs?
Because, see, only the latter interpretation would actually mean that "it's not really about piracy".
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
A real capitalist answers "D".
I would agree with you, except to say that I would not characterize this as a particularly 'good' thing.
It's entirely possible to ensure that people pay high prices using tactics which are detrimental, and in the long run, ultimately destructive to society.
In a fully capitalist society, dumbing people down, making them sick and fearful and ignorant all help to contribute to reliable sales. Corporations engage in this war on humanity all the time. --Yes, such practices are good for the bottom line, but is the bottom line good for humanity as a whole? When all the dross is burned away, this is the fundamental debate people are left having with regard to capitalism, and I think that systems which constrain spiritual, physical and intellectual growth/health for profit are not good systems.
The oft-used counter-argument is that capitalist systems automatically balance these negative forces, but I tend to consider this merely wishful thinking as is evidenced by the continued downward spiral of culture we are witnessing today. --Unless, that is, the total collapse of society, (as seems to happen with empires), is baked into the equation. Usually, though, it is not and people are left standing amidst the ashes of revolution and war, (the final capitalist expressions of the competitive spirit), wondering what went wrong.
The answers, of course, are Fear and Greed.
Yoda summed up Fear perfectly, ("Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, Hate leads to Suffering"). --And Greed is a direct expression of Fear which leads to unbalanced and uncontrolled consumption at the expense of compassion and/or knowledge. (ie., Knowing that to consume at the levels seen in the West means necessitating the creation of slave nations and blood-money wars requires one either to embrace ignorance or to dispense with compassion. Both are spiritually fatal conditions.)
DRM and the idea of Intellectual Property are based on fearful assumptions; that somebody who takes an idea from you somehow diminishes your being. People forget that to give openly also means that you can take openly as well. Greed collects for the purpose of collecting, whereas the healthy approach is to make oneself into a conduit; energy flows in and out, and as long as the flow is flowing, there is always an endless, fresh supply of energy to sustain yourself upon while at the same time you are facilitating the feeding of others. Since all energy comes from the Universe, largely from the Sun and the Earth, then so long as those two things persist, humans can act as healthy conduits and everybody will have enough. --But only so long as selfish behavior is set aside.
This, of course, is impossible, and this is why this reality of ours is a grand school for teaching love and faith and service through trial and error. Fear and Greed are self-punishing. Freedom only comes when you let Fear go.
-FL
...that it hurts the only people that in a sane world should profit from music and movies: The people creating it. It was never about the money men (taking chances on new artists with hit potential) or the distribution chain. They are just middle men that should profit a little bit from their niche.
Today artists don't need a professional studio, nor do they need a huge upfront loan. Many new artists finance their own albums (usually because the big labels never take chances anymore) and they only need retail distribution (unless they intend to sell exclusively from their website). This model leaves no room for the big labels and they know it.
Same thing in the movie business. Most of the better movies are made as independent productions, usually with a fairly limited budget and they only need some form of distribution. Why the major studios pour hundreds of millions into huge productions with overrated stars and too many special effects - and no story - remain a mystery. But they want a return on those investments and as the sales usually don't match the expectations, they need to squeeze the consumer even more, and DRM is great at that.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
What everyone's pointing out that you're missing about iTunes is that if it was really about Piracy, wouldn't Apple and Microsoft be teaming up to provide one DRM scheme to rule them all, so you could play your DRM'd files on everything? Wouldn't they be open to letting you burn not just one CD (for a price), but any amount -- and, for that matter, if they let you burn that CD, why bother with the DRM in the first place?
No, you're kidding yourself if you think this is about anything other than lockin and market control. Think about it: If HD-DVD and Blu-Ray encryption works, you'd have to buy the same movie three times for three different devices -- once for your home theater, once for your PSP, and once for your video iPod (or iPhone). Think about movie soundtracks -- without DRM (or with DRM currently cracked on DVDs), and with a few good movies offering music-only audio tracks on the DVD, I could just rip that and play it on my iPod. And keep in mind: If you've got an iPod, and want to buy a Zune, you'll have to buy all your music all over again -- or vice versa.
And if they were really about supporting the consumer, they would allow us to do anything we want with the stuff we buy to own. Although I don't think it's necessary to have DRM on a subscription service (see below), I also think it's kind of appropriate, whereas if I buy the album, it's mine, and your control stops as soon as I rip it to FLAC and sort it onto my Linux fileserver.
I imagine it would, if the service itself was worthwhile. Oh, you justify it now -- calculate it out, and you could pay for the service for 15 years and not spend as much as it might cost you to buy all those CDs. But what if a year from now, the service is providing absolutely nothing new, other than forcing you to keep paying a monthly fee to keep listening to "your" music?
Won't happen, I know. But when you really think about it, if an organization (Magnatune, Mindawn, and others) can sell me an album for $5 (cheaper than iTunes!) for download as mp3, vorbis, or FLAC -- yes, FLAC, completely lossless, completely open format, no DRM at all -- if Magnatune and Mindawn are even moderately successful with that, I think a service like you're suggesting could work.
On the other hand, keep in mind that it's competing with radio -- and keep in mind that radio works even with absolutely no DRM, allowing things like RadioShark, or broadcasting completely unprotected mp3 streams over the Internet. Hell, our local radio station manages to do that as an almost entirely community-run project (no full-time employees)... But somehow they're paying for bandwidth, air time, and licensing fees. Do they know something the RIAA doesn't?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
when CD's become obsolete - are you going to push for legislation demanding they publish their music without DRM?
how anarchist is that?
this is reality - major software companies generally don't publish software in a way that can (easily) be ripped off any more.
Government isn't do this - the free market is. (I'm not evil - they still shouldn't be able to get away with suing kids etc...)
(I'm sorry - I said something besides slash-dogma - mod me down - I'm a troll... please don't hurt me... I'm using firefox at least...)
any lending resale or hire is prohibited without the express authorisation of the copyright owner.
Despite these elements having NOTHING to do with copyright, there isn't a way to enforce this (until DRM works) but it shows that THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO DO THIS! They want you to pay more (because of licensing DRM) for the product and not get money back by selling (or giving away!) the product.
so much for the customer always being right...
the government is not intervening to support anyone
Sure it is. Now you're the one who's overcomplicating things. Whether the law gets created because legislatures are being tricked or not (and I don't think they're anywhere near as naive as you're implying), it's still government intervention to protect their profits. If you can sweep all my whole marketing and business model details under the rug, then you can't turn around and haul the details of how corporations get corporate socialism through the legislature out and pick it apart.
A Slashdot submitter says that Arstechnica says that Businessweek's Ronald Grover says that an unnamed studio executive admitted DRM is not about piracy.
Even if we skip the verifiable chain, we're still left with Ronald Grover says that an unnamed studio executive admitted DRM is not about piracy.
Very few responses to this submission comment on the article, instead issues about DRM are discussed directly.
Comic books do not include DRM but they are quite able to sell multiple different editions and the movie industry manages it too.
Donnie Darko for example has a version containing little more than the file, a 2 disc version, and 3 disc collectors directors cut edition. Just look how many Lord of the Rings variations there have been, even ones packaged with collectable toys.
DRM just screws people into buying more copies than they want when there are plenty of people who will buy more copies than they need given some incentive.
When? It's already happened. I currently satisfy myself with free radio, and with the services online that do give un-DRM'd music. And not for free, I don't know where in your twisted little corporate mind "$15/month" becomes "free music!!!!11one"
Way to make a strawman. I just searched my own post to make sure, and in fact, I said absolutely nothing about "government", "legal", "legit", "law", or "legislation". Go ahead -- you say you're using Firefox, go read my post, hit your slash key, and search for those words.
No, let them use DRM, I'll just boycott it. As far as legislation, I'd be perfectly happy if we had no legislation about DRM. Unfortunately, we have pro-DRM legislation -- it's called the DMCA.
Actually, yes, they do. If you only knew just how easily...
The bitch of DRM today isn't that it's hard for pirates, or even moderately sophisticated end-users who value fair use. The bitch of it is, it is a pain in the ass and the wallet for legitimate users (who don't want to have to crack things just to make them play on their early-adopter, HDCP-free, but still very good HDTV), and does nothing to stop pirates.
This is just unnecessary. If I had mod points, I'd mod you flamebait for this alone -- the rest of your post is just misinformed and stupid, which means I wouldn't waste mod points on it. You're not insightful, but until you used "slash-dogma" as an excuse not to think your response through, you weren't a troll, either.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
of course you can. Every apple supporter will want you to believe that all it requires is for you to burn the music to Cd, then re rip it onto your hard drive, remember which of thsoe tracks with the same name is the un DRM'ed one, find the file, import with a program that can sync with your player, and finally, if you aren't sick and damn tired of this, get to listen to it on a non-apple product.
I don't know where people get the idea that this is a straight forward, quick little exercise when it actually takes real time and effort to do. and of course, it takes lots of blank cd's(or a cd-rw). this is especially bad for my old laptop which didn't have one back in 2001/2002 when this was all starting. Now, its just a waste of time that I don't have since I'm at work for 60 or 70 hours a week. Free time is now a real commodity and I like spending it doing things other than burning and re-ripping music I already bought. Its much easier for me to just torrent in what I want.
You don't seem to understand what I'm saying.
This is a question of companies and consumers. It is that simple. The companies don't know how to sustain their business model, so they're not trying - they're just scrambling madly to suck as much money out of it as they can before it collapses. In the long run, this money is just being stolen from the tail end of the same business, so it doesn't really matter. Long tail or short tail, the business still dies. Demand for an alternative rises steeply instead of slowly as the end nears, so the startup of the Next Big Thing makes a lot of money very quickly instead of ramping up slow and steady.
When you drag the government into it, YOU'RE complicating things. The government doesn't matter, because legislation is just another tactic being used by the media companies to prevent the death of their business. It's not the government's idea. It's just a trivial detail of *how* the companies are trying to inflate profits today at the expense of profits tomorrow.
In the end, the people who get those profits will probably invest them in the new business model that replaces them, once they know which one is going to "win". The revolution will happen, and we'll overthrow Bob with this new system... which will ultimately be run by Bob. The more things change, and all that.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
When you drag the government into it, YOU'RE complicating things. The government doesn't matter, because legislation is just another tactic being used by the media companies to prevent the death of their business.
You could have made that same statement any time in the past century, at least. Without continued government intervention the "media business" would be about the size of the cookbook business.
I'm not kidding. If everyone pulled their fingers out and just let the free market market work, with music having no more protection than recipes, that's how big the music business would be. Soon as people had the ability to copy and pass around piano rolls it would have been all over.
because legislation is just another tactic being used by the media companies to prevent the death of their business
It's not "just another tactic", it's pretty much the only one they have.
It's not the government's idea.
It sure is. It's explicitly the government's job to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. You seem to be assuming that the media companies are something fundamentally different their historical prcursors have been doing over the past two and a quarter centuries. You also seem to be assuming that there's no legitimate reason for the government to want to intervene.
It's just piano rolls all over again, with the government on a white horse propping up the business.
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were sane.
Carry on, then.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?
If "sane" means "doesn't pay any attention to anything that happened before the iPod", then I bear the title proudly.
Yeah... that's nice and crazy. Glad to see I was right about you.
Microsoft cheerleader, blue flag waving, you got a problem with that?