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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!
"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.
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.
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.
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.
They used to have fits about tapes and vinyl copying too. It's always happened. Their main problem is that selling media in any form will always be a business which experiences lots of unauthorised copying of its products if you use their traditional distribution method (being monolithic companies selling media at high price through a limited number of channels)
The problem they have is that faced with this undeniable fact they have decided to focus on an unrealistic solution, being drm. The plain fact is that drm will only cause problems for legitimate users, not unauthorised copiers.
Circumvention being illegal is no problem. There will always be someone, somewhere who figures it out, and finding that person in time to stop dissemination of their solution is a game that will be lost before they start, every time.
DRM then is so they can continue to attract investors. It gives them something to say in pitches. 'We have solution x to this problem that will ensure a return on your investment' and so on. The fact that historically such solutions have a 100% faliure rate isn't something they can even think about, so they're trapped.
Looking at this from an evolutionary standpoint, they're screwed, and heading to extinction. Simply demanding that the world be other than it is can only have that result. What system will emerge in its place I don't know, but I strongly suspect that the current crop of p2p companies/products will form the basis of a new media empire.
The current media industries are trying to get into this feild, but for years all they've been doing is trying to stop it, whilst the p2p producers have been innovating like crazy. That means the p2p guys are already ahead in the next wave of media production/distribution, and very likely to stay there.
No, that's a completely ridiculous suggestion, for several reasons.
1) Artists build upon other artists. Some of the best pieces of art are composites of other pieces of art (Shakespeare being the classic example). This super-DRM'ed world would contradict that fact and make it much harder for artists to do their work. It would also make it impossible to create such art forms as satire, abbreviation, etc.
2) This system would contradict one of the basic realities of this universe: ideas are infinitely duplicable at no cost other than the medium to store them. You can have all the DRM systems in the world - if your poem appears on my screen and I memorize it or write it down, I've made a copy. I can then repost it if I feel so inclined. Trying to control the technological gateways (enforcing DRM'ed hardware, etc) is ultimately a losing battle, like fighting the ocean with a broom.
3) Such a system, to work perfectly, would by definition require real-time, detailed monitoring of everyone's activities that have anything to do with so-called "intellectual property". Apart from the huge technical challenge that this would represent (can you even imagine any IT company implementing this when they can't even create a centralised system of patient records without screwing up - see NHS PfIT), this would be a huge infringement on everyone's privacy. Or rather, it would be a complete eradication of the very concept of privacy.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Sure, I'll give you the argument that you can't copy [or clone] a car (yet) but to let the originator decide exactly how their product will be played or not played is exactly what I don't want.
Don't buy the car analogy because they are in a different price bracket? Let's aim lower. Greeting Cards. You aren't given explicit instructions with your greeting card and told that you have to give the Happy Birthday card on your kid's birthday, and that day alone. You can buy the card and use it for any occasion if you want. It's always fun to give condolence cards for births, birthdays, or even weddings.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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.
Art != Music (Whether or not music, especially contemporary music, is even a subset of art is a matter of opinion). Some of the greatest works of art in history were done 'for hire'.
Unless you want to see an end to persistent recordings, you're advocating the same sort of BS "have thier cake and eat it too" setup we have now, except instead of some industry suits reaping the cash, it's the artist himself. If I buy a painting, I expect the right to put it on my bathroom wall, wipe my mouth on it, or have my picture taken in front of it. Same for a recording. If I want to listen to it in my cd-less car stereo, on my Neuros, or on my GP2X, I'm going to. I expect to control my own purchase.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
1) Artists build upon other artists. Some of the best pieces of art are composites of other pieces of art (Shakespeare being the classic example). This super-DRM'ed world would contradict that fact and make it much harder for artists to do their work. It would also make it impossible to create such art forms as satire, abbreviation, etc.
DRM in now way stops artists from building upon the ideas of other artists (copyright may stop this with the extreme measures it has been extended to, but not DRM). Shakespeare did not need to be able to make an exact quality of copy of other artists' works to build off of them. Neither did any of the musicians in history need to be able to make an exact copy of something they heard to use it and build off of it. The idea of art building off of arts means that artists hear/see what other artists have done and use it for inspiration, not that they make an exact copy of it. Artists have never needed to be able to make exact duplicates of other's work to find inspiration from other's work in the past anymore than they do now.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
These problem all reall stemmed from the Compact Disk and it replacing vinyl.
We all happily went out and rebought our existing music collection on CD as it was alot more convenient than LP's. And in the process we generated a constant revenue stream as stuff was gradually re-issued. The problem is that this is now coming to an end for the record companies as they have re-released almost everything. They have certainly run out of the stuff with serious mass appeal.
So they now have to look for a new way of extracting similar revenues that they have grown used to over the last 15 years out of a back catalog which most of us already own, possibly in more than one format. The problem is that they have already made it about as convenient as it needs to be and the quality is mostly there as well (Vinyl have better infrasonic performance).
So rather than try and go back to surviving off the revenues they get from new releases which would result in a huge drop in profits they need an alternative. Without an alternative the problems would be very far reaching. The stock market is used to constant revenue growth. If profits fall it is far worse for a company than if they had never risen in the first place, expecially if the fall is not likely to be temporary. This is frequently what drives companies under if they are unable to downsize quickly enough.
So faced with this dilemma the media publishing companies must find a way to keep the boon of the CD years going, and being that they didnt reinvest those record profits very wisely in new content production this is going to difficult. So they are choosing to try and keep the boom of the CD going by constantly selling us a new copy of stuff we already own indefinately.
If you contrast this with companies like BP (who sell Oil) you see that they have invested their profits much more wisely. BP are now the worlds largest producer of solar panels and have started describing themselves as an energy company rather than an oil company.
In a single phrase, "Diversify to survive".
I dont read
Yes, but the thing is the artist could let the art lapse into public domain if they desired it so. If they didn't let it then, well, it'd be forgotten like many other works of ancient times.
I suggest you read up on the reason copyright laws have time limits. It is SPECIFICALLY so that works do NOT get lost forever.
I din't mean to imply this would happen tomorrow but a decade or two from now when certainly things could be watermarked (and recognized) appropriately and furthermore most vehicles of media would be connected one way or another. Given IPv6 it's not impossible.
So the only way to enjoy published works in your version of the modern world is to be connected 24x7x365 to the internet. No thanks.
And what would be wrong with being able to revoke/retrive an embarassing video or soundbite?
What would be wrong with rewriting history? Maybe we can pretend that Sadam was a kind and generous man that was good to his people. Maybe Paris Hilton wants to pretend that she is not a slut, or Mel Gibson wants to pretend that he didn't make anti-semitic remarks. There is nothing wrong with wanting to take back what you said, it's called an apology. There is nothing wrong with stupid teens posting embarrassing videos of themselves either, and later in life saying that we ALL do stupid stuff when we are kids. You learn from those mistakes. Your "system" attempts to eliminate consequences of doing bad / stupid stuff - sorry, that's just not a good thing for society.
Artists would have to reimburse the prorated amount owed the consumer.
So an artist that goes on a drug binge and goes crazy can take away my purchased right to listen to music he sold me back when he was sane? I don't want that, even if I DO get a partial refund. Considering how many artists are nuts to begin with, this is not a far-fetched scenario.
DRM is bad, M'Kay? There are no redeeming values. You can attempt to create some bizzaro perfect-world scenarios where it could possibly work with a gazillion exceptions and conditions, but we do not live in a perfect world.
Huh... that seems very obvious, but I've never thought of that before. When you first said the problem originated with CDs, I assumed you meant because it was the first digital medium available to consumers, and therefore the first to allow duplication without degradation of sound quality, which allowed better "piracy".
But, if I can try to sum up your post, you're suggesting that CDs were the first new medium that offered significant improvement to cause consumers to re-buy the music they already owned. Therefore, the copyright owners grew dependant on the revenue stream of people re-buying their works, in spite of the fact that they already owned copies. Now that people are done replacing their records with CDs, record companies are trying to devise a new way to force consumers to continually re-buy a product in order to maintain that revenue stream.
That sounds right to me. It seems like the intention is to get you to buy a new copy of each song for every new device you buy. One works with iPods, a different one with your Zune, yet another for your PlayForSure device, and a fourth for your cell phone. This also seems to be the intention with HD DVD media. People have finally replaced their VHS tapes with DVDs, and now they expect you to replace your DVDs with HD.
To me, it seems worth noting the obvious: this is not what copyright law was meant for.