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Solving DRM in the BitTorrent Age
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has a new article on DRM in the BitTorrent Age. They argue that the movie industry looking for "perfect DRM" should aim for the printed book model (people still buy books even though they can read them for free at Barnes & Noble). They argue that the missing element is that screenwriters are not marketed by Hollywood in the same way the book industry markets its authors."
Or one can simply read the book on screen. A glance at any file-sharing network will reveal thousands of scanned IT books and language tutorials in PDF format.
How about original, quality stuff for a change?
There are so many movies out there that I do not care about, but if it's a movie I really like, I will go out and buy the DVD.
Ditto for a book - if it's good, I will go ahead and buy it.
And people with tastes different than mine will do the same for books and movies.
The advantage of a book is that most books are quite cheap (well, unless you are looking for a specific one in a narrow area, say something by Springer Verlag or something).
Movie DVDs are getting there, but music is far, far away. That is the problem. And the signal to noise is terrible for music - so much crap out there.
And finally, I can do anything I want with my book - photocopy it, scan the pages, rip it - whatever the hell I want.
The music and movie industry is trying to stop me from doing just that - and that is the heart of the problem.
IMHO and all that.
Which is why all the decent e-book readers mysteriously fail to reach the market. In all the last 15 years, since the invention of e-ink, dozens of companies have attempted to make viable e-book readers and been quashed by patents or by the copyright owners who have demanded that the product include draconian DRM. The OLPC, intended to (eventually) sell at US$100 per unit, has a 1200 (H) x 900 (V) resolution (200 dpi) display which is readable in direct sunlight. That is what you need to comfortably read a book. That, or e-ink, with even higher dpi. These things are clearly not expensive, where are they? The OLPC shows what engineers can do when they are able to stop thinking about what will make the most money, and just try to make something great.
How we know is more important than what we know.
But the media cartels will still probably need another 5 years to get it.
And the funny thing is: if they ever end up developing a really hard to break DRM or copy protection scheme it won't really succeed in most of the world. Technology in emerging economies (such as Brazil, Russia, India and China) only gets widespread usage when their copy protection is broken.
As a brazilian gamer I used to track down PlayStation 2 adoption around here. PS2 only got mainstream after pirated games were available. But that doesn't mean Sony lost revenue. It didn't. If the copy protection had never been broken, PS2 would've never succeeded around here.
In the end, DRM only hurts those that try to play by the rules (well, at least until they get tired if being abused and get their [pirated] goodies for free).
Haven't you heard the joke? "Did you hear about the Polish starlet? She was so dumb, she slept with the writer."
Hollywood pays writers very well compared to non-film jobs, but also treats them like dirt and screws them over at the drop of a hat. They're well below actors, directors, and producers on the Talent Totem Pole. Here's an easy way to confirm for yourself how little heed Hollywood pays writers: Without looking at the IMDB, name any writer who has won an Academy Award (other than Peter Jackson) for best original or Adapted Screenplay. Get one and you're probably doing better than 99% of the movie-viewing public.
Or to put it another way: We'll see Hollywood start promoting writers right after they stop making films based on TV shows or video games.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
This makes no sense. I don't read books online because it's uncomfortable and inconvenient. Movies and TV shows are shown on a projected screen with no pause button (unless you have special equipment) and, in the case of TV, interruptions of advertising.
Online books don't take over physical books because physical books have more value.
BT takes over TV and movie theaters because movies/episodes downloaded over BT have more value than their original equivalents.
In about 10 years, everyone will have cameras on them that document EVERYTHING they see and put it in an easily retrievable form. Flip through a book and B&N, go home, and read it to your hearts content. We are headed into an infomational age nothing like you have ever seen or dreamed of...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
Reading books on a screen sucks. When I'm reading a book, I like to sit sideways in the armchair, hang over the edge of my bed, or sprawl out on the floor. You can't read a screen like that. Books are also convenient for actually taking places where it would be impractical, expensive, impossible, or maybe just socially unacceptable to take a computer. Usually outside. You know, that big room with the blue ceiling.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
It's the film fans who call Bergman and Antonioni "auteurs." I'm not sure if they called themselves that.
They got called "auteurs" because it is believed that their directorial vision colored their work enough that they effectively authored it--regardless of who wrote the screenplay.
Those intending to sell films the way books get sold should use directors, not screenwriters.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
I paraphrase Orson Welles, who said something along the lines of "An artist needs a brush, an author needs a pen, a director needs an army."
there's a simple way for movie studio's to distribute their content and make money from it without it being tied to "nasty" drm. simply release their own BT client which will allow you to 2 options - buy the movie outright and allow 10 copies of it to be burnt ( you can't call that unfair, who the fuck needs more then 10 copies ) OR you can view the movie for free after you have seeded 2x the size of the movie. that way they are assured there will be plenty of freeloaders out there to support the network, they won't need to invest tons in inferstructure and no one can accuse them of heavy handed drm.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I read e-books from time to time on my PDA, outside, under the big blue ceiling, with no problems. That being said, I do prefer the tangibility of paper books. There is something about turning the page, measuring how close to the end you are via a bookmark, etc, that adds extra appeal to a book.
you're never* going to read a screenplay for enjoyment unless you've already seen the movie it was made into -- because if a screenplay was good enough to sell copies of it to the public, then it was more or less by definition already made into a movie.
Harlen Ellison's adaptation of I,Robot, published in Asimov's Science Fiction because Isaac thought it was so good it needed to be seen, but was never going to be made into a movie.
KFG
User experience. OK. How about the user experience of P2P:
Bogus titles. Bonus points if "Corpse Bride" or "Over The Hedge" downloads as triple-X porno.
The camcorder video that looks like a shot of a 16mm print projected on the walls of Mammouth Cave during a blackout.
The amatuer's artifact-ridden DiVx rip. "Back to the Future" Drive-In sound.
I've played this game and I've gone back to Netflix, Movies Unlimited, The Serial Squadron.
Yes, you can read a book at some stores rather than purchasing it and taking it home, which is not true of DVD movies. But you can get a book at the library and take it home and read it, for free. And now, MANY, MANY libraries also lend DVDs, meaning you can take movies home and watch them, for free. The biggest library system in NE Ohio, at least, is usually pretty good about getting new releases (there may be a little bit of lag time) and has a fairly large catalog, though you may have to wait in line. So how long will it be until the big-money movie folks start really looking at some of our greatest national resources as their enemies? Will they include licensing restrictions that somehow prevent libraries from buying their products?
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Except that even the lightest DRM will keep honest people honest. For that matter, since honest people are, by definition, honest, a complete lack of DRM will also keep honest people honest equally well, and fairly light-duty DRM will also keep mostly-honest people honest just as well as the most restrictive DRM would.
Thus, the continued constriction of DRM serves only two real purposes: to cause problems for honest people and to help create an artificial boogeyman to distract people from the real revenue problem in Hollywood: current movies suck.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Just make movies cheaper so that people can't be bothered to pirate them. This works especially well with HD films which take days/weeks to download.
If I could buy the film I want in HD for £3-£5 ($6-$10) and get it the next day, I'm hardly likely to bother downloading a 20GB torrent link am I?
Unfortunately even SD DVDs cost a ridiculous amount of money here in the UK and I don't see why I should spend £15 ($30) on a DVD when I can rent it for £3 in a few months time. I rarely watch the same film several times before it's shown anyway on sat/cable.