Slashdot Mirror
Criminalizing The Consumer - Where DRM Went Wrong
][nTrUdEr writes "The Economist has posted an editorial on how DRM has gone wrong. What ostensibly began as a tool to ensure artists received due compensation for their work has been turned, and now criminalizes the consumer for wanting to use what they have purchased. 'Despite the number of iTunes downloaded for a fee, Apple would be in trouble if people were prevented from transferring legitimately owned CDs to their iPods. The software Apple gives away to iPod customers is designed to let them do just that. Most people think it ludicrous that they can't do the same with the DVDs they own. Now it seems, despite squeals from the movie industry, the law is finally moving in the video fan's favour. The issue in the recent case was whether Kaleidescape, a maker of digital "jukeboxes" that store a person's video and music collections and distribute the entertainment around the home, had breached the terms of the DVD Content Control Association's CSS (content scrambling system) license.'"
When I buy an album or a movie, I am not buying a "license." I am not agreeing to anything. I am not bending to the will of anyone's "license," I am not signing anything, I am not entering a contract, I am not forfeiting anything, waiving anything, and I am not compromising anything. I am buying a copy of some physical medium for my own enjoyment, and at that point I own that copy of that medium. I have already entered into a "license" for this media through a little thing called copyright law. Anything beyond the application of this copyright law, which includes fair use clauses for a very good reason, is bullshit. Pure and simple.
Trust consumers, eliminate DRM and sue the pants off of illegal file sharers. Yes, that means college students, nine-year-olds, cancer patients, single mothers and everyone else. Yes, that means some small percentage of erroneous accusations.
That's the solution, not some goofball schemes to turn the whole entertainment industry into street mimes.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This is what annoys me about pretty much all forms of DRM - the anti-piracy measures ultimately make the pirated version simply better than the legal version.
With Windows, the pirated version removed the annoying "phone home" feature that Microsoft uses to ensure the product is legit. With computer games, it prevents the stupid "CD in the drive" requirement just to play a game that's using 8GB of hard drive space. With movies, it allows watchers to skip the stupid previews and FBI warning and jump straight to the actual content.
Ultimately DRM punishes those who would purchase the media legally, and makes the pirated version just that much more attractive. Why should I pay $20 for a DVD when a free rip offers better usability?
I'm more than willing to pay for content. I just don't want to have to put up with all the brain-dead restrictions placed on it solely because I'm foolish enough to actually attempt to support the content creators. For the love of common sense, make the legal product at the very least almost as good as the pirated version, instead of substantially worse!
And please, please stop demanding that people who paid for the game have to use the CD in PC games. That alone is enough to push me to find the no-CD cracks. I shouldn't have to turn to pirates to make my purchases worthwhile!
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
This is an advertorial for the folks at the Economist, I'm a subscriber and its easily been the most useful journal I've ever subscribed to, it gives a clear business view of what is going on, so even when they get technology wrong you can see how the business will get it wrong too.
Put it this way, if you are arguing with the business and can say "The economist said" its going to be a million times better that wired/slashdot/any computing mag you can think of.
Politically its "liberal" in the traditional sense of the word (i.e. slightly right wing and think the government should keep out of our lives)
Mark me up, mark me down, its a class magazine.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
It would be nice to believe that since Kaleidescape won their lawsuit, that iTunes, Windows Media Player, and all the other media products out there will be able to let the users rip their own DVDs. But I don't think that'll be the case anytime soon (no matter how badly I want it to be that way). Kaleidescape won their lawsuit because they had previously licensed CSS decryption, probably before the DVDCCA really caught on to what they were planning on doing with it. Had the DVDCCA known what the Kaleidescape system would be, they never would have granted the license.
Which is funny, because it's probably one of the most locked down, secured DVD movie servers out there. Other similar servers use DeCSS (they just tell the end users where to download it, so the manufacturer isn't doing anything *illegal*), and they have their movies stored in Windows folders that can easily be accessed and shared with anyone on the network. That's right, they went after the company that had the most MPAA/DVDCCA friendly product possible, and let the other guys with lesser products get by on "illegal" software.
Think of it instead as a group of motivated people, aware of the slippery slope that was approaching, taking action to prevent it from becoming firmly entrenched.
If those 9 years of battle hadn't been fought, and instead people lay down and accept it until it was too late to fight it, we'd then experience.. who knows? how many years of locked down content and bland crap produced by the people rich enough to pay licensing fees.
Once a system becomes widely used and mostly accepted, it's difficult if not impossible to change it, no matter how heinous, illegal, or rights-infringing. That these 9 years were marked by a battle against that is something to be proud of.
One could argue it's a battle that should never have been fought, which is true, but there will always be someone or some corporation willing to push the limits of rights and ethics to make a buck. The battle never ends.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
even when they sold a DRM infected CD the Beastie Boys the 5 Boroughs for example.
The lable at the same time released it in 12" vinyl DRM free !!!!!
Seems silly to have used DRM on the disk in the end.