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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.'"
Not yet you're not. The media companies have yet to receive any court judgements which strip away right of first sale and fair use. Just laws that act to impede such things like the DCMA and it's exported derivatives around the world.
Yes, but hopefully the pendulum in the courts has started to swing back to a more moderating influence.
Someone needs to remind the content companies that treating your customers like criminals, and impeding everything they do isn't going to get you more customers, it's going to get you less. And, graciously offering to give us our rights back in a roundabout way isn't the way to do it.
They buy all of these laws which, on the surface, are intended to stop the widespread commercial exploitation of people selling counterfeit items. But, it has the effect of not reducing piracy at all, and attempting to remove the rights of the average consumer to use the thing they've bought.
They're also trying to argue the line you seem to be buying into -- that when you buy a physical product (a DVD or a CD) that you're entering into a contractually binding obligation to only do what they like with it. That, is completely untrue, and I hope it stays that way.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Just as we have been clamoring for geek involvement in patent review, we should be clamoring for geek involvement in legislation review. Geeks can a) forsee future applications of technology and b) find potential bugs due to the similarity of rigidity and logic between law and code (see comments such as mine attached to Source Control For Bills In Congress?).
9 years. 9 years of prosecution. 9 years of our EFF dollars wasted having to fight this.
No, you're NOT. RIAA and MPAA members fully recognize this in their advertising. When a movie comes out on DVD, they don't say "license Narnia on DVD today" they say "Own Narnia on DVD today" and ditto for CDs.
It is a commodity product; just as with a book, when you buy it, you OWN it. It does come with some limited restrictions, e.g., you cannot make and distribute copies (in full or in part) outside of the Fair Use clause exceptions, but you absolutely, positively do own it.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Jobs argument is actually coherent, although the actual points he made was never reported in the Mainstream Moron Media. Jobs argues the biggest failings of DRM is:
* It doesn't work.
* It's too easily cracked, and patching the DRM software to stop cracks is a losing battle.
* The RIAA sell the very same music unprotected on CDs anyway(!!!!!!)
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
Anything that causes Macrovision stock to crash has to be a good thing.
No, the problem is thinking in terms of products, rather than solutions[1]. I'm going to talk about software first for a bit.
No one ever thinks 'I need some software now.' People think 'I have a problem that needs solving.' That problem might be creating a nicely formatted letter, or managing inventory for a chain of supermarkets. In either case, the thing they are willing to pay for is not the software, it is the solution to the problem. If you are trying to sell them software, you will not get very far, unless you can say 'this software will solve this problem for you.'
The important distinction here is that the thing of value is not the software itself, but the act of creating (or adapting) the software. Similarly, a copy of a song has little value, but the act of creating it enriches society and has a potentially huge value (depending on the song).
In the software world, we are fortunate that we have an economic model that deals with this. With the exception of a few well-known companies, most software firms exist by writing bespoke software. They sell the software, but in many cases they sell it as Free Software (i.e. their customer has the right to use, modify, extend and distribute the software). Such a company benefits from Free Software, since it means that they have a lot of tools that they can use to build solutions cheaply for their customers. The community also benefits when they decide to give back improvements that are not part of their core business to the community, rather than just to their customers.
Unfortunately, the entertainment world does not have this analogue. Actually, that's not entirely true. Artists, by and large, are paid by distributors to produce their work. The distributors are quite canny; they pay for something that has value (the creation of the work) and then sell something that has no, or little, value (the reproductions). What is needed is an economic model that enables artists to be directly compensated for their work. Many artist in history had patrons, who financed their work, and I think a model of distributed patronage would work relatively well. A band might release their first album for free (and Free), and gain a reputation. They might be paid to perform live, and this would help build their reputation more. Once their reputation is solid, they could receive payments from people around the world to create their next album (possibly via some form of escrow, so the money was not released until the album was finished).
[1] In the '90s there was a trend to simply rename products as solutions, without actually changing what they were or did.
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