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Jeremy Allison On Why DRM Will Never Work
eldavojohn writes "At the ZDNet site, Jeremy Allison (a well-known employee of the Google corporation) goes on a hilarious rant against Digital Rights Management. He compares the access restriction technology with underwear gnomes & Star Trek while ending with: 'Believing in a DRM business model is like joining Star Fleet security, putting on your red shirt, and volunteering to beam down to the new unexplored planet with Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Someone will be coming back from that mission, it's just not likely to be the security guard. Always a true engineer, Scotty had the good sense to stay safely on board the ship.'"
Wasn't there a /. article about this same idea a little while ago?
... if it wasn't for DRM, I wouldn't be able to download TV shows from various TV networks online. DRM for no reason sucks ass, but if it lets me get content that I couldn't get before, how can I be upset? If it *is* a sucky situation, surely the problem isn't DRM but the economic structures in place that requires DRM to be used. I think it'd make more sense to get our society to a place where we don't need DRM than to a place where we shoot ourselves in the foot by not attacking the actual cause of DRM, and waste all our time and money screaming at acronyms.
The largest problem with DRM as I see it (except the impossibility issue) is that the paying customer gets worse service then the pirate.
Customer goes and pays $10 dollars for his album and notices the can't play it on any machine except the ones approved by the company that sold the album and he can't backup the album in case it breaks so he has to buy it all over again if it does.
The pirate on the other hand happily buys a cheap cd for $1, goes online and downloads the album, burns it to cd and now has a cd that can be played on any machine and be backupped easily.
The basic idea of successfully selling anything is to provide better service then you can get for free.
When it comes to music/movies/games bought online I propose that you let people download the items as many times they want at high speeds. This means that it will be alot faster/comfier then doing it illegally through the relatively slow pirate networks.
I'm currently enjoying this to a great extent with games I've bought through EA. After a format or whatever I just need to tell the EA downloader to download the game for me instead of me having to hunt down the bloody cd that is forgotten in some bookcase somewhere.
I think downloaded music/movies should do it similarly so I easily can move my collection between computers without any fuzz at all making all my movies/music basically immortal. Good service at a good price is better then pirating.
I always envisioned DRM as a technology that people will get used to. Make it ubiquitous, and people will take it for granted. That is why the RIAA and others are trying to introduce DRM concepts into early childhood classrooms, so that people grow up thinking that it is normal.
You can download a lot more TV shows without DRM than you can with. The biggest difference is that the distributors don't get paid if you download the ones without the DRM. Hopefully, iTunes Plus will start providing evidence soon that people are willing to pay for DRM-free content, just as the original store showed that they were willing to pay for digital content.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I know that in a few minutes, this response is going way to the bottom because your post will be "0, Flamebait", but you bring up a good point regardless. First of all, why criticize DRM and not the consumer practices that necessitate its use? Second, what counts as "working"? People seem to have a MASSIVE change in their definition of what it means to "work" when talking about DRM. Laws against murder "work" even though murder still happens. Windows still "works" even though it has numerous security holes. For DRM to "work", it's not necessary that it make piracy impossible, only that it reduce it to sufficiently low levels that the production of the work is still profitable.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
"First of all, why criticize DRM and not the consumer practices that necessitate its use?"
You mean the fact that media companies won't make their products easily available to the public to download at a reasonable price?
"For DRM to "work", it's not necessary that it make piracy impossible, only that it reduce it to sufficiently low levels that the production of the work is still profitable."
But it can't work, because only one person has to crack the DRM on a file and put it on the Net, and the rest of the world's population can download it. We're not living in the 70s when people had to borrow records and tapes from their friends and neighbors, you know.
The only way I can see in which DRM can possibly 'work' is by totally crippling all the computers on the planet. Some people might just consider general-purpose computers just a little teeny bit more important than record company profits.
Which would be a good point if all Mr. Allison was saying was "DRM is evil". However, that isn't his point. What he is saying is that it can't work, it's never going to work, and that trying build a business model (or an economy) found on DRM is a deeply irrational act.
The problem is that for DRM to work you have to hand the customer the encrypted data, the encryption algorithm and the encryption key. If you don't the DRMed work cannot be accessed. However, if you do, they have everything they need to circumvent the DRM.
But if the DRM has a fundamental logical flow, then the problem is DRM. That's the point.
A lot of people would agree with that. The two main approaches offered seem to be either move to a gift economy, or indoctrinate school kids to believe that copyright infringement is a Great Evil on a par with Rape, Murder, Genocide, and Britney Spears. Personally, I can see problems with both those strategies.
In the meantime, DRM still isn't going to work any time soon, and any exec who proposes spending serious money on it wants his arse kicking. Not for Being Evil, but for Being Stupid.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
>>It has become very clear, that people will pay for content, even when that content can be had for free.
>>iTune has sold over 2.5Billion tracks, all of which can be found for free.
The question is will enough people be willing to pay for it to make it a viable business model. The big problem is that there is an entire generation of college kids that think everything digital is free for the taking unless it is properly secured, and if it is not properly secured then it is basically an invitation to take it.
Most college kids don't have the money to spend on something anyway so it doesn't affect the business model much now, but if they keep this attitude as they grow older and replace the people willing to pay, then there will be a problem.
If digital ever becomes unbreakable (yeah right) then people will resort to analog recording.
You know that Google has an inordinate amount of pull on Slashdot when an article summary like this comes out:
"a Google employee goes on"
A "Google employee"? Really? He has a name... it's Jeremy Allison. You know, the same Jeremy Allison that was described as "The legendary Jeremy Allison (of Samba fame)" when he resigned from Novell.
Hell, he was still Jeremy Allison only a couple of months ago when he wrote an advice piece for young programmers.
Now? He's a Google employee.
Yeesh.
DRM is going to KILL legal downloads of commercial video. Talk to people who've purchased and downloaded movies on-line. Or read reviews of legal download services. Certainly, there are satisfied customers. But all too often you'll read or hear about people who've paid money, spent the time downloading the video, and it won't play. Or it won't transfer to the Ipod (or other portable device). Because of faulty DRM. Legal commercial video download services are just getting started and they can't afford to alienate the early adopters. But because of flawed DRM (redundant), that's exactly what's happening.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Let's call it "light hearted"?
It wasn't supposed to be comedy. If anything, see it as some kind of science infotainment show. Meant to give you some insight without boring you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've heard this argument that $X somehow gives consumers more choice before. In fact I hear it every time something stupid that restricts choice is forced down my gullet. What's more is that the media industry (specifically) is over-saturated and there may be choice but the quality has taken a nose-dive.
I have difficulty finding anything I want to watch or listen to now and DRM is going to give me more choice? No, it will restrict my choice further because I refuse to be subjected to it.
in the 1960s, a bunch of geeks invented a system to interconnect computing systems that could survive a nuclear strike. they did this by making it flexible and redundant
while not actually tested with a nuclear strike, their system has been tested by another form of damage: your DRM. we are happy to report that the Internet is still flexible and redundant. it has survived your DRM, and has successfully routed around the damage
please make note of your coming extinction. the internet as media distribution system is infinitely superior to your schemes, and is not yours to control. some of you apparently are not aware of this reality. you should try to be
the aztec and incan ruling classes were not happy at the arrival of new technology and unseen phenomena like the gun, the cannon, heavy metal swords, heavy metal shields, the horse, syphilis, and smallpox. the arrival was unplanned and overwhelming. but however unhappy they were at the arrival of such things, it did not change the fact that it spelled their quick and certain doom
so it is with you, dear media middlemen
all the best,
media consumers
xoxoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Rights management can be made to work better than it does now. Not perfect, you understand. Just "improved". But only subject to a number of caveats. Let's assume I'm talking about a high-def film:
1. The medium on which the data is shipped to the customer must not be readable on any standardised hardware which is sold with an interface to plug into a PC. (See also: Sega Dreamcast GD-ROM).
- This immediately eliminates the percentage of the hacker world whose expertise doesn't stretch as far as "taking a hardware player to pieces and following paths".
- It implies that the design of the player is encumbered with so many patents that even if you did build such a drive, you'd have a hard time selling it in much of the world.
2. The device which plays the data has no output except for a built-in screen. Rationale: You can't trust anything you plug into the device. (See also: Portable travel DVD players).
- This prevents anyone from exploiting possible issues in any security which may be attached to output data.
- For best results, and to minimise the impact of the analogue hole, the screen should be sized such that lining up a camera is very difficult and even if you did it would be impossible to get very good results.
There's only one minor issue. I've just invented the Sony PSP, which we all know has been a runaway success as a media player and movie releases tend to hit the PSP first. </sarcasm>
>>It seems to me that an engineer who, knowing that it is impossible to create a DRM system that does what it is supposed to do, nevertheless accepts an assignment to create one, is implicitly claiming competence he or she does not possess and is in violation of this point.
All software can be hacked. All software has bugs. People just have an expectation that it performs at a certain level. Should everybody working on operating systems be deemed incompetent because there are still security issues?
After reading the article (which is akin to blasphemy here on /. ), he hits upon a real concern about DRM: The effort to turn the US into a risky "IP economy", relying on DRM to protect our interests while outsourcing actual manufacturing and labor to cheaper countries.
The Pollyanna dream that western countries will be able to sit on ivory towers as "idea centers" while trying to sell DRM'ed Intellectual Property to newly affluent laborers in sovereign China and India is extremely misguided. Especially when these places are used to cheaper (and often better/unhindered) knockoff copies of movies/music/games already.
{ - Generic Guy - }
The obvious conclusion is that if people aren't willing to pay enough to make it a viable business model, the entertainment industry should look for another business model instead of trying to create artificial monopolies with the help of broken technology to make the failed business model viable.
First of all, why criticize DRM and not the consumer practices that necessitate its use?
... zip. Nada. No music. It was one of those dreaded CDs that don't play everywhere, because they don't conform with the standard.
Let me tell you a quick story about a friend of mine. It was the Summer of 01 or 02, and he bought a CD. Like he used to do. He didn't know much about the 'net and he didn't download songs, he went to his local store and bought CDs. Simply because he didn't want to deal with P2P, considered it a hassle and didn't even want to look into it. What for? He bought a CD every few months, who cared that they costed 20 bucks? He can afford that.
He slipped his brand new CD into his car-hifi and
To say the least, he was pissed. He came to me and asked me what to do. Now, I didn't have any idea how to copy the "protected" CD to a CDR so he could play it in his car, but I knew that there are services where he could download what he bought. Funny enough, that was legal here back then, he had the "right" to "own" that music by buying that CD.
So he went and installed some P2P software. Was surprised how easy it is and within a few hours he had his CD on the computer, burning it to a CDR that works in his car was trivial.
From then on, he started using P2P more often and buy CDs less often, if he only found one good song on the disc, which is pretty much common today.
Conclusio: DRM was what turned him into one of those pesky pirates. He didn't (and still doesn't) care about the 20 bucks such a CD would cost him. What he does care about, though, is that the content works the way HE wants it. He doesn't want to distribute it, or remix it, or anything else the content industry fears so much. He just wants to listen to it. He just wants it to "work" as intended. That's his primary goal when it comes to content, being able to use it the way it's meant to be used.
He didn't care about DRM until this moment when his CD didn't work anymore as expected. They don't want me to copy? Cool with me. Don't wanna copy anyway. But what he wants is to be able to use his content. Such is the vicious cycle. DRM is deemed necessary because of the consumer actions caused by DRM.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Maybe he just worded that wrong, but if you can derive the secret key like that, you're messing up. Maybe he meant that messages can be encrypted and sent with the public key, and decrypted with the secret key.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Even if it worked flawlessly, you'd still be left with a copy that is inferior to what is available for free on the P2P networks. When people who pay for your product get less than people who do not, you're business plan is in some serious trouble... you are essentially hoping to sell people on some sort of convenience.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Are you saying that iTunes is not a viable business model? I'm confused... by all metrics, iTunes has been profitable since day 1. Why is it not a viable business model?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
That's simply not true at all. I have yet to meet a non-geek who thinks "it's locked therefore it must be wrong." This weekend I was asked these two questions from two different family members: "why do I get this error message on my PC trying to watch a DVD?" and "why can't I copy my iTunes music to my cell phone?"
All their experiences in the physical world have taught them that if they buy something, it's theirs. This is no different: they both assumed that because they bought the products that they had the right to use them. They see only that "the computer" is giving them error messages. They've never heard of DRM. They have zero assumption that they're doing anything wrong (which is good because they're not.) Yet the products are refusing to cooperate.
In this case, DRM itself is instilling the "mentality" of "this is a stupid computer bug I have to get around." At no point does "right vs wrong" enter into the thought process.
John
And yet, that is exactly what is happening.
Eben Moglen said once that the wealth of nations in the 21st century will not be measured by how much steel they make or how well they make it, they will be measured by how much software they make and how well they make it. Presumably he was talking about software which had some purpose, not Quake.
How we know is more important than what we know.
His argument is not that there is no market for DRM protected content (that's another story). His argument is that DRM is not actually possible, and that trying to control a market using a technology that violates the laws of information theory is probably a bad idea.
I've been downloading DRM-free TV shows for a while now. And not paying anyone. I get them with HDTV quality, and at a speed of about 12MBits/second per show, all without tying up my internet connection. It's even legal, though the MPAA has been trying to change that.
Granted, there are disadvantages; rather than getting the show on demand, I have to wait until they schedule a "push". But generally the show is "pushed" before it is available through on-demand channels anyway, so that's not a big deal.
DRM is like Speeding Tickets. You can slow some people for awhile, but not forever. You can even get extra money out of them if they break the rules, but they'll view that as a small price to pay for doing what they want. You cause most good and safe people to slow down who could otherwise enjoy going faster and doing more.
But, in the end, everyone will see it for the profiteering racket that it really is.
libertarian: (n) socially liberal, financially conservative; neither left, nor right.
I was 12 (IIRC) when the original series with Scotty came out. In the middle 1960s, the "communicators" were fantasy. Now we have cell phones. Doors that magically open were likewise impossible, but now they're at every grocery store. As were the voice activated computers with flat screens. As were a host of other impossible things on that show we now take for granted.
In at least one respect, something that was "impossible" in the twenty fourth century is now commonplace. In one of the movies, McCoy gives Kirk a pair of reading glasses because he's allergic to whatever drug geezers used to soften the eye's focusing lens. Curing it was impossible in the Star Trek future, but in 2003 the FDA approved a device called a CrystaLens, an eye implant that cures cataracts, nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism! I had one implanted in my left eye. After wearing glasses all my life, then in middle age wearing both contact lenses for my nearsightedness and reading glasses for my age-related farsightedness, I no longer need any corrective lenses at all, although I still wear a contact in my right eye. I'm looking forward to getting a cataract in that eye so insurance will pay most of the cost of getting my eye fixed. What Dr. McCoy couldn't do for Kirk, my eye surgeon, Dr. Yea, did for me!
As to all the science being magic and/or bullshit, you might want to read an artticle on NASA's web site titled The Science of Star Trek.
-mcgrew
The big problem is that there is an entire generation of college kids that think everything digital is free for the taking unless it is properly secured, and if it is not properly secured then it is basically an invitation to take it.
Yes, but 40 years ago there was an entire generation of college kids that thought love and sex and drugs and rock and roll were free to be taken and shared, and now that generation packs mega churches and votes for George W. Bush. People change as they age.
I don't think it's appropriate to claim that a generation "has no honor" and thus will not use an honor-based system. Even if it is partially true at one point in time, it can change.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I watched a recent broadcast on C-SPAN of a House Science and Technology Committee meeting on P2P file sharing. I recall there was a recent Slashdot article on that same meeting (proof positive that few have ever watched C-SPAN, let alone that particular program) that I think is also relevant to DRM.
While I watched, two things struck me. First, that the committee members (some of whom sit on the all-powerful Judiciary Committee) invariably said, with a conviction typically reserved for occasions where one is required to place one's right hand on the bible, that they were very strong believers in intellectual property protection. The silence in the room seemed to suggest that the issue was a black and white one, somewhat akin to being against flag burning, or safe streets and neighbourhoods, or fighting terrorism, and the act of making such statements conferred patriotic bonus points on those who stood up to do so.
Second, despite the fact that all of the panel members (the IT heads of various universities) unanimously agreed (and went on at length to describe the reasons) that technological solutions could offer no guarantees of success, they were pressed upon by more than one committee member as to why they weren't placing a greater emphasis on technological solutions, given that it did offer at least some measure of success, even if it was temporary. After a series of "yes buts", the committee and the panel members agreed to agree that a coordinated technological/enforcement solution in conjunction with an education/policy-based approach was the ideal solution.
That last bit reminded me of what typically occurs in communities where crime is a problem and someone comes up with a New and Improved approach. The enforcement approach hasn't worked, but the police are asked to implement a crackdown. After enough heads are hit or enough people are arrested, the New and Improved solution is gradually put into effect and everyone feels good. It's worth remembering that people who vote typically vote for "law and order" candidates, and elected candidates who concentrate on law and order issues stay elected, irrespective of whether their actions have results, positive or otherwise. The scenario isn't unlike George Bush and his recent surge. The military approach hasn't worked, so the solution? More troops.
It would be satisfying if simplistic to state that DRM is a technological solution that's doomed to failure. You can be sure that the issue of DRM is discussed in boardrooms of media companies, in government, and in the board rooms of any technology company that has an interest in the matter. At those levels, the issue becomes a political one, and people are held accountable for what they do or don't do. Put another way, everyone needs to be seen doing something, even if that something has prior art in the form of a Dilbert cartoon.
So if DRM isn't working, the solution will ultimately be more DRM. Followed by a phased in New and Improved approach that, surprise, most likely won't involve DRM. In that regard, we can say that Steve Jobs may be the only smart guy in the room.
Sure it does. Every time I get one of those questions, I tell the person that Sony (or whoever it is that sold the media) ripped you off. They gave you a rental model when you paid for the purchase model, and that is wrong.
The whole point of the article is that since DRM by its very nature can always be broken, it's impossible to "properly secure" content.
If I make a car and sell it to a dealership for $50k, and someone won't pay the $50k to the dealership for said car, that's not car theft, that's business.
If they dealership manages to sell the car for $40k after months of trying, that's still not car theft or thievery, that's business.
Car theft? Give me a break. It's simply a matter of the consumer demonstrating the product wasn't worth that price to them - no more, no less.
>Most college kids don't have the money to spend on something anyway so it doesn't affect the business model much now, but if they keep this attitude as they grow older and replace the people willing to pay, then there will be a problem.
Yes but most college kids have a lot of free time to hunt for the music they want on P2P networks and torrents they have time to deal with the spyware/malware, bad files poor quality rips etc as they get older have children get jobs they have less time for this, and are for more likely to choose convenience over price as they do with many other things...
Why does itunes work ? Why do people pay $3 for a cup of coffee from starbucks they are one and the same.
"DRM ensures that software is only used by people who are allowed to use it: Those who payed for it."
Can you name one piece of mainstream software which can only be used by those who paid for it?
"Instead, encourage DRM that works."
There is no DRM that works. The only kind of DRM that comes close to working is something like Steam, which provides real benefits to the users (e.g. download to any computer, auto-patching, easy purchasing)... and I believe that's been cracked for those who don't want to pay for their games.
Companies have been foisting DRM on us for decades, going back at least as far as the absolutely retarded 'copy protection' scams of the 1980s which required nonsense like sticking a prism over the TV screen to read some corrupted text. I'm not aware of a single DRM scam which hasn't been broken, and the 'toughest' have often been rapidly broken precisely because they were so freaking annoying to users who paid for the software.
Surely after trying and failing for decades, smart people would accept that the whole thing is stupid and move on?
Your last point is the key for me. If I'm going to pay, it must be more functional than the free version. I want to pay a single fee for each song/show/film, which gives me the ability to obtain it in a variety of formats including new ones as they arrive. Technology moves so fast that even if you're allowed to buy the 'best' current version it will be defunct in shorter and shorter spaces of time - either because of a higher-quality (eg DVD to 720 to 1080) or more flexible (eg mp3, divx) version.
Back when stars were just employees of the studios, they made as many as 10 movies a year-- every year.
Now that they are a "star", they get more money and do a lot less work.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Actually, in the real world it is an excellent justification for leeching
1) If you can't afford it anyway, then no damage is done.
2) From their wild high lifestyle, it seems obvious they have gotten an unreasonable monopoly passed so I don't see why poor people should be bound to supporting them.
3) In the real world, I find most people are as moral as they can afford to be. If the products were reasonably priced, people would behave morally. Since the products are unreasonably priced, people both do not behave morally. Also, since the products are so unreasonably priced ($20 in USA/EU when they sell the same products for $2.49 in china and india *at a profit*) people do not even feel guilty about acting immorally (and even question if it is immoral).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Thanks to our crappy American school system, everyone thinks that everyone was a hippie in the 1960s and turned into yuppies in the 1980s and 1990s. The hippies and yuppies were just the most visible groups (just like jocks and cheerleaders are the most visible in high schools) while "the rest" became unassuming, mostly productive, somewhat boring, average people.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
As of right now, that shift hasn't happened - if anything, iTunes success has increased, despite the continuing existence of various P2P networks. I question whether your assumption is plausible...
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
There will always be an analog hole. There are only two things they can do about that. One is to degrade the analog quality. But this also degrades the user experience. That ultimately can't work. They can certainly go as far as making sure no analog connections exist between the playback source and the display. But to see it, you have to have a display. And that's a hole right there. The other thing they can do is restrict the ability to capture from the analog hole. But this ends up crippling devices that inherintly have to be analog, such as a camera. Watermarks are their best bet, but these have to be very subtle to avoid destroying the user experience. And the more subtle they are, the harder it is to make technology that can detect it in a variety of cases, and fit into a cheap consumer digital video camera made in China.
The real cause of the problem is not that content comes to us digitally. That's actually an advantage for the content providers. It's the fact that once a copy has leaked into the pirate world, stripped of its DRM encumbrance, there is no further loss of quality as there once was when everything was in analog.
Back when everything was analog, people put up with horrible quality just to get a movie cheap, or see one before they were otherwise allowed to for some reason. The fact that even today people try to sneak cameras into theaters to copy a major motion picture shows just how low a quality a lot people are willing to accept. Sure, some people today want their pirated copy to be perfect original digital reproduction. But the mass level of piracy will be quite happy with just the one generation of analog lossage that we have today.
The focus on stopping piracy needs to be at the distribution, not at the original capture. It only takes one leak and it's all over the internet. DRM would have to be 100% perfect to make a dent in piracy. It simply cannot do that. It won't work.
What DRM will do, however, is stop casual copying. It can prevent someone from making a copy for a neighbor. Now the neighbor will have to go to the internet to get a "real pirate copy". It will also cause people to have to buy more copies than they wanted, to be able to play on a variety of devices, of the most intrusive of DRM comes into being. But that is what the content producers are really wanting in the end, which would drive up sales because of this deprivation of fair use. That is ultimately what DRM can work for, and is what the content producers want.
DRM will also cripple many ways people can even play or watch the content they legally buy (or would legally buy if they knew they could play it). The number of such people affected is still small, and may well remain small (e.g. die hard BSD/Linux users). Because these people are affected, some of them will (and most of the rest will support) find ways to crack the DRM directly. So basically, DRM itself creates motives to crack DRM even among those willing to pay for everything they have (e.g. are not tha freeloader minority). So DRM will always be under attack. And big corporations have continually shown they are unable to make perfect technology, especially that involving encryption.
DRM will fail. But the prospect is that it could take as much as 20 years for big corporate executives to realize this. They are slow learners (as the internet itself has shown on a massive scale).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This is what happens when technology moves faster than the wealthy and powerful move.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Legality and morality are entirely different and people should care less about the former and more about the latter. If you're an American, think of it this way: Signing the Declaration of Independence was an act of treason. Now, downloading digital content isn't as noble as throwing off an oppresive empire in the hopes of starting a country based on freedom, but to assume something is bad because "it's illegal" is shortsighted.
Personally, I feel that downloading content without compensating the creator (in the way they ask) is immoral. I generate content for a living and I expect to be paid for it. It would be hypocritical not to extend the same courtesy to others. If something is simply illegal and not immoral I don't have a problem breaking that law.
It wasn't meant to be "funny", it was meant to be an entertaining read.
:-). When I submitted it to /. I didn't describe :-). I
/. - they never run my submissions :-) :-) :-).
That's not the same thing
it as a "Hilareous rant", as it wasn't funny and not a rant
described it as "musings on DRM and Star Trek".
But hey, this is
Jeremy.
Great rant, but a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of DRM, probably deliberately I might add, in order to highlight the fundamental misunderstandings of industry senior mgmt.
;^)
DRM is not implemented to end piracy, or prevent it. There is precious little that can stop that.
It is implemented to keep Joe Blow from handing out freebies to his Toms, Dicks and Harrys.
And that's all.
It keeps copying from being a *trivial* operation, and forces him to associate with absolute criminals if he wishes to get something for free. Most folks don't want to do that. Many don't make it past all the porn popups, in fact.
So DRM works, but should always be simple enough and unobtrusive. Anything more is a liability.
Trying to design a "watertight and unbreakable" DRM, of the kind discussed in this article, is the perfect way to end that balance and hoist content providers by their own petard. (c.f.: Starforce, Sony rootkit)
So that's the kind of thing engineers should be saying "no" to, for the sake of their own company's continued profitability.
--
Toro
Thanks for trying to divert attention from the root problem, but they are not sharing anything. In both cases they bought the material through legitimate sources (iTMS and Best Buy.) Their opinion on the question of "is sharing right or wrong?" is completely irrelevant.
And not that I know her opinions on intellectual property rights (she's only 13,) but in the case of the "iTunes niece" every song I saw in her iTunes collection was bought and paid for -- I saw no MP3 files, just AAC files. She's spent hundreds of dollars at the iTMS and can't copy a note of it to her LG phone. Yet DRM is somehow justifiable because she might be an IP thief; because she might harbor dark inner thoughts of audio piracy?
Are you asking me? You can't ask them, because they're not computer geeks -- they can't tell the difference between an actual error and a licensing violation. They see a black screen, or they see no options, or they get a "Player error, click here for details" (and clicking "here" yields a dialog box that reads something like "Error code C1234567 - Invalid access to protected content".) The industry doesn't even have the courage to tell people the truth, instead they hide DRM behind error windows and inscrutable codes and ambiguous legalese. The industry thrives on the confusion, because it deflects the blame for DRM violations to they mystical realm of "computer errors".
If the industry is going to continue with DRM, they owe it to all of us to go balls-to-the-wall with their accusations. It would be much better if a full screen window popped up and said "Your computer is not broken. The legitimate owners of the material you are trying to play believe that you are attempting to steal their intellectual property without paying for it. Click here to send them the $20.00 required to unlock this media and then we will rescind our reporting of you to the FBI for attempted piracy so that you will not have to face fines of up to $250,000 and 25 years in jail. This threat has been brought to you by Dell and Microsoft on behalf of Sony Entertainment." At least it would be honest, and I wouldn't get asked all these questions like "did I break my computer?" And it would reduce piracy, which is their stated goal.
John
The bottled water companies do not seem to have a problem turning a profit despite the availability of free alternatives.
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>>The bottled water companies do not seem to have a problem turning a profit despite the availability of free alternatives.
Exactly. It is all marketing, and they deserve every dime if they can convince people that their water is better and get them to pay for it.
The record industry is the same. They have convinced quite a bit of people to demand their particular artists instead of the huge supply of legitamely free music available.
The difference is that some people have been convinced that yes, the record industry artists are better and we want, nay demand, their music, but we are not going to pay for it unless the industry can figure out a way from preventing us from just taking it.
The bottled water industry is profitable because they built up demand and while controlling supply of their product. If the music industry loses too much control of supply, then there won't be enough profit to sustain it. Why spend millions making everybody want NSYNC if you can't make a profit off this demand.
I have no interest in "protecting property rights", and that is not the purpose of copyright law. Copyright law is supposed to be an incentive to create. A reasonable copyright term for music is probably 10 or 15 years. For software and movies it is probably more like 5 or 10 years. Seriously, are you aware of any company that uses the projected 10 year profits to justify a project? A movie studio will consider box-office and DVD sales... perhaps one run at TV syndication. How many of you are using a 10-year-old copy of software?
So now, why do we have copyrights that last 90+ years? Certainly that isn't the result of any sort of just process that I can think of - and stupid laws like the DMCA show that we are still going in the wrong direction. Quite a few people that I have spoken to view their blatant disregard of copyright as not only a way to get free stuff, but also hope that it will bring down the overall system. Maybe that is naive and juvenile, but I think you should know that the file sharing crowd is not ONLY inspired by greed - or at least no more so than the other side. After all, they are SHARING, not just grabbing.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.