Is Copy Protection Needed or Futile?

Hugh Pickens writes "Columnist Saul Hansell is hosting a debate about copyright issues and technology on his blog at the New York Times . On one side Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, says that anyone who is intellectually honest must 'acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world' and that we should be 'identify workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive and that fully respect other interests such as privacy and fair use.' Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, responds that 'locks will be broken, and so a business model that depends on locking is very vulnerable' adding that locks may form a part of certain successful business models but 'too much reliance on locking can seriously backfire.' Wu and Cotton will respond to each other and to comments by readers today." As for the man on the street, Panaqqa wrote us with word that the Question Copyright site has posted an interesting video of ordinary people explaining why they think copyright exists. It's pretty clear that most people don't understand it at all.

Comments

Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the text:

Monday's Question

Should creators insist on technology that will restrict the copying and transmission of copyrighted works? Any lock can eventually be picked. Do these restrictions provide speed bumps to help keep honest people honest? Or do they create a permanent war between creators and users that may hurt everyone?
Rick Cotton

Rick Cotton: Given our experience to date, it is clear that technology can be and needs to be part of the answer in many areas to protecting copyrighted works on-line. But this can be done flexibly, avoiding "war" between creators and users while respecting privacy, fair use and other reasonable concerns that too frequently are raised not as concerns to be addressed, but as excuses seeking to block any action at all.

It's hard, if not impossible, to have a meaningful discussion on this issue unless we can agree on the following premise: the broadband, digital world is awash in a tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content. As to the question at hand, it is entirely reasonable to explore technological solutions. A few key building blocks:

1. There may not be a single answer to this question. It may vary by medium, by technological environment and by groups of creators. Some media may be more susceptible to flexible, effective and commercially reasonable technology protections than others. Some groups of creators may have different preferences than others. Some tech environments may be easier to address first than others.

2. Many creators devote huge amounts of time, creative energy, and -- in commercial settings -- monetary investment to produce copyrighted works. Media companies, including NBC Universal, have made major commitments to utilize technology to deliver great content to fans in many new ways and to build new business models. Both fairness and the law (firmly rooted in the U.S. Constitution) support creators' right to control the use of their work and to be compensated for these efforts (if that is what they want). " In today's digital world, that includes taking steps to protect their works from indiscriminate, wholesale theft on the internet.

3. Those who suggest that technological protections are not needed must, if they are intellectually honest, acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world on the broadband internet. This indefensible massive trafficking simply must be reduced in any kind of law abiding society. We should be working collaboratively and cooperatively to identify workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive and that fully respect other interests such as privacy and fair use.

4. Another feature of this debate that should change is technologists disingenuously trashing technology. Too often, the same people who enthusiastically and unreservedly sing the praises of the infinite and wondrous capabilities of digital technology in virtually every other respect pretend that technology has nothing to offer and no ability to reduce the massive trafficking in wholesale infringements of entire works (certainly in the area of video, film, TV, games and software). It is categorically and demonstratively untrue and unworthy of tech champions. Current filtering technology, for example, now being deployed on video sharing sites such as MySpace, Microsoft's Soapbox, and even soon on YouTube work with a high degree of technical effectiveness, stopping unauthorized copyrighted material from being uploaded while permitting authorized material to be posted. There remain obvious challenges. But the tech community has demonstrated its capability to solve similar challenges in multiple other arenas. There is no reason to think that the challenges of content protection technology are any different.

5. The imperfect protection offered by anti-piracy technologies - "Every lock can be picked" - is no

Re:Irony?

[maeka]

5. The imperfect protection offered by anti-piracy technologies - "Every lock can be picked" - is no reason to give up on them. Despite the existence of lock picks, identity thieves, and hackers, cars and homes still have locks, e-mail accounts have passwords, and computers have firewalls.

Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls all differ greatly from media DRM in (at least) one important way:
Not one of the security models used in his analogy depends on giving the key to the potential attacker. With media DRM you are given a restricted format and an obscured key to unlock it. This is its weakness, and has no corollary with the examples he gave.

Two - in the case of car and home locks - deterrence is enough. I don't need to secure my house against a perfect thief, unless I have the Hope diamond in my bedroom. I only need to secure my home better than my neighbor does. Even securing my house well enough to change the risk:reward or difficulty:reward balance is enough to greatly reduce the chances of a break-in.

Re:Irony?

[AKAImBatman]

That's not ironic. It's stupid and contrarian. This is how you add to a discussion:

Those who suggest that technological protections are not needed must, if they are intellectually honest, acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world on the broadband internet.

If we are truly to be intellectually honest, then we must address the problem of supply versus demand. Rampant piracy suggests that the demand for content delivered over the Internet is obvious. Yet digital content has traditionally been held hostage by physical media. In many of the instances that content is provided digitally, it is further held hostage behind walls of incompatibilities, digital restrictions, overpricing, poor terms of services, and other devaluing options. All in the name of "protecting" digital content.

The preciously few times that digital content is loosed upon the populace at a fair price and fair terms, it blooms and propers. Which (if we are to be "intellectually honest") means that the failure to prevent copyright infringement is a failure to provide what the average consumer wants. When the content producers fail, many consumers take matters into their own hands.

My dear Warner Bros., why has the DVD of 300 been available for over 6 months, yet it is impossible to purchase or rent online? BBC, why are you not catering to your international audience by providing quality shows like Doctor Who on services like iTunes? NBC, thank you for your website. We very much enjoy the television content you provide. Now why are you backing out of the lucrative iTunes deal? You don't need exclusivity in this business. Viacom, CBS makes a killing on promoting their Late Late Show on YouTube. Why are you cutting off promotion of your excellent Comedy Central series rather than embracing it? (And thereby having some modicum of control over it.)

No. If we are to be "intellectually honest", we must face the fact that content producers are afraid. The world has changed, yet content producers cling to any false sense of control they can find. Each of these walls crumble under the might of economic demand, for which content producers only call for a bigger wall. Your customer is not your enemy. As with the barbarians at the gates of Rome who only wanted the land and crops originally promised to them by the emperor, your customers only want easy access to the content you promise them. No one has proven that they are not willing to pay for that privilege.

Re:Irony?

[snl2587]

I only need to secure my home better than my neighbor does.

Or be considerably poorer than your neighbor. Either works, really.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

I only need to secure my home better than my neighbor does. Even securing my house well enough to change the risk:reward or difficulty:reward balance is enough to greatly reduce the chances of a break-in.
  Hmm, that gives me an idea for helping secure my home: A burglar is probably gonna have a quick look under the mat or pots at the front of your house for a key. Why not put a front door key under one of those pots, but not your front door key. And label the key with the address that it is for (probably best the key doesn't actually work at that address). A burglar would no doubt try the key in my front door, find it doesn't work, but be tempted by the address, so might then piss-off and stop trying to enter my house?

Re:Irony?

[russotto]

Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls all differ greatly from media DRM in (at least) one important way:
Not one of the security models used in his analogy depends on giving the key to the potential attacker.

Here's a second critical difference: Breaking the lock on one physical item nets you one physical item. Breaking the protection on a copy-protected work nets you as many copies of that work as you care to make.

And a third difference: Sometimes breaking the copy-protection on a work allows you to copy many other works as well.

If breaking one auto lock gave a thief access to every car of that model, and perhaps every car of that model year, they'd be pretty useless. Such is copy protection.

Re:Irony?

[morgan_greywolf]

Exclusivity -- exactly right. Here's the problem: on television, exclusivity makes a certain sense -- you want to drive people to YOUR advertisers, not anyone else's.

But when you are selling content, it makes no sense whatsoever. Think of it this way, media executives: What makes better sense to you? Putting DVDs in as many stores as possible, or making sure you are the only one to sell it? Which is going to get a wider audience and more buyers? Which is likely to keep people from buying it?

It's the same for online content. You want to sell it in as many places and through as many different channels as you can. The more widely available it is, the easier it is for the consumer to make the purchase. If a consumer has to go out of their way to get something you are selling -- well, they just won't buy it. And, yes, for iTunes subscribers, going to some other website to get your content constitutes 'going out of their way'.

Re:Irony?

[maeka]

Here's a second critical difference: Breaking the lock on one physical item nets you one physical item. Breaking the protection on a copy-protected work nets you as many copies of that work as you care to make.

And a third difference: Sometimes breaking the copy-protection on a work allows you to copy many other works as well.

Yes, I agree those are two very important distinctions. I had thought of the second one, but after I posted. The third one is a good point I had not considered.

Counter, though, is that the third point is possibly more of an artifact of this transitional period.

As soon as the media companies can reasonably assume a large (enough) percentage of their market has persistent internet connections (possibly as soon as they can trust a large enough percentage of media players have a persistent connection) shouldn't they be able to deploy a wide range of ever-changing DRM systems? With such a model the ability to contain a single security breech to a small number of files should be possible.

Re:Irony?

[nine-times]

You're right to bring up the idea of deterrence. Anyone security expert worth their salt will tell you that security is really all about deterrence. You can't make something impossible to access, and even if you could, the only way to completely secure it is to disallow all access, even to the owner. Otherwise, the owner could inadvertently give access to someone else.

So the purpose of security measures is to make it difficult to get unauthorized access, risky to attempt to gain unauthorized access, and very likely to get caught if you do gain unauthorized access. That's all. However, a good DRM scheme has to be transparent to the authorized user, meaning it has to be simple to get access, without risk to gain access, and unlikely to suffer bad consequences from getting access. Therefore it's just incompatible with the idea of security. You don't secure things against authorized access.

Re:Irony?

[russ1337]

"Should creators insist on technology that will restrict the copying and transmission of copyrighted works? "

My first thoughts are : Maybe, but let the CREATORS decide. Currently the CREATORS have little/no say as it is the DISTRIBUTORS (publishers and Record Companies) that insist on this technology in efforts to maintain their relevance and monopoly. The CREATORS might be happy enough to make money through live performances etc, and opening and sharing the media then becomes free advertising. But either way, let the creator decide NOT the distributor.

Secondly, I have to add the comment based on the view of Rickard Falkvinge from the Swedish Pirate Party after having watched that 80minute long discussion he had at Harvard (look for it on youtube) - paraphrased below:

If you're going to police Copyright of electronic media, then the people responsible for policing it will want surveillance of all electronic communication. (e-mail, internet surfing, internet backbone, content filtering etc). Is upholding an archaic business model for one or two industries worth removing the civil liberty of private communication between two parties? - No

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls all differ greatly from media DRM in (at least) one important way: I'd say the important difference is that I lock my car and my home. I don't expect the car company to lock my car for me* and tell me that I'm not allowed to unlock it. I don't expect a home builder to lock my house and not let me in.
Media with DRM on the other hand is locked by the producer and the consumer isn't allowed to unlock it.

* Actually, my car does lock itself once I start moving over 10 mph.

(Note: this isn't a comment on the pros or cons or DRM, but rather a comment on the limitation of the analogue)

Re:Irony?

[UbuntuDupe]

I don't believe you have cited differences.

Not one of the security models used in his analogy depends on giving the key to the potential attacker. With media DRM you are given a restricted format and an obscured key to unlock it. This is its weakness, and has no corollary with the examples he gave.

The listed examples (car locks, home locks ...) actually are alike in this respect. When you lock your door, you "give" the thief the key in an obscured way. Ask any locksmith. The information contained in a physical lock, by itself, suffices to create a tool that can bypass that lock and other similar ones.

Two - in the case of car and home locks - deterrence is enough. I don't need to secure my house against a perfect thief, unless I have the Hope diamond in my bedroom. I only need to secure my home better than my neighbor does. Even securing my house well enough to change the risk:reward or difficulty:reward balance is enough to greatly reduce the chances of a break-in.

Copy protection is the exact same way. It only needs to be strong enough so that for most people, their utility is maximized by doing something *other* than copying the work. The person adding the copy protection is, just like you, trying to manipulate the risk:reward ratio of copying.

Re:Irony?

[Brad Eleven]

And there you have it for television: The customer is not the consumer. The customer is the advertiser. Forget the consumer. There's no rationale for treating the consumer with any respect or consideration. The emphasis is on proving the value to the customer--the advertiser.

Perhaps the same applies in a different way for film and music, albeit blunted and less direct. The real customer is obviously not the consumer... it's the investors, which vary from enterprise to enterprise.

We tend to think we have a stake and perhaps a say because we spend our time watching and/or listening, when really we're simply spending time with no promise of return on that investment. Celebrity is impossible without fans, but there's no way to reward the fans except with more output.

Investors and advertisers, though, can be rewarded more directly.

After all, it's just entertainment. I'll cop to ranking it as more important than simple distraction from my responsibilities, but ultimately, it's just some stories that I like.

More than anything, I'm interested in this discussion because I find it entertaining to see how content providers, producers and "owners" are squirming. How long, I sometimes wonder, how long until one of more of them acts out inappropriately? Surely it'll be a big hit on YouTube.

In general, the same applies for my fascination with Presidential candidates: Surely one of them is just going to pop. The difference is that the result of that conflagration is far more profound than whether some studio is going to use DRM or not.

Re:Irony?

[xtracto]

Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls all differ greatly from media DRM in (at least) one important way:
Not one of the security models used in his analogy depends on giving the key to the potential attacker. With media DRM you are given a restricted format and an obscured key to unlock it. This is its weakness, and has no corollary with the examples he gave.

Ah, that could not be stated in a more insightful way. Thanks.

Copy procopyrighttection is stupid, and I am talking about copy protection for any kind of intellectual property (temporalrly property of the author by means of copyright). The main idea behind all those other locks is deterrent. But with intellectual property you simply can not deter someone from modyfing the bytes of their computers at their couch by putting locks.

I think a better idea would be watermarking. If I was someone like the RIAA, I would spend all the millions of dollars they have spent in the frugal lawsuits in researching better (undetectable, unmodifiable, more incriminating, etc) watermarking methods in order to really deter the people that acquired legally some work from illegaly distributing it.

Re:Irony?

[Just Some Guy]

The new ThinkGeek ad under your diatribe is for "MORE FLEXIBLE SCREWING". Now that is targetted marketing.

Re:Irony?

[Belial6]

There is a bigger difference. With the other items you listed, the person who has paid for the item, owns the lock. When I have a car, home lock, email account and computer firewall, I get to control the lock on my stuff. I can even unlock them and let anyone or everyone have access to them. DRM is the only lock where someone else gets is trying to lock up my stuff, and telling me who I can give access to, or even how I access my stuff.

Re:Irony?

[maeka]

Copy protection is the exact same way. It only needs to be strong enough so that for most people, their utility is maximized by doing something *other* than copying the work. The person adding the copy protection is, just like you, trying to manipulate the risk:reward ratio of copying.

Except, as has been mentioned by others elsewhere in this thread, for the fact that picking my home's lock does not give you access to my neighbor's home.

Also, to pick my Honda's lock you need physical access to my home. This limits greatly the number of people able to work on picking the lock. To break the security on a DRM'd file - any (easy to make) copy will suffice.

Re:Irony?

[Maxo-Texas]

You are also ignoring the fact that other grossly overpriced items invite theft and law abuse.

There is such a glut of entertainment that there is no reason that Tom Cruise gets $20 million for a $100 million movie when a movie (and a host of people involved with the movie also get 7 figure and 6 figure salaries as well).

The fact is that a movie -- the hard technology of it, the writing, the editing, can be done at a 10th the cost it is currently done at (probably 1/100th).

Sane people do not pirate $6 dvd's. However $89 DVD is something different. Especially for a movie that made it's profits years ago and is in the "all gravy" phase.

Do people have a *right* to infringe (steal) creator's works? No.
But to think they will not when they can easily do so for $1 and two hours of their time is insane.

Also... I used to write software which was used to earn my company 8 billion dollars. Why are movie and television writers so special that they get paid for the rest of their life when they write yet another boilerplate television script?

Actors... writers... everyone in hollywood is in for a wakeup call. Multi-million dollar salaries are going to be unsupportable very soon. Already, I spend 30% of my entertainment time on free things like Star Wreck, Fan Movies, and so on. A huge chunk of my time goes to Mmorg's at $15 a month (maybe 50 cents per hour). And then DVD's of series like Mission impossible and Heroes run me about $1 per hour for entertainment. Why does a movie justify $15 per hour? It doesn't.

The compensation in the entertainment industry is grossly inflated.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

s/Honda's/home's/

Re:Irony?

[skeeto]

anyone who is intellectually honest must 'acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world'

I think and "intellectually honest" person might look at this and say, "This copyright things is all wrong and unfair. It no longer serves its original purpose. It needs some severe reworking, such as reducing terms to 5 or 10 years."

If the length of copyrights were 5 or 10 years, guess what? There would be very little "unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content" online.

Re:Irony?

[UbuntuDupe]

Except, as has been mentioned by others elsewhere in this thread, for the fact that picking my home's lock does not give you access to my neighbor's home.

I don't see how that would even count as a *relevant* difference, but it's not even true. Constructing a key given a lock, will give you an instrument capable of bypassing similar locks as well.

Also, to pick my Honda's lock you need physical access to my home. This limits greatly the number of people able to work on picking the lock. To break the security on a DRM'd file - any (easy to make) copy will suffice.

Okay, still not a relevant difference. So, for you (!), bypassing DRM protection is easier. Doesn't change the fact that DRM's inclusion, like physical locks, alters the risk:reward ration sufficiently to maintain profitability of the protected works.

Re:Irony?

[maeka]

Unless a design defect is discovered in a line of locks, picking one (or creating a specialized pick) does not grant all would-be attackers instant access. The best it can do is lower the barrier to entry, it can make the task easier. Physical access, time, and a certain level of skill are still required of the attacker.

This is very different from current media DRM schemes. Once a file is broken there is no longer a barrier at all. Anyone can use the broken file, without physical access, without spending time "picking the lock", and without any skill.

If a design defect is discovered in a line of physical locks, the locks can be changed. Until no media is delivered on physical media such recalls are impossible for the subjects of the original argument.

Re:Irony?

[robot_love]

God dammit I wish I could mod you a +6. Thanks for that great post. It should be required reading. "You cannot log in until you read all +6 posts." ...or something.

Re:Irony?

[tilandal]

DRM in no way alters the risk of copying. It only alters the difficulty of copying. A thief trying to break into a car that is locked takes on inherently more risk then a car that is unlocked because he is more likely to be seen. Copying a DRMed song from itunes is no more risky then copying a song from a CD.

Re:Irony?

[UbuntuDupe]

This is very different from current media DRM schemes. Once a file is broken there is no longer a barrier at all. Anyone can use the broken file, without physical access, without spending time "picking the lock", and without any skill.

Assuming (baselessly) they can find your freed file.

Re:Irony?

[ajs318]

Copy protection is the exact same way. It only needs to be strong enough so that for most people, their utility is maximized by doing something *other* than copying the work. The person adding the copy protection is, just like you, trying to manipulate the risk:reward ratio of copying.

Yes, but that "something *other* than copying the work" might well turn out to be "copying a copy of the work that someone else already made".

You fail to account for people breaking copy-protection just for the hacker challenge factor (I'm guilty of that; once I even bought a CD I didn't even like, just to see if I could crack the copy-protection ..... it fell at once to cdparanoia, leaving me feeling rather short-changed). It only takes for one person to break the copy-protection (and, trust me, it is breakable) and seed a torrent. From then on, the protection is meaningless. The lock on the door may be sound, but it doesn't help a lot when the walls have collapsed!

Since all copy-protection technology is expensive proprietary snake-oil sold by disingenuous hand-waving spivs, it must cost the record companies more to release a copy-protected CD -- which will still be copied just as heavily as if it was not protected -- than it would cost them to release a non-protected CD. The only people who are benefitting are the snake-oil pedlars.

Question for the record companies: If there are so many photocopiers in bookshops, why didn't people just photocopy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows instead of buying it?

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the address of the local police station.

Re:Irony?

[Maxo-Texas]

One problem...
Make the lock as strong as you want it. But if one person.. anywhere in the world breaks it, then it is broken for everyone.

It would be like if one person figured out how to jimmy a chevy in london and all chevy locks throughout the world unlocked.

Re:Irony?

[UbuntuDupe]

Okay, sure, that's a good point. The right term should be cost:reward ratio, rather than risk:reward ratio. We should all be careful to phrase our positions to the highest level of abstraction so as to allow examination of the underlying justification.

However, it doesn't change the point. Breaking DRM is illegal; therefore it has a risk. Even if it were not illegal, it would add difficulty, making it functionally equivalent to a physical lock.

Re:Irony?

[FireFury03]

Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls all differ greatly from media DRM in (at least) one important way

There is another very important difference - the locks on cars, homes, etc is there to benefit the user of the car, home, etc. Whereas the locks on content are there to benefit the rights holder and serve no benefit to the user - in fact, in many cases DRM is very detrimental to the user since it prevents them from doing things they have a right to do (either because the copyright holder doesn't want them to do those things, or because the copyright holder doesn't believe a enough people want to do that for it to be worth their while implementing support).

A good example is the "DRM" on DVDs, Bluray discs, etc. which prevents the owners of those items from exercising their rights to make fair-use copies, play the media on a platform of their choosing (for example, using Free software or to a TV that doesn't do HDCP), import discs from other regions and skip certain sections of the recording.

I'm also unconvinced that the DRM is being broken by people wanting to infringe the copyright. I suspect a lot of the DRM cracking is driven by people wanting to exercise their legitimate rights on content they are purchasing.

In my opinion, no amount of DRM will make a significant impact on copyright infringement. The only thing it does is inconveniences the legitimate consumers, rakes in licence fees for the DRM system's central authority, and (in the case of region coding) restricts international trade (which is legally quite dubious).

Re:Irony?

[UbuntuDupe]

Yes, but that "something *other* than copying the work" might well turn out to be "copying a copy of the work that someone else already made".

Fine. Rewrite my statement then: "Copy protection is the exact same way. It only needs to be strong enough so that for most people, their utility is maximized by doing something *other* than copying the work, or seeking out an existing, illegally distributed copy of the work."

Question for the record companies: If there are so many photocopiers in bookshops, why didn't people just photocopy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows instead of buying it?

Because the legal market price of the book was of lower disutility than obtaining such a copy and incurring associated risks. The disutility of the latter would be even higher if such copiers had additional barriers.

Re:Irony?

[AndersOSU]

The point I would like to see Rick Cotton address is how his mythical "workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive" addresses the problem that copy protection only needs to be broken once to show up on the file sharing networks. After that any copy protection only serves to burden the rightful owner.

"Workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive" only stops the casual pirate from uploading their file. It does nothing from stopping the casual pirate from downloading a cracked file that a serious pirate uploaded.

If the content producers are dead set on controlling the flow of their material given the realities of broadband, what they're looking for is digital watermarks, not digital locks. At least in that case you can track down whoever it was that originally purchased the file. No it doesn't work with any content that was ever given away freely (I'm still not sure why you'd want to protect that anyway) and no it isn't perfect. Yes, it is also a bit of closing the barn door after the horses are out, but it at least has some deterrent value.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

A better analogy of the lockpicking would be a safe that is not secured to any physical structure and small enough to move. If you are a thief and there is a safe that you can pick up and carry away, you would take it somewhere else and pick the lock where you would have a much less restricted time frame and risk of being caught.

If you have the locked file, you have as much time as needed to break the lock.

Re:Irony?

[FireFury03]

shouldn't they be able to deploy a wide range of ever-changing DRM systems?

This is significantly dangerous for the consumer since it means that the consumer's right to access their legally purchased content may be revoked at any time. For example - if the DRM server becomes inaccessible you really don't want all your content to be revoked (if the rights holder has gone bankrupt, for example, they aren't going to care that none of their customers can access their content any more).

Sadly many of the public who I have talked with about DRM seem to think this is a problem. Usually they say something along the lines of "I don't care if I lose access to my music in 10 years, after all it's 10 years old so not important" - I don't know about anyone else, but I still listen to music I purchased well over 10 years ago.

Re:Irony?

[CodeBuster]

With such a model the ability to contain a single security breech to a small number of files should be possible. Indeed, that was their intention with the Blu-Ray format or at least in part by allowing part of the decryption algorithm to be dynamically loaded from the disc. The model was still flawed in that the dynamically loaded code was subject to analysis, but the designers probably hoped that the extra effort involved in analyzing dozens or even hundreds of variations all different on different disks would be enough of a deterrent to discourage copying. Obviously they are wrong, for the reasons pointed above, but it was the first time that the DRM pushers took a slightly more dynamic approach to the problem (unsolvable IMHO).

The only way that their copy protection scheme would work is if they had complete end-to-end control of all hardware devices that might capture either the data or the sounds and images which is not only ridiculous but impossible. I have long thought that a different course should be pursued and it is as follows:

First, the music industry should discontinue their lawsuits and refund all money and reasonable legal expenses that they have inflicted upon average citizens of modest means in their lawsuit campaign. Second, they should apologize to both the artists and the fans for years of skullduggery, ripoffs, and other assorted nastiness. Third, they should charge reasonable prices for downloads of music in the format chosen by the user (ogg, mp3, aac, or whatever the customer wants). Finally, after all of these steps have been taken, they should make the case against wholesale copyright infringement by taking the moral high ground and appealing to peoples' sense of decency and fairness. Most people are reasonable and would be swayed by such an argument. They would not infringe copyright wholesale for the same reasons that they don't empty the cardboard change box (i.e. the one with no lock or other security) of the charity candy stand. The honor system works, and works at least as well as treating everyone like a thief. There will always be wholesale copyright infringers no matter what the industry does. However, the problem can be minimized for minimal cost and expense by taking the high road and appealing to peoples' noble side rather than taking the low road with lawsuits and injustice for all.

Re:Irony?

[immcintosh]

The real difference, to me at least, is that your car didn't cost me any money. That protected digital content I just bought did. Really, that's what sorta breaks any physical analogy I can think of--the fact that only with DRM are people forced to legitimately* break into their own possessions.

* The law might debate this, but basic ethics, at least in my opinion, does not.

Re:Irony?

[cliffski]

The customer is not the enemy, but its about time people campaigning very loudly against DRM and even against the idea of copyright realised the content producer isn't your enemy either. We are just people trying to make a living creating entertainment for lots of people. Yet generally, on sites like /. and digg, we are treated like rapists.

You can't expect any copyright holder to listen to a single word of criticism said by people who are abusive, sarcastic and insulting whenever the topic comes up, yet that is always the case.
And any discussion of how bad copyright or DRM is must be accompanied by serious proposals for how we can continue to get entertainment media created in the same quantity and variety using an alternate system. People waving their arms and talking about 'performances' and 'ad-revenue' haven't done the maths, or worked out how software developers and film makers can perform their works.

Re:Irony?

[UbuntuDupe]

My dear Warner Bros., why has the DVD of 300 been available for over 6 months, yet it is impossible to purchase or rent online?

Because they're wary of things that would facilitate illegal distribution, like online distribution, and only allow it with reservations.

And why is that? Because if they "rented" it online, they'd have to have really powerful DRM. That, combined with the meatspace-equivalent price point[1] they'd have to use, would anger fans, and make them more likely to violate the terms of the rental (by "recording" the video off their screen). Long story short, no good deed goes unpunished.

[1] Not price, nay, price point. The former would TOTALLY change the meaning of my point and violate the chain of logic at that step.

Re:Irony?

[FireFury03]

But when you are selling content, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Actually, it does make sense. If it is available through many channels, those channels will compete with each other and drive the price of the product down. On the other hand, making it available through a single channel will allow prices to remain high through a lack of competition.

The problem is that the content producers want to have their cake and eat it - they want high prices, yet also a large volume. In their efforts to maintain high prices by restricting distribution they have made it too hard or expensive for customers to legitimately buy the content. If there were no other way to get it then more customers might choose the legitimate channel, but with the ease of copyright infringement over the internet people will choose the (significantly) easier option and ignore the legitimate product.

This is, of course, made worse by DRM systems since the black market version is now of _higher_ quality than the legitimate version because the DRM has been removed. For example, the black market DVDs no longer force you to sit through long videos telling you how stealing is wrong.

Content producers need to realise that you can't stop all copyright infringement, but given a quality product at a reasonable price the majority of people will choose to go the legitimate route.

Remember that even if your DRM system is so good that the majority of people can't circumvent it, that doesn't matter - it only takes a single person to circumvent it, strip the DRM and post the resulting content and all your potential customers can now download the un-DRMed version with ease.

Re:Irony?

[maeka]

Assuming (baselessly) they can find your freed file.

Are you implying there is difficulty in acquiring "scene" distributed media, much less the hundreds of smaller providers?
Far from baseless, I think the current situation proves my "assumption" correct.

Re:Irony?

[ajs318]

I think any shopkeeper would willingly help you photocopy a bestselling novel, given how much they would make on it. Let's say 600 pages at 10p a copy, that's £60. Obviously they don't get all of that, but I bet the chunk they make is still way more than they would make selling the book (which they have still got, of course). As for risks, well, the biggest risk attendant with photocopying an entire book is that you'll drop the huge stack of papers and get them out-of-order. Rationalisations aside, your point was spot-on; it's cheaper to buy the official product.

There's a price point below which CDs would no longer be economically feasible to copy, and I reckon that's about £4.

Re:Irony?

[AKAImBatman]

Because they're wary of things that would facilitate illegal distribution [...] Because if they "rented" it online, they'd have to have really powerful DRM.

That's a silly argument. It's pitifully easy to rip a DVD and share it online. I know for a fact that I could go and download 300 off of Pirate Bay if I wanted. But I don't want to. I *want* to do the right thing. I *want* to purchase the movie legally from the content owner. I *want* MovieLink to have a better selection than when I was using it. I *want* iTunes to carry more blockbusters other than just Disney movies.

As a consumer, I want those things and have a track record of being willing to pay for them. The infrastructure exists in the form of MovieLink, iTunes, Vongo, etc., and are no more dangerous than a DVD. (In fact, it's quite a bit easier to rip from a DVD.) In most cases, they also generate the same revenue per copy. Yet studios are blind to these simple facts.

Re:Irony?

[gmack]

You need to read that more closely. He doesn't have any idea how it's done. He wants everyone else to figure out a way to protect HIS content.

Did they help You Tube come up with the fix he was bragging about? No. They just sued You Tube for not implementing it fast enough.

Re:Irony?

[AndersOSU]

While I have no doubt that that is true, I guess that leads me to this question:

Does he really want someone filter every electronic exchange between individuals? A system like YouTube's or MySpace's only works because they are the gatekeeper. Who is the gatekeeper of a torrent, of emule? Look, the p2p software/protocol developers learned their lesson from napster - no central index means no gatekeeper.

And as to the inevitable suggestion that comcast could do this, why in the world should an ISP be any more responsible for the data that travels through it than the USPS?

Re:Irony?

[gandhi_2]

And YOU are ignoring the fact that only ONE thing decides cost or profit in a free-market economy.
Tom Cruise gets $20 million because he can. He can only get paid what willing to pay him. Movie studios can only get what the market will bear. Don't apply your morals to the ecconomics.
If someone's IP is being "stolen", then take it as a sign that PART of the market has decided not to bear it. It's just another cost of doing business.
Since we are on the topic...Why is it everyone on /. thinks that morals have no application until we start talking about evil corporations being greedy?

Re:Irony?

[srussell]

If we are truly to be intellectually honest, then we must address the problem of supply versus demand.

And to continue with this theme...

If we are truly to be intellectually honest, we'd acknowledge that "supply versus demand" is different in the world of electronic media than it is for physical product. The two variables in the equation of supply and demand are scarcity of supply, and strength of demand. Scarcity is (usually) driven by cost: if you build two chairs, the second chair costs you almost as much to produce as the first one does. Even in mass production, the difference in cost between the first and the 10,000th is infinitesimal compared the the cost difference between producing the first MP3 of a song and the second one. So, for intellectual property and electronic media (which, I'd argue, there is only a very thin boundary), the "scarcity" variable is almost irrelevant -- in this context.

If we are truly to be intellectually honest, we'd admit that the original purpose of intellectual property rights (including copyright) was to stimulate research, development, and production. The originator of the intellectual property was given certain rights to ensure that they could recoup their R&D costs and make some profit. It was not intended to grant them universal and exclusive rights in perpetuity; the authors of our IP laws were trying to find a balance between encouraging initial R&D, and all of the spin-off good that comes from having R&D released directly into the public. The main point here is that it has been recognized that it is better for the public to have no IP protection, and that IP protection itself can hinder new IP development. Obviously, with no IP protection, it will be more difficult for companies to recoup their R&D costs, which discourages R&D. But in the current climate, we've swung too far into the "protection" zone; there's no public benefit for submarine patents; there's no public benefit for perpetual copyrights and patents; and there's a mounting body of evidence that DRM is actively bad for the public.

--- SER

Re:Irony?

[InvalidError]

I think a better idea would be watermarking.

This was suggested years ago and someone proposed a simple counter to it: averaging.

Given copies of multiple specimens of a watermarked title, it would be possible to compare them and identify the watermarking algorithm then devise a filtering/averaging algorithm to mangle the watermark without affecting the resulting file's usability. The more specimens get used in the "averaging attack", the harder it becomes to positively identify any of the original specimens from the diluted watermark.

Since implementing watermarks would require producing CD/DVD/HD media unit-by-unit and re-processing/transcoding downloadable media for each download, it does not appear economically viable for most scenarios.

Re:Irony?

[Chosen Reject]

watermarking methods in order to really deter the people that acquired legally some work from illegaly distributing it.

Yay, and then my iPod gets stolen and suddenly I'm charged with hundreds of thousands of dollars for copyright infringement. But I could point to a police report that states my iPod was stolen, you say? Then it's a good thing I never let anyone borrow my iPod. It's a good thing my computer is never attached to a network so there is no possibility of someone breaking into it and copying my media. It's a good thing the idiots at Best Buy never copy media from a customer's computer. Boy, if those things happened somebody might be held liable for copyright infringement they never did.

Note: I don't own an iPod, I'd never use the idiots at Best Buy (or anywhere else for that matter), and seeing as how I'm on /., of course my network is immune to any and all network attacks. I'm just sayin'.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

For further "intellectual honesty" we need to consider the market value of the content. Internet distribution and redistribution of digital content constitutes a truly free market. The _free_ market has determined the value of a song to be somewhere between $0.00 and $0.99. The media conglomerates have lost control of the market. That's what they're so upset about.

Re:Irony?

[gmack]

At least with a movie you can just buy it and watch whenever you want. If it's a TV show they expect you to watch it whenever they want.

I also like to pay for things. I believe in supporting artists and I have a mid sized movie collection containing some of my favourite classics and the odd new movie (some of them are already blu-ray).

But what about TV shows? My favourite shows are, for the most part, on when I want to be doing something else. TV "prime time" is at times when I prefer to be out with my friends. That means the only option I have if I want to watch them is to pirate them. I would gladly pay a reasonable price if I could just for the convenience of watching what I want when I want without having to spend the the time hunting through torrent sites and hoping that whatever I just downloaded wasn't complete crap for quality or in a codec I've never seen before.

Re:Irony?

[gmack]

The MPAA has already been lobbying the isps for ages exactly that. See the latest announcement by AT&T from CES.

As for the USPS.. well I'm sure they would demand that if they could.

Re:Irony?

[ultranova]

I'm guilty of that; once I even bought a CD I didn't even like, just to see if I could crack the copy-protection

Hm... So, if a music exec has a few songs which are pure crap to the point where no one would ever buy them, he could burn them to a CD, wipe it with steel wool, turn off error correction in his CD driver, copy the CD, and send the copy to be mastered and copied. Then he'll brag publicly that his new copy protection scheme is invincible and welcomes any pirate to try. Since no one wants to listen to the songs, no one will realize that a regular CD player can't play it, and will assume that the the inability of a computer CD drive to read it is due to the copy protection. The word gets around and all the l33t h4x0rs want to try, so the crap songs sell like bread.

MUAHAHAHAA !!!

Re:Irony?

[More Trouble]

I used to write software which was used to earn my company 8 billion dollars. Why are movie and television writers so special that they get paid for the rest of their life when they write yet another boilerplate television script? Because it's in their contract. Maybe your contract included a slice of the $8 billion, perhaps in the form of options. Or maybe you weren't valuable/smart enough to negotiate that. Perhaps if you'd participated in some sort of collective bargaining, you could have gotten yourself a better deal. Or maybe you got the best deal possible, given the market.

:w

Re:Irony?

[Timothy Brownawell]

And YOU are ignoring the fact that only ONE thing decides cost or profit in a free-market economy. Tom Cruise gets $20 million because he can.

And the reason he can is that he isn't competing in a free market. Free markets require lots of producers of interchangeable goods, but there's only 1 Tom Cruise. Sure there are other actors, but they're all different. So instead of a free market we have somewhat of a monopoly market, with somewhat different behavior and rules.

Re:Irony?

[AKAImBatman]

I use iTunes, so for the most part I can't identify with your problem. :-P

But I agree. Television on-demand is a growing concern. While not perfect, the TV industry has been fairly good about responding with Tivo, iTunes, NBC.com, etc. There's still more progress to be made there, but it's moving right along. I'd say the Movie industry is currently the one lagging the greatest while the RIAA (which may or may not represent the companies they're SUPPOSED to represent) kicks and screams the most.

Re:Irony?

[PitaBred]

If you haven't made something new in 5 years, you need to get your ass back to work just like everyone else. Hell, make it 10 years. Copyright as it is is a drain on society. DRM is a bad idea in general, especially relating to music. You may not be able to perform movies, but I'll guarantee you people will buy the official copies of the video if you include some other value. Say, a code that allows you to log in and email the actors a question about the movie.

It's about time the "stars" of media started working for a living, like the rest of us. Things used to be that way until the 20's, when radio appeared, and content started centralizing. Now that the Internet has come about, we can get back to the natural order of things, where if you're a musician, you play music for a living, rather than record one hit record and then snort coke and live on the royalties. If you're a movie producer, you learn to cut your damn budget, stop overpaying moronic actors, and make a compelling story, as well as get the audience involved with the movie. If you make software, and you haven't made a new version or new product in 5-10 years, it's time to get out of the software business and dig ditches or ask people if they want fries with that.

The economy will survive. Just not looking the way that it is right now. Which means that even though some people may lose, the vast majority of us will win. And even the "losers" can win if they can figure out what way the wind is blowing soon enough. Get off your high horse... no one (with a clue) is wishing for the end of content producers. We're wishing for the end of the "a content consumer is the product, the advertiser is the customer" business model that makes some people very rich at the expense of the rest of us.

Re:Irony?

[carrier lost]

Three - Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls are not designed to lock out the owner

When you buy DRM, you are buying a lock designed to prevent you from legitimately using your own possessions.

Re:Irony?

[Maxo-Texas]

I agree with you entirely. I got paid a fair salary for the work done.

And I think writers, actors, producers got a deal in the past which was fair and as the number of people served scaled up, the deal became ridiculously good. And they are all still unhappy with it.

And with grossly inflated prices, they howl when people pirate their material.
And they do everything they can to suppress competition (guilds and unions these days mainly being about suppressing the potential number of writers, etc. as much as anything).

The dam is slowly breaking. It won't be long. Some "fan" produced material is extremely entertaining now and more worth my time than "pro" stuff.

Re:Irony?

[carrier lost]

Third, they should charge reasonable prices for downloads of music...

These people are like crack addicts. They are so accustomed to the $12-20 CD that they can't conceive of the windfall they would enjoy if they were to switch to a $2-5 CD. I personally would probably buy 5 CDs a week at those prices.

Why would I want to go through all the hassle of downloads (I don't) if I could just buy CDs for a fair price?

I don't have the exact link, but I remember hearing a story about a street performer who found that he could make a decent living by playing for tips and selling CDs of his music at $5 each.

Re:Irony?

[Maxo-Texas]

I have put it this way in the past...

People are as moral as they can afford to be.

If you need 10,000 songs to fill your iPod and you can buy them for a reasonable amount of work then you will do that. You feel good about honestly paying for it.

If they make it impossible, then you will redefine your morality so that you feel good about it anyway.

If they are complete jerks while making it impossible, then a lot more people will redefine their morality. Once society reaches a tipping point, then it is all over. I think despite some pretty blatant propaganda, the kids coming up today have a very dim view of copyrighted material- giving it less respect than I do. Myself, I can afford to so I adhere to the 28 year period (but feel anything over 28 years is fair game). One way i do this is by staying 6 to 18 months behind the release curve. Why pay $19.99 for "Stardust" when I *KNOW* it is going to be $5.99 within 18 months. I'll buy it honestly then.

But try to charge me a premium for a song written by a dead man 40 years ago when copyright periods were not even 40 years yet (and it should have been in public domain now) and I will let out a little happy dance and laugh of joy every time I play it with a complete lack of guilt.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well stated. I think it's crazy that the networks are unable to grasp the fact that high-quality, freely available copies of their media are already available. I have an AppleTV (I have several Apple computers and AppleTV is convenient for me; YMMV) and I am perfectly willing to pay the $1.99/show that Apple charges for a low-quality version of a show I like that I may have missed. For example, My wife ad I enjoy Heroes, but twice our Tivo managed to miss recording the show (cable service was out both times, but that's another complaint for another day) and we wanted to see the show. NBC and Apple are feuding and we can't purchase the show legitimately. NBC has decided to only show the show one time and we have no comfortable option to watch the show on our television (I hate web-based video) with our AppleTV. So instead, I need to get a pirated, higher-quality, HD version of the two episodes instead.

Generally I am opposed to piracy of any sort and would not pirate something, however, I'm paying over $100/month for cable and if I can't watch the show at the time the network showed it why can I not watch it later? I'm even willing to pay $1.99/show for a lower-quality version to resist prating a copy, if the networks will let me. Sadly, the networks think that if they don't offer something to people that it ceases to be available. I try to be an upstanding citizen, but I am watching the shows for their continuing story line. If I cannot watch a show in the middle of a season, I'll be forced to not watch the remaining shows until I can see them as reruns (of course, I'll have to watch the whole season in reruns) or wait for the DVD to come out. I've done exactly this with other shows in the past. The network loses viewers during the prime advertising rates of the show (for at least for one household) for the remaining shows in the season because I missed one show. The networks should want to keep me involved in he first-run story line so they make the most from advertisers rather than forcing me to watch the less profitable reruns in the future.

Today, I was wrestling with the same problem. My wife and I just discovered that Terminator: The Sarah Caonnor Chronicles has begun airing. We've missed the first two episodes and needed to decide whether to miss the entire first-run season because we missed two episodes, or pirate the two episodes to get ourselves up to speed so we can watch the future episodes as aired. Of course, I'd buy them for my AppleTV if they were available, but they're not. I finally decided to pirate them and got higher-quality files for free. It takes a while to download the files then transcode them for my AppleTV so we can watch them in the family room on the TV, but each time the process becomes easier, faster, and generally less hassle for me. My worry is that I'll eventually stop looking for the legitimate copy because it's been unavailable so many times before and simply skip this step. How many people are becoming pirates simply because it's becoming too much of a hassle (or outright impossible) to give the studios money for their product?

Re:Irony?

[Bob-taro]

There's a price point below which CDs would no longer be economically feasible to copy, and I reckon that's about £4.

I think it would be lower, or maybe even zero. If you're going to copy music, why buy even a £4 cd when you can rip mp3's off of a friend's cd and load them to a player. Now it's MORE convenient than the cd and I paid nothing.

And with your book example, sure it doesn't make economic sense to "xerox" a whole book instead of buying it, but book piracy does occur, because the per book cost of printing 1000s of books is very low.

Re:Irony?

[hoooocheymomma]

...a good DRM scheme has to be transparent to the authorized user, meaning it has to be simple to get access...

Sadly, I think your definition of "good," and that of your friendly neighborhood music/movie cartel are different. It is my personal feeling that Microsoft has no qualms with making the DRM schemes it pushes as intrusive and painful as possible in order to get backing from production studio, etc. We can only hope that consumers are unaccepting, or at least perceived to be unaccepting enough of intrusive and painful DRM that major media producers will move toward a nice, transparent way of doing things.

Re:Irony?

[cliffski]

Wow, try and tone down the bitterness, jealousy and arrogance a bit, and maybe some of the 'moronic actors' would give a flying fuck what people like you thought. You are a perfect number one example of the exact attitude that I mean

"moronic actors"
"get your ass back to work"
"work for a living like the rest of us"

Re-read my post. You are doing exactly what I knew people on here would do, sneer at people who decided to work for royalties rather than the nice safe cushy salary you chose, call them morons, yet strangely torrent their movies... What total fucking hypocrisy.
if all actors are lazy morons, you could obviously make so much more money and do such a better job if you started acting. So maybe you should get off your ass and go show those morons how easy it is eh?

Some famous actors make more money than you or I do. Deal with it. Some hedge fund managers make even more still, why not go hurl abuse at them?

Re:Irony?

[PitaBred]

People who decided to work for royalties by and large get fucked. Don't forget that.

I sneer at people who work for LONG TERM royalties. Notice how I mentioned 5 years and such in my post? I'm not for the abolishment of copyright, or for people profiting from it. I'm for the abolishment of a single work providing a lifetime of security. If someone is just living off of royalties, they're contributing exactly jack and shit to society. Copyright was not meant to be a gravy train. It was meant to provide people incentive to create new things. When they stop creating new things and adding to society, copyright has failed.

It's not hypocrisy that I work a safe, cushy job with a salary. A good band that gets popular and really uses a 10 year copyright term will make much more than I'd dream of in 10 years. That's the risk/reward. If they spend it all on hookers, booze and blow and have nothing left after copyright expires, that's not my problem. Those were their bad decisions. You seem to be under the assumption that if you're a creator or an artist, you are somehow OWED profitability, and perpetual income. You aren't. I don't get paid next year for the work I did yesterday. I won't get paid in 20 years for the work I did yesterday. That's what keeps me contributing to society. How much is RCA contributing to society? Nothing with regards to Elvis' music, aside from charging a hefty fee to buy his recordings. They're not creating anything, and they're definitely draining out of it by leveraging copyright of what is now a cultural icon, and rightfully should belong to America as a whole.

I don't abuse hedge-fund managers because they take a high-risk job with a big chance of failure, and they don't have copyrights on managing hedge funds which ensures that they'll get paid 150 years from now on work they did today. Actors and studios will, which isn't right. They don't have to keep working, because the system sets up a gravy train for their type of work.

I am not a hypocrite. I understand the game perfectly. You, however, do not seem to. Go look at an economics textbook, couple that with a couple of history texts, and then get back to me. I simply expect people to behave as if this were a capitalist economy, rather than trying to game the legal system into protecting a socialist style of governmental support for non-work.

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think one other major difference is that once I buy my house or my car I can both takes the locks off and/or leave them unlocked if I want to...

Re:Irony?

[Blue_Wombat]

The locks analogy does not work. The lock on my house is to keep burglars out, but I have bought the house and the lock on my front door does not restrict me. If I lose my keys then even if the builder of my house has gone out of business I can simply pay for a "circumvention device" in the form of a locksmith. DRM is more about control - going through my front door into the house I own does not require me to watch 2 minutes of adds from the housebuilding company first - but my legal copy of the Simpsons Movie does (or did, before I made a copy that does not insist on this).

As the purchasers of some digital content have discovered, when the vendor closes the business and they cant "authenticate" online they become unable to view the content that they have bought and paid for. However, if Toyota went bankrupt tomorrow, my key would still start my car.

Re:Irony?

[big_paul76]

If we are truly to be intellectually honest, then we must address the problem of supply versus demand. Rampant piracy suggests that the demand for content delivered over the Internet is obvious. Yet digital content has traditionally been held hostage by physical media. In many of the instances that content is provided digitally, it is further held hostage behind walls of incompatibilities, digital restrictions, overpricing, poor terms of services, and other devaluing options. All in the name of "protecting" digital content.

Here, here.

While we're all busy being intellectually honest, let's make another observation. Content middlemen like TV stations and the MPAA/RIAA have been making a killing through most of the 20th century on a shortage of "bandwith", that is, bandwith was limited by # of tv channels or amount of shelf space at the record store or a finite number of theaters where a movie could be shown.

These days, bandwidth gets cheaper every year. So that means an era of declining return-on-investment for the content middlemen. Scarcity is good for the seller but pretty crappy for the consumer or citizen. This is the 'elephant in the room' on this issue. The plain fact is, as bandwidth gets very cheap (as it has in the last 15 years or so), the content middlemen will see a declining ROE.

If this guy was concerned about being 'intellectually honest' he'd admit that our current copyright scheme is completely unsuitable to an age of networked computers, and that what he's doing is trying to stretch out the lifespan of the copyright gravy train he and his employers have been riding for almost 100 years now.

Re:Irony?

[jp10558]

The worst part is, this isn't just DRM. The whole legal system of licensing, the crappy license management software, the node locking etc imposes *huge* costs on anyone trying to do "the right thing".

In software:
First, you have to figure out which of several licenses is the right one for you. Then you have to fight with various vendors to get a quote - I've had to get quotes from companies like Acronis for $44 to continue maitenence on 2 license of TIW + UR. Why did they take that off their website? From Altiris I have to get a quote for 5 licenses of SVS ~$150. Why? Why isn't small numbers of licenses available for purchase on a website?

Then you've got crappy license management stuff like FlexLM for Matlab or ANSYS - which just serves to try and force you to do manual installs... Why can't I package for deployment? I have the licenses, why does it need to be node locked. Why do you care on the network licensed ones (that is, license is install anywhere on network, so many can be used at once)? If I want to update, they want me to go to each system manually and run the installer... How is this supposed to be done on 30 systems across several sites? Why do I have to waste time?

I could go on, but the point I'm making is if I just ignored the licensing or cracked it, I'd be able to do my job faster and spend more time on things that need more of an IT background than clicking next a lot, or waiting for PDFs so I can submit a payment!

On the media industries, we already see that CDs are a better deal for most users than digital music with DRM - better quality, less or no copy protection, will work or can be converted to any player.

Netflix is a great example - I can rent DVDs and pretty much watch them anywhere (though I might have to still break the license/law to watch on Linux), why would I want to use a streaming service that has crappy quality, requires Windows *and* IE?

eBooks pretty much continue to kill any possible market through stupid policies of locked formats, prices higher than paperbacks and the other issue of really expensive readers or lesser quality print.

Anyway,the above question is why do I have to pay all those costs? Why don't I get discounts on the media and devices if I have to spend so much time, effort, etc.

Digital watermarks fail as well. They do not address the concept of physical theft of a victim's PC, malware grabbing files, or other users of the PC sharing files. It's all the problems of filesharing but one more psudoproof the purchaser is the copyright infringer.

Re:Irony?

[init100]

Breaking DRM is illegal; therefore it has a risk.

Not necessarily. If you break a DRM scheme in the confines of your own home, how is law enforcement going to find out unless you are under constant surveillance?

Re:Irony?

[init100]

The GP argument is just a rehash of the old "DRM can work, just look at the success of encryption technologies" fallacy, which has been explained to death already. Unfortunately, those that would need this knowledge the most never seem to listen.

Re:Irony?

[SeaFox]

Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls all differ greatly from media DRM in (at least) one important way:
Not one of the security models used in his analogy depends on giving the key to the potential attacker. With media DRM you are given a restricted format and an obscured key to unlock it. This is its weakness, and has no corollary with the examples he gave.

Another difference is the ability to bypass the protection if needed is not held by a single entity (the content provider) which is a company (and companies have a history of merging, disappearing, changing polcies, "losing" the keys on accident and on purpose, etc).

If I break my Schlage key off in my Schlage doorset, I don't have to depend on Schlage to get my door open, or hope Schlage is still in existance to call to begin with. I can call any locksmith and get the door drilled or picked as needed and gain access to the contents of my home again.

Re:Irony?

[jp10558]

The biggest problem I have always had with copyright, especially as it is incredibly long now, is that it seems fundamentally unfair for content producers to somehow be due money ad infinitum for work they did once. I don't get paid every day for work I did in my last job... When I moved on, they stopped paying me.

But if I wrote a book with one publisher, and then later switched to another, the payments keep coming in.

I understand writing is hard. I understand it can take time to get published. Well, I don't find my job super easy - and it took me years to get it. I was rejected by lots of employers. Creating content is not special IMO - it's just another job, something that some people are good at and others suck at. Like most other jobs. But only content creators expect to get paid *over and over* for the same work as their due.

I don't know what the right answer is, but I do think this:
You don't have a right to make money. You can try to make money at what you do - and if it fails, well, that happens to lots of people.

I still think that as we go more and more digital, we're looking at lots of people making money in different ways. Several online comics provide the whole comic online, but still can sell books - see megatokyo for instance. Several software projects have "bug bounties" where interested parties donate money to getting bugs fixed, or to get features coded. Look at the amount of money raised to try and continue Star Trek Enterprise - it was in the millions. Look at Baen Books subscriptions. Sure, it's trivial to copy the partial books, but you want to read the ending of the story... Or you want the hardcover, or you want the author to write a sequel. Radiohead is a good example of music working without enforced copyright.

I still like the idea of various organizations providing some services, but not like the publishers etc of today. First, there could well be reviewers like the Consumer Reports of free media (there's a lot, what's good?). You pay a fee for an easy feed, or Amazon provides it as part of Amazon Prime to entice you to purchase hardcopys from them or whatever. There are consumer escrow companies to safely take pre-payments to help produce various seasons etc. Advertisers work much like today. Agents get paid from bands etc to promote them, PR firms work for the big acts etc.

You might have to get big by playing local venues and asking people to mod you up on myspace or whatever - you might give away some tracks and run an easy paypal escrow that says when you get $100 you'll be able to record a second song to pass out, etc. You could still have loans etc.

I think it might be different - but rather than trying to force people to stop doing things, this is actually having people do things they want to do. Look at the guy who came up with the $1 million pixil page. You do something unique that people want to see more of, you will get money.

Re:Irony?

[cpt kangarooski]

And any discussion of how bad copyright or DRM is must be accompanied by serious proposals for how we can continue to get entertainment media created in the same quantity and variety using an alternate system.

Why? The goal of copyright is to have as many works created and published as possible with as few restrictions on the public as possible. It's perfectly acceptable to have less quantity and variety so long as there is a more than proportionate increase in the freedom that the public has with respect to those works. Stop leaving out half of the equation.

Re:Irony?

[MacWiz]

There is no such thing as a "good DRM scheme."

If you are creating content, trying to deter people from accessing it is ludicrous. Why not just save everyone the time and aggravation by simply not producing works you don't want others to have, hear or read?

Re:Irony?

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed a couple.

The value is in the network. Most things are becoming interactive. Games have been multiplayer for years. There is a lot of value in giving away the game for free, and then charging for the networking of players together in that space. Media is just going to keep getting more and more interactive as time goes on.

Operating systems can harness this same effect. Give the OS away for free, network in and get paid to use excess CPU time. Get network time and network random number sets that are real random numbers. Share file space and network bandwidth so that the network of computers is also a network of secure file storage with duplicate data stored all around the world. Log in and securely access your data from anywhere in the world.

As far as making money. Don't make money from the content. Make money by offering people access to content that is suited for them. Make the value add in being a filter for the content. When everything ever made is available, then it becomes a valuable service in helping people select things they like and pointing them at it. Just don't think you are going to be making as much money as before when you had a lock on distribution and got to say who the new hotness was.

Re:Irony?

[StormReaver]

"Not one of the security models used in his analogy depends on giving the key to the potential attacker."

There's an even more important distinction that was not mentioned: If I paid for the right to use my car and my house, but I wasn't given the keys and was forbidden from using them, I would be pissed and I would sue. That's what Digital Restrictions Management is all about: taking our money without exchanging the personal use rights that are necessary to use and protect the purchase.

Re:Irony?

[Alsee]

Rick Cotton:
I want Magic Pixie Dust.
Magic Pixie Dust stops the bad people.
Magic Pixie Dust doesn't hurt anybody.
Magic Pixie Dust is a good thing.

I hate technologists, they tell me Magic Pixie Dust doesn't exist and cannot be created.
Technologists are intellectually dishonest. That is why I hate them.
I'm not a programmer or an hardware engineer or anything and I don't really understand any of this newfangled digetematal stuff, but I want the technologists and other people who actually are experts to make Magic Pixie Dust for me.
If those damn technologists would stop being intellectually dishonest and just make some Magic Pixie Dust it would solve all the problems and make everyone happy.

And anyone who opposes me is a big fat doody head because Magic Pixie Dust is a good thing and helps good people and doesn't ever do anything bad.

-

Re:Irony?

[Grishnakh]

No, use the home address of the local police chief.

Re:Irony?

[Grishnakh]

There's another big difference with cars/houses vs. "digital locks": if you break into a car and steal it, it'll be reported to the police, who will then search for you. Stealing a car is a pretty serious crime, as is breaking into a house. Cars have license plates, so even if you successfully steal it, you may get caught by the police during your getaway. And houses are worse. In many/most states, if you successfully break into a house and someone's there, they can lawfully shoot you dead for trespassing. And even if the house is empty, it'll be reported to the police, who will search for evidence like fingerprints, and you may get caught and prosecuted.

With software and digital content, if you break the "digital lock", no one's going to know that you did anything, most likely. One you've bypassed the protection on a movie or whatever, you're home free; no one's going to come after you for the "crime", because no one's going to notice (the movie owner isn't going to see their movie missing, for instance).

Re:Irony?

[Grishnakh]

Because then you don't make any money.

So the content cartels' answer is to change people's perceptions, so that they'll accept bad DRM schemes, and feel they have no choice other than to accept these bad DRM schemes or be bored staring at the wall.

Unfortunately for the cartels, people aren't allowing their perceptions to be changed so easily.

Re:Irony?

[init100]

TV "prime time" is at times when I prefer to be out with my friends. That means the only option I have if I want to watch them is to pirate them.

Ever heard of a VCR, or equivalent (such as a DVD recorder, PVR, etc)?

Re:Irony?

[MacWiz]

Because then you don't make any money.

If we're talking about music, the creators have traditionally been paid as little as possible. And then they steal half of that. Sony still owes the Bay City Rollers about $60 million. Their quarter million dollar advance from 1975 or 76 was the last check they ever saw. Five guys in the band. That's less than $2000 a year.

There are hundreds of examples.

No one ever gets paid. If we give our music away, it just eliminates the false hope.

Re:Irony?

[Grishnakh]

The "creators" are the big corporations who own and control the music. The artists are just paid (or not) employees. We're not talking about the artists here, your question was "If you are creating content, trying to deter people from accessing it is ludicrous. Why not just save everyone the time and aggravation by simply not producing works you don't want others to have, hear or read?". The answer is: because the corporations won't make money that way with their creations.

Punishing your PAYING customers

[sheepofblue]

DRM tends to punish your paying customers as much (or more) than those stealing it. When your business model punishes your customer the result will be decline and eventually failure.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[goldspider]

Quite true.

This past weekend my girlfriend got some new perspective on why the morality of "piracy" is a very gray area. She wanted to copy music from a CD she'd purchased to her iPod, but we found that the audio was encoded as protected WMA. The only way to do what she wanted was to "illegally" strip the DRM from the audio first.

She has no intention of buying another album from that particular artist, at the very least.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[Technician]

Should creators insist on technology that will restrict the copying and transmission of copyrighted works?

The simple answer is based on a decision. Is it more important to keep unauthorised people from using your product (possible sales loss to piracy) or more important to keep buying customers happy (lost sales due to problems introduced).

In short, Microsoft for example is big on protecting it's product with WGA, Validation, and litigation. Did they lose more customers because Vista Sucks, or did they lose more in older versions from piracy. How many now decide what to use in software based on the BSA goon squad. If the EULA permits an audit at any time, then it is rejected. The alternative licenses are much safer. Permission to install the software on all my computers is a definate plus. You pick the software license you will use in the future.

In the music industry, is more sales lost to rootkits, lawsuits, and DRM on CD's, or is more sales lost due to piracy. Don't make the mistake of counting a pirated copy as a lost sale. A free copy of a song, movie, program, etc simply would not always result in sales of a $15 CD, a $25 dollar DVD, or $400 office suite. The prevention of a collection of 5,000 pirated MP3 songs will not equate to sales of $5,000 worth of iTunes sales.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[sm62704]

What's more, if I can buy a new, loaded Caddilac for $2000 or a stripped, used Yugo for $50,000, why in the world would I choose the Yugo?

This is the choice faced by someone wanting digital content: get full rights for free, or pay for a product crippled by Dumb Restricted Media.

The fact is that DRM doesn't work, PERIOD.

DRM tends to punish your paying customers as much (or more) than those stealing it

Copyright infringement is not thieft. For one thing, the penalties for copyright infringement are far, far greater than the penalties for thieft, to the point that if you get caught, you're better off shoplifting a CD or DVD than infringing copyright on it.

Stop confusing potsmoking with murder.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[CastrTroy]

How was the music on the CD encoded in WMA? That doesn't even make sense.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[Rude Turnip]

This doesn't make any sense. A /.er with a girlfriend? Kidding aside, she could have ripped the CD into MP3, WMA, AAC or whatever format she wanted. Windows Media Player rips to WMA by default, but IIRC the "copy protect" box is unchecked by default.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[brown-eyed slug]

I assume it has an autoplay application that could be bypassed with the Shift key.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[clare-ents]

Adventures in an iTunes nation

As a Linux geek up to now I've always done digital music with a collection of hacked together scripts. After I was given an iPod I thought I'd try using with Windows + iTunes to see what the fuss was about. Apparently there are executives who think that excluding the 100 million+ iPod owners from playing their CDs will improve sales, and they're in charge of record companies.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite true.

This past weekend my girlfriend got some new perspective on why the morality of "piracy" is a very gray area. She wanted to copy music from a CD she'd purchased to her iPod, but we found that the audio was encoded as protected WMA. The only way to do what she wanted was to "illegally" strip the DRM from the audio first.

She has no intention of buying another album from that particular artist, at the very least. What are you talking about? Did she buy a CD or get it from a download? If it's from a CD, just rerip it. Windows Media Player defaults to WMA and has the option to add DRM (why would anyone want that?), but recent versions can also rip to MP3. If it had the WMA's on the cd, just rip it and get it in a decent format (mp3, aac).

If she downloaded it, I hope she learned her lesson. Buy a DRM'd product and you lose. I hope she learns to stay away from DRM-infected stores (including iTunes except the extremely limited iTunes Plus) and switches to Amazon MP3, eMusic, DownloadPunk, and others.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[goldspider]

There was a "feature" on the disc that would export the music to her hard drive. The end result was a bunch of protected WMA files.

iTunes was unable to import the CD directly; it didn't see it as a music CD. I'm curious now to see if that CD would even play in a regular CD player.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[goldspider]

If it had the WMA's on the cd, just rip it and get it in a decent format (mp3, aac).

It didn't, as far as I could tell. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure in what format the music was actually stored on the CD. Granted, I haven't bought a CD in about 7 years, and wasn't really up on what the RIAA does to CDs these days.

In any case, the most apparent (to me anyway) way to do what we wanted was technically illegal, and that in itself is a big chunk of this problem.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[BigRedFed]

Yea, murderers have an opportunity for parole, just like thieves.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[internewt]

It probably would have played in a normal CD player. The way this copy protection works, I think, is the WMAs are on a second session, with the music in the disks first session. I think they then purposefully corrupt the info on the CD about the session layout.... in a normal CD player the error correction corrects the session info, and finds the music. But a computer CDROM sees only the second session, so the user can only find the data: horrible low quality DRM'd WMAs.

I think the way around it is with software that can find that first session. Exact Audio Copy under windows has an feature to do this: action menu, detect TOC manually. Then you can rip the audio to WAV files or MP3s and ignore the data session at the end of the disk.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[peragrin]

question do you own windows or a mac?

If you own a Mac you can access the CD audio directly and import it from that. if you own windows your still screwed. Even so called copy protected cd's, can be bypassed. The cd audio data has to be there somewhere.

That's the problem with software DRM it is single platform only, once you get out of that platform you can bypass it easily.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[twistedsymphony]

yup... EAC is the only application I ever use to rip my CDs, not only does it let you cut through this kind of garbage it does a damn good job quality wise as well.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[CastrTroy]

Most of the CDs I've seen like this can easily be ripped with CDex.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a lot of 'CDs' (i.e. CD like discs without the CD Digital Audio logo) and I've never found one that cdparanoia can't rip.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[goldspider]

That makes sense; and thanks for the heads-up. I might take another crack at that CD tonight just to satisfy my curiosity.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that stealing is immoral. Copyright infringement is merely illegal.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[clary]

That has happened with this customer. I have mostly opted out. I have an iPod, but buy no music from iTunes. (I really only use the iPod when exercising, and have a very few purchased CDs worth of songs on it.) I listen to the radio in the car, and listen to live music now and then. If the whole music recording industry tanked tomorrow, I wouldn't lose much sleep over it. Ditto movies.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[suggsjc]

The fact is that DRM doesn't work on slashdotters, PERIOD.

There, fixed it for you. While I do agree with you to a certain extent, you are distorted by your own technical knowledge. I'm going to use my parents as examples (despite the fact that I would attempt to inform them of how to not get burned). If either of my parents purchased music through iTunes (and did not have me as a resource) then they would in fact be 100% constrained to any and all of the DRM for the tracks. My mom has dabbled with trying to learn/understand P2P, but in the end she actually prefers the convenience and intuitive interface of iTunes and some of the other on-line music stores. The only thing that she cares about is being able to either burn a CD or use it on her mp3 player.

There are so many things that we think are "easy" like things as trivial to putting attachments on emails or burning CDs, but to some they don't know how and they don't know where to turn. For those people, they just accept the DRM and its restrictions as part of the whole "computer experience." If they can't listen to their music on any/all of their devices (but be honest, those people probably have an iPod anyway), then they don't feel cheated...maybe a little frustrated, but for the most part it is just all part of the game.

Again, just because you are clever to avoid any/all DRM doesn't mean that it is completely ineffective.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[sm62704]

Stop confusing potsmoking with murder

Yea, murderers have an opportunity for parole, just like thieves

Stop confusing potsmoking with stealing!

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[sm62704]

Copyright infringement is enough like stealing that it can reasonably be called "stealing"

If I shoplift a CD, the proprietor no longer has that CD. If I infringe your copyright you still have both the work and its copyright. The difference is if you're caught you have a small criminal fine with stealing but a large civil penalty with copyright infringement.

If you go into a theatre without paying that is also described as "stealing" the movie, and similarly if you take a ride on a train without a ticket.

No, that's "tresspass" and if you're caught you will be charged not with thieft, but tresspass.

It's basically NewSpeak under a different agenda.

Calling copyright infringement "stealing" is the newspeak. Cats are cats, dogs are dogs, copyright infringement is copyright infrienement, stealing is stealing and small furry animals from Alpha Centauti are small furry animals from Alpha Centauti. And that last bit was plagairism, not copyright infriengement.

"Newspeak" is calling a spade a "pointy shovel" as you are doing when you confuse copyright infringement with stealing.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[sm62704]

You don't have to be a slashdotter to download something a slashdotter has cracked, hacked, or tracked.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[ajs318]

Audio CD players are not multi-session aware. They see only the first session on the disc.

CD-ROM drives are multi-session aware. They see all sessions on the disc.

Every session has a TOC. The second and subsequent sessions' TsOC are supposed to be supersets of previous sessions' TsOC. So it should be enough to read the TOC from the last session on the disc. However, some little scroat discovered that if you put in bogus details for the tracks in session one in the TOC for session two, then a CD-ROM drive can't ordinarily access them.

In my experience, cdparanoia will recover audio from almost any CD; especially when used with an older CD-ROM drive. Don't let the speed be a problem. After all, you only need to do it once per CD!

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[ajs318]

You can now get record / CD players that can record MP3s directly to SD/MMC memory cards or USB mass storage devices, straight from CD or LP, without the use of a computer. Check out one of those catalogues that fall out of the Radio Times while you are browsing in the newsagent's.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[FireFury03]

If either of my parents purchased music through iTunes (and did not have me as a resource) then they would in fact be 100% constrained to any and all of the DRM for the tracks.

But it sounds like your parents are not the sort of people who would be infringing copyright anyway. i.e. the DRM serves no useful purpose and yet may still cause problems for them when they are making legitimate use of the tracks.

The copyright infringers fall into 3 camps:

1. People who purchase material and share it
2. People who download material and use it for their own use
3. People who download material and share it

DRM doesn't affect (2) and (3) at all - once the material is being shared the DRM has been removed so is a non-issue.

DRM does affect (1), but unless you can stop *everyone* from circumventing it (something I don't believe to be possible) then the material will still be available so at best you're just pushing a few people from (1) into (3) - it doesn't affect the overall amount of infringement going on.

However, you mentioned convenience. DRM reduces convenience for people paying for the content. Of course some people might not realise why they are having problems, but some will and they will be pushed more towards doing (2) because it is more convenient than dealing with the DRM on legitimately purchased material.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[Jabrwock]

If either of my parents purchased music through iTunes (and did not have me as a resource) then they would in fact be 100% constrained to any and all of the DRM for the tracks. My mom has dabbled with trying to learn/understand P2P, but in the end she actually prefers the convenience and intuitive interface of iTunes and some of the other on-line music stores. The only thing that she cares about is being able to either burn a CD or use it on her mp3 player.

And if she cannot burn a CD, or use it on her mp3 player, I'll assume she turns to you to "fix it", correct? Regular consumers don't think of DRM in terms of "protecting" anything either. While not technical enough to bypass them, they too see them as limitations on the product they bought, and will find ways (or find someone who knows ways) to get around them.

My friend can't figure out how to rip a DVD. But she wants to play them on her new video iPod. If she was told she was doing something illegal, she'd think you were nuts. She bought the DVD. She owns the iPod. She's not copying it to someone else. But the DRM punishes her equally, because it prevents her from using her possessions in a way she wants. So she turns to me to do it for her.

This is a fundamental difference between the lock on the house and the lock on the media. Media owners see it as a "licence" to use, not ownership. So while you can do in your own house whatever you bloody well please once you get in the door, because it's your house, the media lock is more a key to a friends house you were lent with a strict set of rules of conduct attached. Just strict enough, and you can enjoy yourself, but your friend's house is still protected from damage. But imagine if the use of the key forbid the use of the bathroom, or something equally silly. Would you be annoyed? Yep. Does the restriction help protect the house? Not unless you've got some kind of medical disorder. Why impair the use of the house when used in what would seem to be a normal and natural function? Especially since you've already been given permission to enter.

How often would you go to that friend's house if all you were allowed to do was walk on very narrow plastic to the couch, weren't allowed to sit, and could only watch the shopping channel unless it was Sunday, at which point you *might* be able to watch sports, but only if you held your arms out at the right angle? How often would you to there, if your other friend had non-stop sports channels, a great couch, and actually let you sit down?

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[hackstraw]

DRM tends to punish your paying customers as much (or more) than those stealing it. When your business model punishes your customer the result will be decline and eventually failure.

This is so true.

I think everything is more or less on a continuum. I don't drive an armored truck, but the banks use them. I don't have a safe in my house (I think I should more for fire, but thats irrelevant), but most businesses have safes.

As it stands now, an overpriced CD needs to have unbreakable end to end DRM (and it should cost more!).

No, CDs are disposable, commodity crap, and should be priced as such and the cost should be low enough and the ease of legally acquiring said CD should be easy enough that torrent sites should not be the most efficient and cost effective means of acquiring the material.

I download whole "discography" torrents, especially for older artists, because I want to take a look at their whole career. There is no affordable "legal" comparible product on the market. Some of these box sets, are way overpriced, same with TV series on DVD. I told my mom outright not to buy me any more X-Files on DVD because they were $100/season and not worth the money, even if it wasn't my money.

I think the best alternative, is a service model, where you pay X/month (where X is much less than my income), and you can have access to quality (not MP3) recordings, and when you run out of storage, you delete the crap you don't want, or redownload it if you miss the song or whatever. Hell, offer MP3's at a lower rate, thats fine too. How about DVD-Audio? Sure, there are the great multi-channel, and really high bitrate DVD-Audio, but guess what? They can have standard "CD quality" 2 channel 16bit/44.1kHz PCM data, but at CD quality there are about 6 CDs worth of music on DVD-Audio.

Most commuters have to change a typical CD or listen to it again before going to and from work. The format is too short considering the technologies out there.

There are so many options (including the sue your customer one), out there, but these assfucks would try to push 8-tracks on us if they could. Lets get with the times people! I mean, wax cylinders and cassettes and 78 RPM records went away for a reason. There was superior technology out there, and the public wanted that.

Today, there is superior technology out ther, and the public still wants it, but the media "owners" are not meeting the demands of the industry, and they should either adopt or simply go out of business -- just like any other industry.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[hackstraw]

If I infringe your copyright you still have both the work and its copyright. The difference is if you're caught you have a small criminal fine with stealing but a large civil penalty with copyright infringement.

I dunno, it may be all BS, but a lot of consumer videos start with an FBI warning saying that they will come and get me if I watch the movie wrong with specific criminal punishments/fines, and the like.

As it stands, I think the safest (illegal) way to acquire new music and videos is standard shoplifting. I knew a friend who was big into "quasi-organized" shoplifiting when he was a teenager, and stole tons of crap and when he was caught, he was basically told not to do it again (community service, etc, he was a minor).

A minor caught today with a shared drive with some Britney Spears MP3s may never see the light of day. Or will never get out of debt for the fines and court costs.

Good old fashioned theft seems best today. Its less than copy infringement.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[mea37]

Copyright infringement is not thieft.

Legally they are different offenses; that's true. And there is a lot of hand-waving that goes on when copyright infringement is presented to the public as theft.

On the other hand, language is not black and white, and how finely we need to split hairs depends on the context and the audience. Outside the courtroom, I question whether arguing the semantics of what can, or cannot, be called "stealing" is a worthwhile use of energy. There are more efficient lines of argument if you want to fight the current copyright practices. There's a lot wrong with copyright as it exists today, but I hold that none of it will be changed by getting people to say "infringe copyright" instead of "steal".

At one level, the apparent intent of the offender (as seen from the point-of-view of the victim[1]) -- to get something for nothing -- is similar, and I think it's this similarity that made the use of "steal" to mean "infringe copyright" popular.

That's unfortunate, but it's the way people outside the legal profession tend to talk about rights and laws -- they use imprecise terms.

If you do want to be more precise, the real problem is in the understanding of "property" as it applies to copyright.

People like to say that IP is a made-up concept. They like to forget that the idea of proprietary rights to tangible items (i.e. physical property) is also a made-up concept. Both are constructs of law; the latter just happens to be more established (and therefore better-understood). In current societies, both are subject to abridgement for the perceived good of society (though I'd say this is currently done too often for physical property and not often enough for IP). So I discard the notion that one is "more real" than the other.

I think the biggest problem is understanding what the "property" is. It's not a CD. It's not even a collection of 1's and 0's. It might arguably be the informatoin encoded by those 1's and 0's. Along the same line, what does it mean to "use" that property? Listen to it? Not really; that's not the use to which the copyright holder puts it. That's not one of the rights protected as exclusive to the owner.

In that line, I hold that the analogy of copyright infringement as theft is valid if the concepts of property are applied correctly. True, when I copy your CD, you don't lose your ability to listen to the CD -- but then again, the CD isn't what I've "stolen", listening isn't "use", and you aren't the "owner".

The thing I've "stolen" is the distribution opportunity. It is finite and has real economic value (though in the case of a single copy that value is rather small). And while it is very intangible and maybe even unintuitive, it is legally protected and in that sense just as "real" as your exclusive right to drive your car.

"Use", in other words, is exercise of the right to distribute (resulting in economic gain, normally). (Or exercise of any of the other protected rights; of which "listen to" is not one.) If I infringe copyright, I do deprive the copyright owner of the opportunity to use his property.

As your later comment points out, if the degree to which copyright infringement resembles theft were understood clearly, and the punishment made proportional to theft of an equivalent value of tangible property, we'd actually be better off.

[1] And seriously, let's just skip the debate on usage of the word "victim". It's much shorter than "person whose legally-recognized right is violated", or would be if I didn't need this disclaimer, which I wouldn't in an honest discussion of real issues

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[sm62704]

At one level, the apparent intent of the offender (as seen from the point-of-view of the victim[1]) -- to get something for nothing -- is similar

You're stealing air. Stop breathing. ;)

I do agree that someone needs to come up with a short word for "copyright infringement".

There's a lot wrong with copyright as it exists today, but I hold that none of it will be changed by getting people to say "infringe copyright" instead of "steal".

I have a problem with the term "intellectual property". The very term is unAmerican (which you may not care about as this is the internet and you could be anywhere) but here, copyright is supposed to get authors and artists to create, so the work can go into the public domain.

I hold two registered copyrights, and have written a shitload of prose. You cannot steal it from me. I don't own it. I have a "limited time" (ha) monopoly on its distribution, but I don't own it. It is NOT property.

Those who call copyright infringement "thieft" are trying to get something for themselves that they don't own (ownership of the copyrighted work), and I take issue with that.

You can't steal something from me if I don't own it, and I don't own the works to which I hold copyright. "Steal" isn't anywhere near the correct term.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[Hoknor]

I'm guessing you mean something like: "Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000." My understanding is that this mostly refers to unlicensed production of bootleg copies. There is some ambiguity here, in that it could mean infringement without monetary gain is still investigated by the FBI but not that it is punishable by 5 years in federal prison.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[NotBorg]

To play some games on Linux--games which I purchased with my own hard earned cash--I depend on copy protection being broken. Many games will not run in Wine without a no-cd/dvd crack. Even when I did use Windows, I ran cracked versions of games I had purchased. The idea of inserting a 700mb disk on a system capable of storing it hundreds of times over is a bit stupid and dreadfully inconvenient. You can't tell me that a large part of the success of MP3 type audio players isn't due not having to carry around 600 disks every where you go.

So, yes... Crack on dudes.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[PitaBred]

Didja try AmaroK with the iPod video? I've had decent luck with that. I don't personally own an iPod, but my fiancee does.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[Moofie]

Replying to your sig:

"Why do death penalty advocates mostly oppose abortion while vegans mostly support it?"

Because the issues have almost nothing to do with one another?

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[PitaBred]

Actually, theft of services is often a common charge. It's used primarily for when people walk out of a restaurant without paying and such, so they're liable for more than just the raw cost of the food, but I can see how they could get those charges in theaters and so on to stick.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[PitaBred]

If your parents don't feel cheated, it's up to you to show them how easy you have it. Then they'll feel cheated. I know mine do, and as such, have really limited their spending on media. They're going out to a lot more plays and dinner with friends instead of watching movies.

Information is power... even if they can't do it themselves, they need to know how it COULD be, rather than just deal with it as it IS.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[sm62704]

A haircut is a tangible item and will garner "thieft of service" if you walk out, but if they catch you in a theater or train without a ticket you'll be charged with trasspass.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[funaho]

Even worse, it's in Federal Pound-Me-in-the-Ass Prison. :)

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[maxwell demon]

Well, the sig asks about why a certain correlation exists. Your answer would be a reasonable explanation if no correlation existed.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[cpt kangarooski]

My understanding is that this mostly refers to unlicensed production of bootleg copies.

No, infringement by any method is capable of being criminal infringement.

There is some ambiguity here, in that it could mean infringement without monetary gain is still investigated by the FBI but not that it is punishable by 5 years in federal prison.

No, take a look at 17 USC 506 and 18 USC 2319 for the relevant statutes.

If you willfully infringe "by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than" $2,500, and it is a second offense, then you can be sentenced to up to 6 years. (First offenders max out at 3)

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[aliquis]

I for sure hate to have to look around for my Warcraft 3 CD when I want to play. Even more so that I have to use the TFT one in OS X althought it doesn't matter which one in Windows since I have two ROC CDs.
I hate that I broke the original TFT CD by droping it (see http://cdcrack.istheshit.net/), kind of suck if you can't download it.

Annoying to require a DVD-drive / to actually have a disk in it / extra noise from spinning.

Thought in this case actually requiring a key makes pirates banned from bnet which is a good thing, easier to ban cheaters aswell. So I'm all for the key but not useless cd copy protection.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[init100]

If you go into a theatre without paying that is also described as "stealing" the movie

It is? I never heard that one before.

and similarly if you take a ride on a train without a ticket.

So what do you call that, stealing the train? Never heard that one either.

Re:Punishing your PAYING customers

[init100]

Media owners see it as a "licence" to use, not ownership.

But they surely like to use the word ownership in their advertising. Who hasn't seen "Own XYZ today!" type advertising for a movie or some music? Add to this fact that you buy it just like you would buy any material goods, which makes it feel like ownership to the customer. They want to have the cake and eat it too, in having ownership that isn't ownership but rather some twisted form of renting.

It keeps being said

[FredFredrickson]

Price the content based on quality, and make it convenient. People prefer convenience.

People won't bother to steal if there's a quality, low-cost solution they could just pay for.

For example- I pay $15/month to subscribe to Yahoo Music with my MP3 player, because it's just easier than stealing. The catch? I don't even keep my music if I stop paying. But I don't care! I'm paying for convenience.

Re:It keeps being said

[Aladrin]

That's not exactly true. I believe -most- people would pay (if they could) rather than steal/pirate/infringe/whatever. There will always be those who get a kick out of not paying and will do it just for that little thrill.

As for pricing on quality, the 'quality' of all music on iTunes is the same, and all the songs cost the same... But I sense that isn't what you're talking about. I think you mean 'value', and that's a subjective thing. My value of any given song is probably lower than Random Joe's because I'm not that into music. It doesn't excite me.

I suscribed to Rhapsody for a few months for the same reason you subscribe to Yahoo Music... It's just easier. Then I realized that I mostly listened to internet radio and I could do that for free, legally. imeem.com also provides a way for me to sample songs I think I might like, find more like it, and listen to classics that I just want to hear again right now.

I think Amazon is doing a great job with pricing and convenience right now... Many songs are cheaper than iTunes, all are DRM-free, and it's pretty easy to download the songs. I still think AllOfMP3.com had more convenience (I'm ignoring the ridiculously low prices), but they didn't have any rules they had to play by.

Re:It keeps being said

[Mr. Underbridge]

Price the content based on quality

By quality, do you mean bitrate or a more subjective quality of the material? If the latter, the studios most certainly want variable pricing. It's Jobs that's forcing the uniform $0.99 pricing.

Re:It keeps being said

[CastrTroy]

I singed up for eMusic about a year ago and as such, I pay 30 cents a song, or around $3-$5 an album, depending on the number of songs on the album. This has set a value of the music I listen to of around 30 cents a song. Now, I don't have access to a lot of mainstream artists, but I can still use iTunes or CDs for that. The problem is that I find it hard to justify paying $10+ for an album. I would have to like the album twice as much as the stuff I find on eMusic, probably more to really justify the cost. When I can get tons of albums I like for $3.00, your album is going to have to be really good before I'm willing to spend $10 on it.

Re:It keeps being said

[Andy Dodd]

The music industry completely screwed up with allofmp3 - It's a classic example of a dying industry trying to hold on with legislation instead of competing.

Rather than complain and moan about it, the RIAA should've figured out why allofmp3 was doing so well. It wasn't just the prices.

1) Selection as good as, or in many cases even better than many existing stores. About the only online store that does better is ITMS in my opinion.
2) NO DRM. Makes selection variety a bit less important, as there's less incentive to stick with a single store. (In some ways bad for a store if it's easier to go to someone else, but if your selection stinks and/or is niche, you're going to find that no one chooses you if you've got DRM.)
3) Not overpriced. Admittedly too cheap, but the RIAA could've made a store at twice the prices and still have been wildly successful. (Why? Legality = convenience, as far as "ease of payment", and twice Allofmp3's prices would have still been far below current RIAA-sanctioned stores.)

The RIAA wants to hang on to high per-track prices, but they should be thinking about sacrificing per-track profits to drastically increase volume. For example, if someone hears a track they really like on the radio or elsewhere, they're likely to buy the entire album at $3. But at $10+ for the entire album, they'll probably just buy only that track at $1, given the tendency for albums to have a lot of "filler crap".

Re:It keeps being said

[value_added]

People won't bother to steal if there's a quality, low-cost solution they could just pay for.

Need not look any farther than the success Apple has found doing just that. Granted they're making their money off the sale of ipods, but people are only too happy to buy what's being offered.

For example- I pay $15/month to subscribe to Yahoo Music with my MP3 player, because it's just easier than stealing. The catch? I don't even keep my music if I stop paying. But I don't care! I'm paying for convenience.

Agreed. In my case, I pay only $9.95 per month. Admittedly, it's a different approach (cron jobs and scripting) with different benefits (wider and more varied offerings), but the "I don't care" sentiment and convenience factors are similar enough.

Seriously, though, the number of people downloading "content" without paying for it is staggering. Probably just as staggering as the number of people who wouldn't pay for it in any case.

Re:It keeps being said

[irae]

By quality, do you mean bitrate or a more subjective quality of the material? If the latter, the studios most certainly want variable pricing. It's Jobs that's forcing the uniform $0.99 pricing. I don't think the studios want different prices... read Joel's article for an explanation http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/11/18.html/

Re:It keeps being said

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Amazon is doing a great job with pricing and convenience right now... Many songs are cheaper than iTunes, all are DRM-free, and it's pretty easy to download the songs. I still think AllOfMP3.com had more convenience (I'm ignoring the ridiculously low prices), but they didn't have any rules they had to play by. I like eMusic as it has a good selection, and stuff's always getting added. Ie, last month Century Media (Arch Enemy, Lacuna Coil, The Agonist, God Forbid, etc) was added. With my plan ($19.99/mo) it costs $0.27/song. Unlike with other subscriptions, I get to keep everything. Yeah, they don't have the same selection, but I'm always finding good new stuff to download thanks to Pandora and Last.FM.

Re:It keeps being said

[ednopantz]

I believe -most- people would pay (if they could) rather than steal/pirate/infringe/whatever.

Really? On my planet, people share music because they don't want to pay for it. They dream up lots of excuses to justify their actions.

But on planet slashdot, bittorrent is exclusively used for linux distros and public domain films from the 1920s.

Re:It keeps being said

[butlerdi]

Yep ... Like Jello Biafra once said "Give me convenience or give me death"

Re:It keeps being said

[robot_love]

You make a good point that a lot of people miss. We are quite content to pay for things that we perceive as having value. We do it all day, everyday. The problem with digital media is that a lot of people do not think they are getting a fair deal anymore, hence the rise in "casual piracy".

Art existed before media companies and it will exist after media companies. Art isn't dying, only the current business model is.

Re:It keeps being said

[Mr. Underbridge]

I don't think the studios want different prices...

I don't know who Joel is (and his page is throwing a 503), but it's well known that it's Jobs fighting for the $.99 standard. The studios want to charge higher prices for new releases.

See:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2006/04/22/3710

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/7436.cfm

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/record-companies-criticize-apple-itunes-pricing/

Re:It keeps being said

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how on earth I keep getting modded "Troll" for just about ANY post these days. Who gave these idiots MOD points? -Fred (Scared of stupid idiot mods)

Re:It keeps being said

[Phisbut]

You make a good point that a lot of people miss. We are quite content to pay for things that we perceive as having value. We do it all day, everyday. The problem with digital media is that a lot of people do not think they are getting a fair deal anymore, hence the rise in "casual piracy".

The problem with digital stuff is that copying it is so easy that people can't perceive the real value of the work that a lot of people put in making that digital stuff, and therefore feel ripped off by the retail price, and prefer downloading while chanting their mantra "Copyright infringement is not theft! Copyright infringement is not theft! Copyright infringement is not theft!".

Software companies invest several million dollars in R&D, yet the "customers" consider $400, or $200, or $100 is too much. That's ridiculous. You want to use Photoshop but consider $650 is too much? Great, make one yourself IN LESS THAN 26 HOURS (assuming you're paid $25/hour). When you're done, you'll realize the huge amount of work the people at Adobe put in the software. Replace Photoshop by MS-Office or any other piece of software that is often casually-pirated and the same logic still holds. Software often costs upwards of $100 (or even $500) because it is worth as least as much.

Disclaimer: I write proprietary software for a living and hate so-called "casual pirates". Everything I have at home (music, video and software) is 100% legit (most of it is Free too).

Re:It keeps being said

[PitaBred]

And on my planet, people think that they're entitled to record some wailing once, and then get paid for the rest of their life for it, multiple times over. And then their family gets paid, too, never actually having to have done anything. And movie actors are paid the lion's share of the movie's production budget, even though they don't do more work than anyone else on it. And often times, they do much, much less.

Funny thing is, I think we're all on the same planet.

Re:It keeps being said

[Phisbut]

Price the content based on quality, and make it convenient. People prefer convenience.

People won't bother to steal if there's a quality, low-cost solution they could just pay for.

Pricing based on quality only works for shitty stuff. People don't want to pay a fair price based on quality, they want to pay as little as possible no matter the quality.

High-quality means high-price
Low-cost means low-quality

When people are faced with a choice between pirating a higher-quality and higher priced software, and paying for a low-cost and lower-quality equivalent, most people will opt for "casual piracy".

Re:It keeps being said

[robot_love]

Thanks for your comment, Phisbut. You make a good point. Something to consider, however, is that at least some of the casual piracy is not lost sales, in that some people might pirate Photoshop, but would never buy it/could not afford it. That isn't a lost sale for Adobe, but it is an increased user base, so you could argue that at least some "casual piracy" is beneficial to Adobe.

If I were a hard-ass (which my wife accuses me of quite often) I would say that you can't fight the market this way. As much as you feel entitled to $X per copy, at least some people do not, and we need to find ways to be profitable accepting this fact. How? Dunno. But whoever solves that problem will be rich like a Nazi!

As to your personal situation, I of course wish you nothing but success.

Re:It keeps being said

[Corwn of Amber]

This is ridiculous. Every student who uses Photoshop needs the full version, to learn to use it for his future job. Thus, they'd make some millions more if they'd price it $30 instead of $650.
The Big Companies use volume licenses, and those are much cheaper. Big companies like Adobe just rape the little guy out of his money, for his only license on his work computer. Which he'll use on his laptop too, and ask the trained monkeys at Adobe Call Center for a working "I had to reinstall and now it won't work" activation number, which they'll give without much questions, as those things happen all the time... They lose the moral high ground, and I'm happily using $100,000 worth of software on my Hackintosh. Come get me, I'm unemployed and penniless. Where is the lost sale then? Answer : at the price point I could have afforded.

Re:It keeps being said

[big_paul76]

The RIAA wants to hang on to high per-track prices, but they should be thinking about sacrificing per-track profits to drastically increase volume. For example, if someone hears a track they really like on the radio or elsewhere, they're likely to buy the entire album at $3. But at $10+ for the entire album, they'll probably just buy only that track at $1, given the tendency for albums to have a lot of "filler crap".

While I think you're basically right, that's a pretty, um, generous, description of the RIAA goals.

What I find so baffling and infuriating about this type of content middleman is that they not just wantthe per-track price that they had in 1990, they believe they're entitled to it!

Besides, one thing that has to be said here, is, can anybody as of yet demonstrate that private non-commercial copyright infringement is actually a problem? I mean, the MPAA's fine. The only times historically that ticket sales have been stronger is when the economy's doing a lot better. I haven't seen any movie studios or TV stations or production companies file for bankruptcy protection saying "those dirty internet pirates finally put us out of business".

Of course, before we can have that discussion, we need to agree on the definition of "a problem". Some people think "a piracy problem" means "we failed to make > 20% return-on-investment for our shareholders last year", and is sufficient grounds to justify government intervention.

Funny how the guys who are such strong free market evangelists when we're talking about tax policy or health care or something all of a sudden want the government to protect them from any and all risk when the chips are down, eh?

Re:It keeps being said

[cpt kangarooski]

So? There's nothing wrong with not wanting to pay for it; that's just greed. It's the exact same motivation as the other side wanting to get paid for it. There's no moral high ground as copyright is an amoral field. (Though, if there were a moral side, it would be pirates, who greatly disseminate, preserve, and unauthorizedly contribute to our cultural legacy in defiance of those who would lock it up and dole it out for monopoly prices)

Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[Blakey Rat]

Are the two options mutually-exclusive? Ask the PC Games industry whether copy protection is needed or futile. It's needed because retailers/publishers won't sell the game without it. It's mostly futile for the obvious reason (although I'm sure it snags some casual copiers.)

A more interesting question would be to ask a PC game maker if they'd release their game with no copyright, if their publishers/retailers allowed them to. Right now, they have no choice-- given the choice, which would they make?

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[snl2587]

A more interesting question would be to ask a PC game maker if they'd release their game with no copyright, if their publishers/retailers allowed them to. Right now, they have no choice-- given the choice, which would they make?

They'd probably still use a lesser copyright, but still a fairly strong one. Also, unfortunately, without the publishers and their money many of the games simply wouldn't be as detailed/good. I point you to the majority of open-source games (ignoring the exceptions). And the publishers are never going to go for a lack of a copyright.

And yes, copy-protection is futile, but does not need to be increased. Worse comes to worse, a male-male cable on the computer for audio or a direct-feed-to-audio-capture for video is still going to copy the media, and for games...well, that might be a little harder. The bottom line is that the most copy-protection can and should do is prevent copying by the average user.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[s20451]

A more interesting question would be to ask a PC game maker if they'd release their game with no copyright, if their publishers/retailers allowed them to. Right now, they have no choice-- given the choice, which would they make?

Let's turn that around. Would you agree to take a prominent GPLed software package, say the Linux kernel, and remove the copyright (and hence the GPL)? If not, why not? Probably a related answer will hold for the games industry.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[CastrTroy]

The problem is, is that it's becoming very easy for the average use to circumvent most copy-protection technologies. I remember 5-10 years ago, you'd go to a site, download a patch, and run it. Voila, the game would have no more copy protection. The same is currently true with DVDs. Download a simple program, and it does everything for you. I know a bunch of people who can't keep their computer running for more than 3 weeks without getting a virus, but they know how to copy a DVD.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[m50d]

I thought you were about to mention a quite common practice in the PC games industry - initially release with copy protection, then disable it in a later patch. This strikes me as a very good compromise - the copy protection is as effective as it can ever be, and makes the difference when it matters - namely immediately after release - while customers aren't inconvenienced for very long.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[the_B0fh]

Huh? Who does that? I don't remember any games where this happened. Granted, I only play starcraft or PS2 games...

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[m50d]

I most recently noticed it with Supreme Commander, but IIRC it happened with most of the recent versions of Quake/Doom and Unreal Tournament.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[aj50]

I think Unreal Tournament III doesn't have any copy protection, I only ever needed the disk to install it. On the other hand, it does have a CD Key which can only be used by one person at a time to play online.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[Hoknor]

You say becoming, but I'm not actually familiar with this period of time when copy-protections were actually effective. I hear a lot of reference to game protections stopping the casual copier, but the kind of user who is going to be tripped up by the majority of systems I've ever experienced is just as likely to have been frustrated by the install process itself.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[servognome]

Ask the PC Games industry whether copy protection is needed or futile.

Actually whats more interesting is look at how more PC game developers are moving towards closed box consoles. Part of the reason is because the risk of piracy is lower, sure you can mod chip or emulate, but those are steps which are more difficult for the average consumers.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[Hoknor]

I wouldn't call it common, but it's known to happen. There is even talk of doing it in an upcoming Bioshock patch. I wish I could remember who it was, but there was a dev that talked about how they basically had a compromise with the publisher, they put whatever protection the publisher wanted on the game for release, and then after a month or two they released a patch removing it. Explanation being that publishers are most concerned about the initial sales being eaten into, but after that the possibility of the protection interfering with a legit purchasers install out weighs the benefit of keeping it since cracks are going to be out by then.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[Creepy Crawler]

And the online cd-key is perfectly fair.

The servers are THEIR property, and you can enter independent IP addresses and play on their server.

I get this message: "Do what you want with our content, but dont come to us to play your unpaid game."

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[aj50]

I do realise this, my point was that because UT3 is primarily an online game and can restrict access to it's online services without having to use any traditional copy protection, it would have less of a reason to prevent copying the actual program because without your own cd key, you can't play online. For UT3, this is a big thing, for games with a large single-player component or games without online multiplayer, this problem would be less likely to put off someone considering copying the game instead of buying it.

Personally, I find this to be a happy medium. People who like the game buy it, those who don't like it so much can still borrow a copy to play at a LAN.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[Jherek Carnelian]

Well, that is pretty much RMS's goal - the copyleft is just a hack of copyright law to use it against itself. The abolishment of copyright is pretty much an indirect goal. So if copyright can't be used to hurt GPL'd software, there would be no reason to continue using the GPL either.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[s20451]

Well, that is pretty much RMS's goal - the copyleft is just a hack of copyright law to use it against itself. The abolishment of copyright is pretty much an indirect goal.

I don't think that's true, or at least it isn't true anymore. For example, GPLv3 and AGPL (which was included in an early draft of GPLv3) defend against two phenomena that would be impossible to prevent in a copyright-free world: Tivoization, and web services derived from modified open source, respectively. If RMS truly wanted a world without copyright, he never would have released these licenses.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[Jherek Carnelian]

I don't think that's true, or at least it isn't true anymore. For example, GPLv3 and AGPL (which was included in an early draft of GPLv3) defend against two phenomena that would be impossible to prevent in a copyright-free world: Tivoization, and web services derived from modified open source, respectively. If RMS truly wanted a world without copyright, he never would have released these licenses. The way I've heard it put is that just as the current market does not accept cars with their hoods welded shut, a market without the effects of copyright would not accept software that was locked up without source. Tivoization and black-box web-services are no different than regular closed source from that perspective.

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[s20451]

I think that's bizarre. If anything a world without copyright would see less incentive to release source, since the only value in information would be secrecy. Do you have a citation for your statement?

Re:Are the two options mutually-exclusive?

[Jherek Carnelian]

If anything a world without copyright would see less incentive to release source, since the only value in information would be secrecy. The seller does not make a market, the buyer does. When the default expectation of buyers is for the hood to be openable, then only the fringes will be able to survive by selling cars with the hood welded shut. In other words, there is absolutely no value to the buyer when the source is closed. At best it is neutral so a market without the distortion of copyright will favor products with open source.

Do you have a citation for your statement? Not particularly, but google is rife with references to RMS and the welded-hood analogy.

To be honest...

[jamar0303]

I don't really see any reason to keep pursuing copy protection. As it is it only hurts the legit customers, and if they keep going it's going to get to the point where nearly everyone will start pirating.

Re:To be honest...

[Goffee71]

Since the music companies are gradually dropping DRM, I think the argument is already over. Movies will go online (leaving BluRay and HD owners screwed) over the next few years and still have certain protections, but nothing that can't be broken as has been proven time and time again.

Re:To be honest...

[Not_Wiggins]

I don't really see any reason to keep pursuing copy protection.

I do. In a world where things are black-and-white, you have a point: people will ALWAYS either pay (though they don't have to) or steal (though they don't need to). In that world, you're 100% correct; copy protection doesn't matter because the "payers" would have paid anyway and the "thieves" would have always found a way to steal.

But the world isn't so clear-cut. I think most people fall into a middle ground, neither fully honest nor fully thief (even if that isn't a conscious choice).

Here, a trivial example that I think holds to the broader truth:

Let's say you have an office coffee machine. Next to it, there's a cup where one is supposed to deposit $.25 for each cup that is taken. We're purely on the honor system in this office... there's no monitoring.
Some people will always put money in. Some people will never put money in and will in fact, TAKE money out of the cup. And then there's the majority of people who, if they didn't see/know about the cup, might take a cup of coffee thinking it is free.

Copy protection is, fundamentally, supposed to set the bar high enough that one cannot accidentally steal; it has to be a directed effort.

What I disagree with content providers on (and is the pain point for most consumers) is that they're trying to raise the bar SO high in an effort to stamp out most theft that it is "punishing" most users by making fair use extremely inconvenient. In fact, it is having, in some circumstances, the opposite effect: people turn to "piracy" not because they want to steal, but because their needs aren't being met.

In my office example, we're headed away from the shared cup and towards a machine that requires an employee id, credit card, and a pin just to get a cup o' joe.

But, you will admit, that in terms of collecting money for coffee, that works better than a cup with no sign at all.

Re:To be honest...

[cbreaker]

Thanks for your honesty! It's the best policy!

Re:To be honest...

[huge]

If I generalize a bit it seems that awful lot of people are against copy protection and DRM without realizing that actually they aren't opposing the means to achieve it but the goal itself: preventing copyright violations.

I have absolutely no problem with copy protection and DRM, in fact I'm all for it. It'd be nice if you could make sure that nobody can make illegitimate copies while legitimate customer could use the product unaffected. I'm just all against half-assed implementations that hurt more the paying customer than the person who makes illegit copies.

Thus I say that pursue the copy protection and DRM as much as possible. Just keep them away from me until you have an implementation that doesn't hurt the paying customer. It might take a while, though. If some megacorp somewhere is willing to pay for research that might not lead to anything conclusive, why should I care, it's their money. If we are lucky there might be some unintended side products coming out of such research. Somebody will get paid doing pointless job but I'm happy for them, at least they got a job... ;)

Re:To be honest...

[Chosen Reject]

Copy protection is, fundamentally, supposed to set the bar high enough that one cannot accidentally steal; it has to be a directed effort.

What on earth are you talking about? How does one accidentally "steal" media? If you bought the DVD/song/ebook/whatever, then you should be able to make copies of it for you own personal use. If you didn't buy it, then you would have to download it from somewhere, which is going to require a "directed effort." DRM on the media didn't create the need for that effort. You not buying the media created the need for it.

Re:To be honest...

[Not_Wiggins]

If you bought the DVD/song/ebook/whatever, then you should be able to make copies of it for you own personal use.

I agree with this assessment. What I'm talking about is the altruistic/sharing response I think many people feel. It is the response that says, "hey, I really like the song/album/movie... let me make a copy of it for my friend so he can enjoy it too."

There's nothing malicious in that. But, it is what DRM is trying to stop in an uncontrolled way. The problem is that in an effort to stamp out unintended "piracy," corporations have pushed people towards it because, hey, it is easier to download it than it is to try and pull it back off my ipod after visiting ITunes.

But, I digress in my response. My original point was that something IS needed and that being wide-open IS NOT a good idea because of this very thing. If I get a completely unprotected piece of content, I won't think twice about sharing it, and that has nothing to do with piracy or not wanting to pay but in being interested in being a good friend.

It's not much of a copyright protection system...

[dkf]

if it can't also protect copyleft.

You can't lock a tent

[vtcodger]

*** 'locks will be broken, and so a business model that depends on locking is very vulnerable'***

'very vulnerable' isn't the half of it. You can't lock a tent . If your business model depends on end users not copying your product, you might as well save everyone a lot of trouble and move on to another project. Copyright/Patent/Trademark may protect you a bit against some commercial competition. But you can't do much about end users violating them. And maybe not against mega-corporations with brigades of lawyers either.

Re:You can't lock a tent

[postbigbang]

There's an old aphorism that says locks keep your friends out, your enemies have pick tools.

The root of the problem is that the supply chains are inefficient to get from the content makers to the content consumers. The value chain is distorted by various elements that mandate draconian copy protection, through a further distortion of the concept of copyright.

Inventing a more efficient supply chain is in the making, and apps like iTunes and a hundred like it are a step in the right direction. Creators are those that should need the most protection, but instead, it's given to the EMI/RIAA/MPAA and so on, as ostensible 'agents' of the creators. Clearly, none of the techniques for protection are working, and the supply chain needs desperate re-alignment.

Okay

[styryx]

'acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world' Dear tidal wave of (blah etc),
I have never heard of anyone being able to stop a tidal wave before -- ya big self-sustaining soliton, you. But I was asked to acknowledge and speak to you, so here I go: Hello to all people of the world, sharing is caring!

Bringing da lolz, y'all. Also, wholesale would perhaps involve... I don't know... selling stuff. Yeah, the word "sale" is right in there. Perhaps you could track down the money trail? I am JUST trying to be helpful!

Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both.

[Alzheimers]

The problem with DRM is that the copyright holders want it to be a magic bullet to control exactly how a product is used by the consumer. Unfortunately for them, the consumer usually has a different idea of what they want to do with their own legitimately purchased products.

The Media companies need to understand that what they really need to focus on is getting customers to pay for the song. How they get it should be device agnostic -- a download, a CD, recorded off the air, etc. Once the "license" for that song is acquired, the consumer should be legally entitled to do whatever they want with it, including (but not limited to) space shifting, time shifting, remixing (for non-commercial use), transcoding, and demonstration.

While I don't agree with "file sharing" in a general case as a legitimate practice anymore (I think enough legal alternatives exist) the litigation-happy companies going after every last dime because someone ripped a legally purchased song into an MP3 that's on their iPod, desktop PC, Laptop PC, car CD changer, digital picture frame, gaming console, playing in the background of a youtube video of their kids, and their cellphone ringtone. Technology has made media accessible EVERYWHERE, and the rights of the consumer to use it as such should outweigh the nickle-and-dime dreams of the RIAA.

Re:Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both.

[Fnord666]

While I don't agree with "file sharing" in a general case as a legitimate practice anymore...

What many people fail to understand is that "file sharing" (bittorrent, etc.) is a tool, just like a photocopier is a tool. Both have many legitimate uses in addition to illegitimate ones. Photocopying an entire book remains a violation of copyright, whereas copying a single page for fair use is not. The same standard should apply to audio recordings, and in fact it has until now. It was only with the introduction of digital audio and the ability to make "perfect" copies that the copyright owners began to take exception. The fact that it is a digital recording also allows them to introduce some FUD into the mix and try to claim that it is somehow different. It's not. Technology made it easier to violate copyright, but it doesn't change the nature of the act. People need to understand the difference.

Re:Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both.

[sm62704]

Licenses are for publishers, not end users. You don't "license a work" to me, you license the content to the publisher, who sells me the media containing the work. This is how it's worked since Gutenberg.

Now that the printing press has been invented, all the scribes will be out of business and nobody will write any more books!

Just like Gutenberg changed media, the internet changed media. The world is not as it was in the 20th century and never will be again. This is no more the time to invest in media companies than 1900 was the time to be investing in carraiges. Like that business then, the future paradigm is completely unlnown. What is known is that DRM doesn't work and cannot work. As has been said countless times before, making bits uncopyable is like making water not wet.

Re:Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both.

[zizzybaloobah]

You've hit the nail on the head. While DRM ostensibly promoted as piracy prevention - it's really about making the customer pay for the same piece of entertainment as many times as possible.

Re:Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both.

[Anonymous Coward]

While the printing press may have put scribes out of business, the difficulty involved in copying a work has always reduced piracy. Digitized copies of works are trivial to copy, yes, and DRM only adds artificial difficulty while preventing fair use. Even so, BECAUSE digitization makes perfectly copying a work a trivial task, what is then the incentive to publish at all?

While it would be quite nice if all works were freely available, who would compensate writers/editors of anthologies or magazines? Who would pay those who do peer-review for scientific journals? There are certain tasks to which "freedom of information" does not apply BEYOND what is currently fair use---for example, referencing a source instead of copying the whole source verbatim---and applying freedom of information to those creates a disincentive to publish such information.

While it would be shiny if music was freely available, it's impractical: many works are specifically produced for profit. For example, why would O'Reilly publish its reference books if not for the profit made by doing so? If O'Reilly books were freely copied, why would they go to the expense of writing more? A fungible resource, such as a book, is essentially worth the lowest cost it is available for, much as GNU coreutils is technically saleable but almost never bought. Licensing a work allows certain better, nonrestrictive methods of enforcing copyright, though they aren't done at all. A scheme that was proposed somewhere in the recent topic on watermarking was to license a work to people directly, then permit those with licenses to get copies of the work with a certain watermark. While watermarks are removable, they pose no burden whatsoever on legitimate users.

As all works in the United States are copyrighted automatically, licenses are what, in fact, permits you to legally read them at all. Whether this policy is poor or not I will not discuss because, well, this is /., and I think we all know the prevalent opinion here by now. The issue with copying is that currently you buy a license to a *specific copy* of a work, violating fair use. The DMCA doesn't help much either, and that is a law that I think all people would condemn if they knew the implications of it.

Copyright is NOT THE SAME AS DRM. A system of DRM is a system erroneously used in the belief that it protects copyright, while trampling on fair use rights &c. If making bits uncopyable is like making water not wet, then watermarking is like dying the water before distribution. While it is not perfect, what system is? It is the least intrusive possible system, posing no burden whatsoever to legitimate users.

Re:Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both.

[sm62704]

Even so, BECAUSE digitization makes perfectly copying a work a trivial task, what is then the incentive to publish at all?

Writers will write, singers will sing, painters will paint, because they have to, as surely as an alcoholic will drink or a crack whore will smoke crack. The creative process is addictive. Writing slashdot journals is addictive, particularly when you get positive feedback like in the linked one.

Take the money from art, and all that is left is the art itself.

While it would be quite nice if all works were freely available, who would compensate writers/editors of anthologies or magazines? Who would pay those who do peer-review for scientific journals?

Who would write FOSS?

Copyright is NOT THE SAME AS DRM

That's so; IMO any work protected by DRM should have copyright stripped and be placed immediately into the public domain.

I'm not against copyright per se, but believe that if copyright terms were like before the 20th century (20 years) there would be so much stuff in the public domain that copyright infringement would pretty much disappear.

In the US a work has to be "affixed in tangible form" to be copyrighted, I would posit that electrons and bits are intangible. Your manuas, for example, are a whole lot more useable in paper form.

Re:Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both.

[funaho]

For example, why would O'Reilly publish its reference books if not for the profit made by doing so? If O'Reilly books were freely copied, why would they go to the expense of writing more?

Interesting choice, because they actually offer at least some of their books online for download, as PDF, no strings attached. I found this out a couple months back when I tried in vain to find a local bookstore with a copy of "Perl Best Practices" in stock. The PDF even has the cover art, so if I wanted to I could print up my own copy and throw it in a three-ring binder (though I find referencing the PDF itself is more than sufficient.)

Re:Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the same AC to whom you replied; sorry for the delay.

Take the money from art, and all that is left is the art itself. People often seek to do the art as their job. They shouldn't be relegated to having to ask for donations. If someone wants to sell something, and there is a free alternative available of equal quality, then under my assertion that the resource of least cost is generally used, the non-free resource would not be used. Therefore, the non-free resource would have to be of superior quality. If they choose to sell it, and not to give it away, that's their prerogative, as is choosing to give it away freely. This is already permitted under current copyright law. I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be prohibited from giving away their work, I'm arguing that they should have the right to sell their work and not have others copy it.

Who would write FOSS? Few seem to like the boring tasks in FOSS, such as writing documentation. The expat "documentation" is a very egregious example of this. (For those not sarcasm-attuned or familiar with the expat project, it's a very popular XML parser, to the extent that, IIRC, the python XML parsing module is just an interface to it. It's used so often that there was a fiasco when gentoo revision-bumped stable expat to 2.0 due to soname-change-induced linking breakage)

I ... believe that if copyright terms were ... 20 years ... there would be so much stuff in the public domain that copyright infringement would pretty much disappear Yes, current copyright terms are far too long; they shouldn't be defined in terms of the creator's lifespan. That's O/T, though.

In the US a work has to be "affixed in tangible form" to be copyrighted, I would posit that electrons and bits are intangible. Your manuas, for example, are a whole lot more useable in paper form. First of all, a google search for "affixed in tangible form" brings up only a few references, none of which are anywhere near legally binding, and one of which is slashdot itself. To be more accurate, in the United States:

Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device.

The specification "with the aid of a machine or device" serves specifically to get around this argument. Please don't make sophistic arguments: you know (or should know) perfectly well that if that were the case, copyright would be utterly unenforceable, as anything transferred to digital form would essentially have an automatic exemption, nor would the GNU FDL (and I'd hope GNU's lawyers are competent). There are counterexamples to your position, as well. Under the WIPO Copyright Treaty http://www.copyright.gov/wipo/treaty1.html, both software and compilations of data are copyrightable.

And so it should be: digital works are copyrightable. Digital text is copyrightable, and authors should have the ability to prevent copyright infringement. Before I'm modded down, DRM is not an actual prevention of copyright infringement, as it's Defective By Design (tm!). If that weren't so, then any machine-aided reproduction of a work (e.g. phonographs, mp3s) wouldn't be copyrightable, and all of the RIAA cases would be moot. Whether you dislike the RIAA or not, they *should* work to prevent copyright infringement, though certainly not in the way which they do now. The oft-repeated claim of "outdated business practices" seems to be used far too often as but an excuse to perpetrate copyright infringement.

Re:Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both.

[adminstring]

Exactly! That's why I have always avoided iTunes (which has until recently based their business around DRM-encrusted tracks) yet I love emusic. Once I pay for the download, I can listen to it in my car, at work, at the gym, all with no hassle and no extra payments, and I can use it on whatever future device I may happen to buy, without worrying if some stupid DRM method is implemented on that device. Devices come and go, but the music, if it is good, should last my lifetime.

DRM is about giving a downloaded track a short, inconvenient lifetime of its own, which might be OK for a teenybopper buying a Britney Spears track for her iPod, but it really chaps my long-term-music-fan ass!

Absolutely

[Anonymous Coward]

Copy protection on media files is by and large pointless. It takes only one person to break it, and break it they will. Even if it's not pristine 100% quality, as long as it's free most people won't care too much if the quality is a little degraded. So in the worst case you can always make an analog copy. Trying to protect the files themselves is just not going to work; if they want to crack down piracy they need to make sure getting a legitimate copy isn't going to be too expensive or inconvenient, and they need to go after the distribution networks.

It's futile and everybody loses

[CaptainZapp]

Just assum that they indeed can figure out the super-duper-ultra-secure path

Let's also assume that they hand the secret crypto keys to Carol (the attacker) in an utterly unbreakable meanner

It's still totally futile. Let's take music as an example:

There comes that point, no matter how secure the path, they keys, the algoritm, etc where a digital signal must be transformed into an analog, human "readable" signal. That signal can be re-captured and re-digitalized (and with the right equipment in good quality too)

Thaat's also referred to as the analog hole and no amount of DRM will ever get around that.

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[greg1104]

As was pointed out by several people in the recent discussion of digital watermarking, good audio watermarks will survive passing through the "analog hole" just fine.

One possible future we may be heading toward is where the DRM on every music download someone makes is a watermark on the file, perhaps personal, perhaps anonymous but still indicating the source for the download. You can do any legitimate thing, without restriction, with such a file; there may be "trusted" players that reject playing other people's files but as always these will be easy to avoid. But if you push it onto the P2P networks it will be trivial to prove you've given out an infringing file, and unlike a CD rip your download will come with an EULA that makes it more obvious you're guilty if you do that (instead of the current fuzzy "fair use" situation).

Watermarking is way scarier than regular DRM because unless you've got the source code to the watermark detector, which only runs on systems consumers and potential pirates have no access to, you have no way to know for sure if you've really removed a watermark or not. This a very different situation from the current DRM setup where all the components necessary to bypass the protection must be on the consumer's system where they can be hacked.

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you planning on capturing the output of your digital monitor? Some kind of scanning system?

Even if they do agree to send video to your analog monitor, do you have the equipment to capture that?

I am afraid there is no analog hole for video. Just AnyDVDHD, HDDump, etc... We don't need no stinkin analog hole.

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[Jumphard]

Well you know what the solution to that is?
Do not let the end-user actually play the music at all! No analogue output, no holes, no problem. Unhappy customers, but hey... we've got their money!

Please send cheques to DRM Enterprises PO Box: BLLSHIT.

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[rubycodez]

but with a sufficiently sophisticated p2p system no one knows what the payload was, what the route of delivery was, or who the sender, middlemen, and receiver were. p2p can be embedded in seeming innocuous data.

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[Just Some Guy]

Even if they do agree to send video to your analog monitor, do you have the equipment to capture that?

I don't. The commercial operations who sell copies of ripped movies most certainly will. All it takes is one person sharing that copy with the rest of the Internet and we're right back to square one: freely available unprotected content.

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[MobyDisk]

They can get around the analog hole: they can make everything digital. Today, that might seem insane, but it could happen several ways. Legislation would be one: and under the current knee-jerk anti-terrorism environment, they could claim it would allow the government to spy on people more easily, and that it would deter terrorists from profiting off of piracy. Another way would just be to form a consortium of electronics companies and step-on anyone who doesn't join. For example, how easily can one get a region-free DVD player in the US? Or how about one that lets you skipt he FBI warning? Those types of things are there because anyone who doesn't follow the rules doesn't get CSS and MPEG-4 licenses. So they've already proven that they can get away with delivering what the consumer doesn't want. If Americans were given the choice of boycotting their music and TV, or getting screwed -- they'll choose to get screwed, because they will go without eting before they go without TV or music.

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[Anonymous Coward]

You are assuming the one providing the file does so from a country where copyright law exists/is enforced. Some guy with an internet connection who lives in little village in south africa doesn't really care about your laws, since they do not apply to him. Once the file is on the p2p networks, there's not much you can do.

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you push it onto the P2P networks it will be trivial to prove you've given out an infringing file, and unlike a CD rip your download will come with an EULA that makes it more obvious you're guilty if you do that (instead of the current fuzzy "fair use" situation).

Trivial to prove?
Defence: My $15 mp3 player containing these watermarked tracks was lost. I didn't report it to the police at the time because the value was so trivial they would have told me to 'go away' (but not so politely).
(Almost) no-one keeps receipts, packaging etc. for $15 items.

This must be considered a potentially valid defence since it surely will happen to some people. But it's almost impossible to disprove (even on balance of probabilities).

Or consider the following: housemates (students etc.) with some grudge or who think it's funny 'borrow' other housemate's mp3 player and place contents online.

And would a typical clueless joe six-pack (or his granny) be held liable if they sold their PC with music tracks on and didn't properly erase them, so the next owner put the online?

The basic point is that the watermark (unless the scheme is cracked, which is probable but another issue) proves only where the track came from, not where it's been in order to get online.

After a while there'd be all sorts of stuff with various watermarks on it flying around without the permission of the original purchaser.

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[ajs318]

Defence: My $15 mp3 player containing these watermarked tracks was lost. I didn't report it to the police at the time because the value was so trivial they would have told me to 'go away' (but not so politely).

The easy way around that would be for manufacturers to make MP3 players "write only" via the USB port -- so files cannot be read back once transferred (only erased or overwritten).

It wouldn't surprise me if the Windows software for these devices already emulates that.

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[mini me]

They can get around the analog hole: they can make everything digital.

Unless it's discovered that the brain is capable of receiving a digital signal directly, how do you propose that they do that?

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[init100]

The easy way around that would be for manufacturers to make MP3 players "write only" via the USB port -- so files cannot be read back once transferred (only erased or overwritten).

Though that would disable the dual use of mp3 players as portable storage devices. I'm not sure that everyone would like that. Some manufacturers advertise this ability as an advantage.

Re:It's futile and everybody loses

[ajs318]

There's no reason why the MP3 player part has to take any notice of the mass-storage part -- it could simply ignore any files not sent through the proprietary, write-only interface. Or, the device could just do whatever checks it does to determine whether a file is a playable media file; and if so, refuse to allow it to be read via the mass-storage interface.

Borat got it right

[Big Nothing]

I believe Borat got it right when he said:

"...we support your Global War of Terror!"

If it doesn't play at all its's pointless

[edwardpickman]

The trend is to cripple them so videos can't play on computers. I've found Disney started doing this with DVDs and most Blu-Ray disks don't seem to play on computer drives. I live in my home office and the room is full of hardware but I don't have a DVD player in the room so I normally play them in one of my computers, the Mac mostly because it's wide screen and often available. If I can't play videos on my machines I won't buy or rent them period. I had planned to buy a stack of Blu-Ray disks but since it's a crap shoot if they'll play on my drive I'm not buying any. Bricking the disks so they can't be played is costing them sales. It definitely cost them a bundle with me because I've been wanting to get into a HiDef format and I have a brand new Blu-Ray drive and a nice big 24" screen that can play at 1080P res but the catch-22 is the disks won't play. I used to be a fanatic over Laser disk and I still prefer them to DVDs so I was hoping Blu-Ray or HD would be the next format to dive into. I currently have no plans to buy a dedicated player for either format so they definitely shot themselves in the foot with one customer. I don't care if they block copying but to block playing entirely is insane.

Re:If it doesn't play at all its's pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be a fanatic over Laser disk and I still prefer them to DVDs

You're an idiot. Case closed.

Re:If it doesn't play at all its's pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you were never interested in Blu-ray at all you just wrote all that crap to advance your agenda against Sony.

Nobody is complaining about Blu-ray disc not being able to play; it is only the minority nerd crowd who wants to do some stupid experiment and declare that because it failed him that obviously all consumers are gonna have the same problem.

Anytime you see somebody around here mention 'ooohh I was seriously thinking about switching to Blu-ray but when I found it that it limits my use, well in my opinion that means the format is doomed'.
The format was is over and HD-DVD is the 'losers'. The only consumers who lost were the idiots who bough HD-DVD and tried to argue against Blu-ray. Those people who listened to the nerds who told them HD-DVD was better than Blue-ray are probably not going to be considered next time for an opinion about any format.

Re:If it doesn't play at all its's pointless

[cpt kangarooski]

Yeah, SelectaVision will never die!

Futile

[Demablogia]

Futile. Another question.

Re:Futile

[sm62704]

Futile. Another question

Excuse me, Yoda, but as a cyborg I have to ask you to stop using part of our catchphrase "resistance is futile. You will be assimilated".

You will hear from our cybernetic lawyers shortly. Oh, and when they come, resistance is, of course, futile.

-mcgrew

"War on piracy"

[spasticfantastic]

Quite clearly millions of ordinary law abiding people have proved that copyright laws, when applied to modern technologies, do not work. However, don't expect this fact to deter people with a vested interest to continue down the road of prohibition and aracne laws that are impossible to actualy enforce with any real effect. The fact is it will probably benefit the major labels to have a scapegoat like priacy to blame for their pooor results (see EMI shedding 2000 jobs today), it will benefit politicians to take an anti pricay stance and lure in those fat donation wallets that the labels have and it will benfit the ISP's who want to throttle any type of P2P use to cover up the fact that their infrastructure is poorly lacking. All in all it will benefit everyone but the actual consumers of copyrighted material who will always find a way to get it for free if they really want but run the risk of ever more draconian punishments should they get caught.

Most will tell me that I don't understand

[iminplaya]

But I see the creation of copyright as a method to protect established businesses or industries from new technology, be it the printing press or the internet, and it should be pointed out that it is also an attempt, and a very effective one, to silence critics of the authorities, be they government or corporate. It's about the control of distribution of information by those deemed worthy.

Re:Most will tell me that I don't understand

[mr_mischief]

Copyright doesn't keep you from criticizing in your own words. The jack-booted thugs have to call it "terrorism" to keep you from criticizing their masters. OF course, they do that so readily now that the word is quickly losing any meaning.

Re:Most will tell me that I don't understand

[iminplaya]

Copyright doesn't keep you from criticizing in your own words.

Actually it is. It is the basis of the anti-P2P, bittorrent, and uploading in general tirade that we are up against today. It was used by the writers guild to protect their business from the printing press of old times and by the corporate controlled mass media from the internet today. It is being used to cripple all recording technology. Look what happened to the mini-disc, and even cassette tapes and CDs for that matter are being taxed. It is being used to give law enforcement probable cause to bust your door down and take away your possessions. It is truly a tool invented and maintained for nefarious purposes. And nothing to do with "protecting the artists", or assuring that "culture remains commercially viable", as one person here put it. It is a tool of pirates to steal our culture and lock it down under their control.

Re:Most will tell me that I don't understand

[mr_mischief]

Okay, I see you're not dealing with an issue of the concept of copyright but with abuses of it. From that viewpoint, I'd agree it's being misused to do those things. I just don't think it's the tool that's damaged so much as the way it's being misused.

Re:Most will tell me that I don't understand

[iminplaya]

If the concept of copyright (and patents) had been strictly limited to the issue of plagiarism, or if it is reduced to that issue alone, I wouldn't have a problem with it. That's the only natural, logical right a person has to his/her idea/invention. But the concept goes into control of distribution and how a work is used and who can use it, which by its very nature is abusive, and it has been that way since the first law was written.

Re:Most will tell me that I don't understand

[mr_mischief]

I disagree. The ability to make and sell copies of an entire work is just as important to curb as the ability to plagiarize part of a work. That's the control of distribution that was initially intended. Making a copy for a different device or watching a recorded TV show at a different time don't hurt the original author's ability to profit from the work. Distributing copies of what they're selling does.

The terms are too long, and there are abuses like the anti-anti-DRM in the DMCA that are truly abusive. To allow people to make hundreds of thousands of copies for strangers across the Internet and take a serious chunk of the market away from the artist is just as abusive to the artist as the other extreme is to the public.

Re:Most will tell me that I don't understand

[iminplaya]

The ability to make and sell copies of an entire work is just as important...

If I could apply those rules to washing dishes or replacing a light bulb, I would agree. But copies don't clean dishes or fix the lights. There is no reason to give anybody else such special privileges. You should profit from the amount of work you do, the way I do. If somebody wants more of your work, you should perform the work. The notion of a playing a recording as a performance is absurd. Your performance was making the recording, and that's what you should be paid for. Once you perform said work and get paid for it, that's it. You're not performing the reproduction (unless you're performing live to an audience). The playback device is. You can claim you did the work, but you don't own it. It belongs to the person who possesses it. You should not be permitted to control what happens to it afterward.

Re:Most will tell me that I don't understand

[mr_mischief]

Under your model a band would risk getting paid just $0.50 per song they write, rehearse, and record. That's because one person would buy one copy, and then turn around and sell or give it to everyone else. An author who wrote a 700-page novel could get paid $7, since everyone else could just make their own copies. What you're talking about is the end of commercial content altogether. If that's your goal, you've found a very effective way to promote it. Don't expect everyone else to jump on that bandwagon, though.

Re:Most will tell me that I don't understand

[iminplaya]

I have confidence that a better price could be arranged before anything is released. Studio musicians could charge by the hour, and live performances can pay quite well. A snippet of a book can be released leaving the reader craving for more if it's a good book. Make 'em pay for each subsequent snippet, or chapter if you wish. Control of distribution is not necessary. In fact it is detrimental in that it reduces the size of your audience. Commercial content will sell just fine. That it might cease to be a multi billion dollar industry with all its undue political influence isn't necessarily a bad thing. The individual creators will do well without it. And they will have control of what is released, and at what price, not their publisher. And, if they prefer not to handle all the daily business, they can hire a manager to make their deals for them for a reasonable price. Copyright gives all the power to the distributor, in the same way the railroad monopolies screwed over the farmers who depend on them to get their product to market. This, to me, is its purpose.

Re:Most will tell me that I don't understand

[mr_mischief]

The point I'm making is that without keeping the first purchaser from redistributing the work, why would anyone else pay the creator? If I buy your book at $5 or even $500 and I'm not bound not to reproduce and redistribute it, I can sell it 1000 times for $1 and make a profit. You'd only have to sell it 100 times at $5 to make $500, but by letting me reproduce it you'll likely lose that chance.

Screw the medium, which isn't very important these days. The intellectual and creative content has value, and the person who put that content in form deserves to be compensated. The way that's being done now sucks because of middle men, not because the original author has certain rights. A copyright of 50 years on a book or musical composition doesn't seem outrageous to me. That we go back to literal patronage -- rich people supporting artists charitably so that the artists can continue to create art -- does seem outrageous.

Re:Most will tell me that I don't understand

[iminplaya]

If I buy your book at $5...

I guess you didn't notice that little part where I said you would only get a small piece, or maybe a chapter. And you might be waiting a while for me to release any of it until I get enough buyers. I could play that by ear.

I can sell it 1000 times for $1 and make a profit.

I wouldn't know how if everybody else is giving it away. Eh...nevermind. Same argument, different person.

A copyright of 50 years on a book or musical composition doesn't seem outrageous to me.

GASP!!

Re:Most will tell me that I don't understand

[mr_mischief]

Why would I buy a chapter of your book? Why, especially, would I buy only part of a musical score or only part of a song?

Prepay before release is interesting, but it's pretty much limited to those with a track record of creating good work or with one hell of a marketing campaign, isn't it?

You're right about people giving the work away absolutely free. If I buy it for $5 and another buys it for %5, and he gives it away, you and I are both out of a market for it. That's the problem. It can take years to write a book, and $5 doesn't support you for years.

You gasp at 50 years of protection, when right now we're dealing with over 100 years and abuses by middlemen. Yet you still haven't stated why it's bad (or even unneccessary) to limit distribution. It's perfectly clear you think it's bad, but you haven't made a case for why or a workable alternative.

Nail On Head

[Anonymous Coward]

Price the content based on quality, and make it convenient. People prefer convenience.

It really sucks that, as it stands, pirate content is easier to acquire, easier to manipulate, easier to consume, and is priced more effectively.

Someone will get rich when people like me are better off paying for content rather than paying to steal it.

copyright is defunct

[circletimessquare]

its unenforceable

i mean, you can also outlaw alcohol. but people will still drink, you just wind up rewarding is the mafia

people will copy files and share them. before the internet, that was a work intensive and very localized effort. anyone remember bootleg cassette tapes of concerts?

nowadays, the effort involved in sharing files is practically zero. and so a major shift has developed. people will copy files and share them. with ease. nothing you say or do will stop that

as for morality, what is moral or immoral about sharing files? someone "owns" them? oh really? their "ownership", unlike say, their ownership of a house or a car, is an abstract legal notion, derived from a business model that is now defunct in the age of the internet

there is nothing immoral or dishonest about sharing files. except among those minds who can't adapt and shift to a new paradigm about how media will be consumed in this world

new business models will develop. and they surely won't be as lucrative. again, is that a bad thing? not at all. music is about community, a passion for art. it's not about the passage of filthy lucre

so deal with change. or don't, and remain defunct. your choice, but copyright is dead

Re:copyright is defunct

[Microlith]

music is about community, a passion for art. it's not about the passage of filthy lucre

Because money is bad, baaaaaad!

And anyone who touches money is evil, evil!

And bad things ALWAYS happen when ART and MONEY come together!

Except for that whole cost of production thing, which people like to ignore. Oh wait, anything can be produced with a dime and two toothpicks.

Re:copyright is defunct

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with the pursuit of money. There are a million different ways to make money from producing a song that does not rely on CD sales, but there's no point in pursuing any of those ideas because copyright says you don't have to.

Re:copyright is defunct

[Phisbut]

as for morality, what is moral or immoral about sharing files? someone "owns" them? oh really? their "ownership", unlike say, their ownership of a house or a car, is an abstract legal notion, derived from a business model that is now defunct in the age of the internet

Your ownership of your house or your car is just as abstract as my ownership of my copyrighted work. I could pack my things and come live in your house, but I can't because the law doesn't allow for that. Just as the law doesn't allow you copying my work. Law (abstract legal notions) is what protect property, be it physical, intellectual, or land. Either we deny the existence of those abstract legal notions, in which case he-who-has-the-biggest-guns gets your house, or we accept the fact that "abstract legal notions" exists and are valid, and we have a working society.

Which abstract legal notion is good or bad is up for debate. The fact that we need laws isn't.

I don't steal but...

[realkiwi]

I pay a tax on all blank media. That money goes to "artists" so they say. Shame, because the blank media is used to back up files that I created - I am the creator/copyright holder of those files. I am annoyed that creating those files does not make me rich, as least as rich as the artists who get the tax I pay on media that I don't use for stocking stuff I am supposed to have "stolen" from them...

My music (as I write this) is from an internet radio station. It is varied and usually corresponds to the style of music I like. Why "steal" it by recording it? It is on 24/24 7/7. Movies I watch on DVB-S TV stations. Ones I really like I buy on DVD (LOTR for example). I do record TV shows to hard drive - time shift - so that I can watch them in the language and at the time of my choosing rather when the TV station decides I should. Is that a crime? Doesn't sound like stealing to me.

Oh and pirates are people who stop boats or cars or other vehicles to steal valuable contents, sometimes even killing the occupants who stand in their way. What does piratery have to do with music, films or TV shows? Who would kill another human being for that? Oh you mean the RIAA would go to that extreme to protect "artists"? Wouldn't they do better stopping "artists" messing with drugs or playing with little boys? Or even (shudders) promoting quality over quantity in artistic creation...

Sorry it is long I had to get it out of my system.

Pretty good business model

[oldhack]

Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, responds that 'locks will be broken, and so a business model that depends on locking is very vulnerable'

And sustainable. It's like garbage sweeping business - you never run out of garbage.

There has always been piracy...

[Gybrwe666]

No matter what the medium, service, or object, there has always been piracy, and always been people who will copy anything.

Counterfeiting is big business. As are knock-offs of Gucci and Chanel.

I've been using computers for nearly 30 years now, and since the day I started programming, I've seen piracy. In fact, I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of any protection scheme that hasn't failed. From early software anti-copying measures, to serial numbers, to DRM, to DVD encryption, its all failed miserably to stop the determined.

I've often wondered what the actual cost of these measures truly is to the companies that use them. If they create them internally, there's the development cost. If they license them, they end up paying per-use, I would guess. Either way, it seems to me that this is one of the ultimate excersizes in futility. I've often wondered if this was due to stubborness or simply stupidity. Either way, it ends up being a burden to the legitimate user, and hasn't, as far as I can tell, stopped the illegitimate users.

Take copy protection. When I was a 13 year old using an Apple IIe, everyone I knew was pirating software. We did it because there was no way we could afford to buy it, for the most part. While I acknowledge it was stealing, at the end of the day, it wasn't a loss, because we wouldn't have done it if we could a) afford it, or b) live without it.

So what did copy protection accomplish? It simply stopped people who bought it from making backups of legitimately purchased software. I remember once when I school I went to had a bad drive, and through stupidity ended up destroying multiple copies of AppleWorks trying to get it working on a machine. A "friend" of mine attempted to make duplicates of legitimate software so they had enough to go around for classes. Because of the copy protection, he ended up using cracked software to make copies so they could teach class for the two weeks it took to get Apple to acknowledge they owned the software and to ship it out to them.

As far as my own personal views, I can see the motivation for someone who is young and poor to make illegitimate copies of digital property. Mainly because you can't afford it. I know a few years ago, $20 made a differenc between eating or not. I sure didn't have it to spend on (software, CD's, etc.).

Now, however, I buy what I need to use. When I could afford it, I went and bought CD's to replace all the cassette copies of my favorite bands. I can afford it, and I recognize that if my favorite (artist, author, software company) doesn't sell their work, they won't make more for me to enjoy. Could I suck down my favorite albums off a Torrent? Sure. But I don't have a single desire to do so. I want that struggling band to sell enough CD's that they'll make the next one.

So, does any sort of copy protection benfit anyone at all? Maybe the guys who write/license it.

But everyone else loses, in the end.

Hopefully the negative feedback inherent in this system will rip it apart. One can only hope.

Bill

Re:There has always been piracy...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of any protection scheme that hasn't failed.

Well, high-end pro audio stuff tends not be cracked because it's very difficult to do so (nasty tricks like dongles that actually RUN key parts of the code!) and the target market is small. There was a release group that specialised in such stuff but iirc they're defunct now. More generally I believe the obnoxious but technically impressive StarForce protection still hasn't been cracked, just worked around in some cases with specialised CD emulation hacks.

Things get worse when the whole platform is closed and heavily DRM'd, e.g. the Xbox 360 is holding up well so far as are current generation satellite TV decoders. Contrary to slashdot groupthink, it is possible to build DRM that can't be broken (in a reasonable time), and we cannot rely on the idea that Johnny Q. Randomhacker will somehow always be able to circumvent it.

Re:There has always been piracy...

[Anonymous Coward]

"While I acknowledge it was stealing..."

Don't give into the MPAA brainwash, it's copyright infringement as opposed to stealing, w/o a profit motive I'm not even sure it was illegal 15 years ago.

Shops and bars

[jaweekes]

Shops and bars take the cost of stolen goods into account when they price stuff, as they know that glasses will be stolen, things will break, etc. Why can't the entertainment industry realize the same thing? It will be more profitable for them to sell digital music with or without DRM and cost it with "wastage" included and expect piracy, then to hinder it continuously with law suites and such.

I also realize that they should go after the people sharing 1,000's of music / movie files, just as they go after the thief who steals from stores (I know, piracy != theft).

Re:Shops and bars

[Anonymous Coward]

The prices on most DVDs and CDs is already grossly inflated - these industries have been making money hand over fist for years at the expense of consumers and seldomly their artists.

Re:Shops and bars

[Phisbut]

Shops and bars take the cost of stolen goods into account when they price stuff, as they know that glasses will be stolen, things will break, etc. Why can't the entertainment industry realize the same thing? It will be more profitable for them to sell digital music with or without DRM and cost it with "wastage" included and expect piracy, then to hinder it continuously with law suites and such.

They already price it with "wastage" included, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try to stop piracy. Bars price their drinks expecting some glasses to be broken, but that doesn't mean the bartender won't call the cops on you if you break stuff on purpose.

Information Wants To Be Free!

[wiredog]

But entertainment wants to be paid. If people only shared (without purchasing) the low quality stuff then it wouldn't be an issue. But the high quality stuff gets shared (freely) too. Thus depriving the entertainer (U2, Corman McCarthy, the BattleStar Galactica producers) of some income. If they can't make a living selling their singing, writing, or movie making to the listeners/readers/viewers, they will find some other way. Lots of product placement, perhaps. Tracking who listens/watches/views and selling that data. Or just getting sponsors, as was done in the Renaissance, before copyright. Each album from U2 having a paean to whoever paid them, each McCarthy book having a prologue extolling the virtues of Lord Rupert Murdoch. Probably no BSG, or similar, because who (other than advertisers) would pay for it?

Re:Information Wants To Be Free!

[Gramie2]

These "entertainers" are (certainly in the case of movie/tv production) controlled by financial concerns. They don't use product placement, tracking viewers or sponsorship to make sure they can make a living. They do it to maximize the profit they make. They would do so regardless of whether their ink was red or black. You are not going to stop the above techniques by buying their products.

What you should be arguing for is that if people aren't paid, they won't create at all.

Re:Information Wants To Be Free!

[wiredog]

But those financial concerns want to make a profit as well. Lacking that, they don't pay, and the case of movie makers collapses into the same one as the other entertainers.

People will create if they aren't paid, at least some will. But they won't create as much, or as well.

The only solution...

[Dirtside]

and that we should be 'identify workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive and that fully respect other interests such as privacy and fair use.'

Sorry to be the one to break this to you, Mr. Cotton, but the only approach you're going to find that works is making your product inexpensive and easy to use. If it's easier for people to pirate it than it is for them to buy it legally and play it (thanks to defective-by-design DRM schemes), they're going to pirate it. We've said it a million times: treating your customers like criminals is just going to make them act like criminals.

Re:The only solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

the small number of cds with drm compared to the vast number of albums that i can get off of emule 24/7 shows that your theory is wrong. the bottom line is that people are thieves and they're going to do great damage to their own culture. serves them right. i hope people who use bullshit arguments like the one above to justify their theft choke on their stolen goods.

Re:The only solution...

[Dirtside]

the vast number of albums that i can get off of emule 24/7

...and then...

i hope people who use bullshit arguments like the one above to justify their theft choke on their stolen goods.

So, are you one of those people? :)

Besides, you forgot the "inexpensive" part. $20 for an album can't compete with free (but inconvenient and illegal) nearly as well as $10 or $5 can. This isn't justifying piracy, this is explaining it. Whine all you want about how greedy people are, it isn't going to change how much piracy happens.

Would I lock my bricks and mortar store?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course I would lock my bricks and mortar store. I might even put iron bars on the windows and install a burglar alarm. In the end, however, a determined thief could steal all my goods. So, is locking my store futile? If it were, there would be no stores or maybe even civilization.

The question asked in TFA is not the most important one. The more important question is about whether too much security will bork the economy. When people try to make money from something, they often end up making it less convenient to use. When that thing is a productivity tool, that slows the economy down.

Example: Windows Vista tries to protect its own and other people's copyrights. As a result it does some annoying and outright dangerous things. Vista's content protection could end up killing people. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/22/1727245 That can't be good for productivity and therefore the economy. It is far too high a price to pay just to protect the RIAA and MPAA's profit stream.

Re:Would I lock my bricks and mortar store?

[mini me]

I'll lock up the CDs I own too. But I have the key, and when I want to listen to them, I can unlock them. DRM never gives me the key.

I always use a no-CD hack for my games.

[Dr. Manhattan]

I pay for games (well, technically, I get almost all of them because I put them on my xmas or birthday lists, but either way, the game is paid for) and I don't pirate 'em. But I have small children in my house and I always use a no-CD hack so I can put the game media on a nice, safe, high shelf. I lost one game to little fingers and I won't let it happen again.

So, this xmas, when I wanted the Orange Box (hey, Portal looks cool), I just asked for it on Steam. No muss, no fuss, I don't need to pop in a CD and I can just download and go. I'm not planning on giving copies to others or anything like that, so what do I care? Sure, there's DRM and such in Steam, but it's not obtrusive and doesn't get in my way. So, why not? Hopefully other game publishers will learn from this.

For games, this kind of model makes sense. For many other apps... not so much. I use open-source for practically everything so I won't have the hassle of keeping track of keys and media and such. Games are basically the only software I purchase anymore.

Re:I always use a no-CD hack for my games.

[FauxPasIII]

> Sure, there's DRM and such in Steam, but it's not obtrusive and doesn't get
> in my way. So, why not? Hopefully other game publishers will learn from this.

What happens when Steam is down, or when Valve decides to shut it down?

Re:I always use a no-CD hack for my games.

[Dancindan84]

For the most part you can run the games in offline mode if steam can't connect, as long as you logged in successfully the last time it -could- connect.

Steam is by far the best executed "DRM" I've seen. 99% of the time it doesn't get in my way (and often has benefits), so the 1% of the time it is an issue I'm willing to deal with.

If I wipe my computer, I just install steam and log in. All my games are accessible (I do have to re-download them). If I have two computers steam lets me install my stuff on both, just not run it on both at the same time, which is reasonable.

If media DRM worked like this, I'd be happy. Unfortunately you hear the stories about people reformatting their computer and no longer having access to their media, or changing hardware and being blocked from viewing it, or only being able to view it on the machine on which it was downloaded. These are the things that piss off consumers and force them to pirate to get the flexibility they should have in the first place.

Re:I always use a no-CD hack for my games.

[Dr. Manhattan]

What happens when Steam is down,

Then it's like when Gmail goes down - I can't use it. Such outages have happened, but I've managed to miss 'em. Moreover, Steam allows running a game in offline mode, so long as the game and Steam client are fully up-to-date. Can't do that with Gmail.

or when Valve decides to shut it down?

The odds of that happening in the next five years are small enough that I don't let it keep me up nights. By then, if it's a problem, someone will have cracked it. I paid for it, so I won't feel even a tiny pang of guilt bypassing the DRM then.

Re:I always use a no-CD hack for my games.

[i.r.id10t]

Yeah, but you can still go to jail under the DMCA for bypassing the DRM...

Here's one for you

[MikeRT]

How about proposals that don't destroy our physical property rights? Stop telling people what they can do with their DVD players and computers, and we'll have more respect for your copyrights. Our physical property rights are the result of centuries of common law and culture. They should get primacy over intellectual property rights because they are a tradition that has been with us, and worked for us, for far longer than intellectual property has been around.

Re:Here's one for you

[slcdb]

I never have my mod points when I need them. That's probably the most insightful comment I've seen all week.

it's futile and makes for a hostile 98% of market

[swschrad]

let me explain. just about everybody has heard "thou shalt not steal" once or twice in their life. most folks are pleased to just bump along and follow the path of least resistance. you want to watch "Murderous Androids IV?" tune it in, punch the PPV button and acknowledge, or rent or buy the DVD. no problem.

there is a small fraction that gets its jollies from defying authority any way they can. if the DVD was free in their mailbox, they'd still seek a way to find a source and hack it, just for the exercise, or because it's contrary. you are just going to create a more fearsome breed of hackers, crackers, and crossposters by putting obstacles in their way.

there is a very much smaller fraction of people who see a way to profit from somebody else's effort, and will take any and all cracks, crosspostings, or bumpy video from theater seats, put it on purple disks, and sell it for a couple bucks. you can't stop those people except by international law enforcement.

and every generation of flags, copy protection, rootkits, and the other pernicious slop that media companies have slapped the obedient purchasers in the face with, along with phone-home schemes attachable by identity thieves and the like, just pisses off the good customer more.

in short, give it up, you're putting yourselves out of business. and take your blue-ray and HD-DVD with you. it's all deck chairs on the Titanic. we're surfin' the net now, dude.

DRM will fail always.

[LWATCDR]

It really will always fail but at the same time I am sick of the pirates as well.
Pirate's Bay is making money off of other peoples work. They Sell ads on their website they are not the good guys. I don't like the RIAA or the MPAA going after grandmothers, little kids, and college students and they are also not the good guys for sure.
As I said it seems that we are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
You have two groups of people that seem to think they are entitled to rule the world.
You have the media companies that think that they should have the right to control how you watch and or listen to their media. If they could do figure out how they would charge you for every person that you let listen to your music. Don't put that CD on at a party and heaven forbid you play while tailgating at a football game! Don't forget that broadcast flag! They must sell you that show on DVD when they get around to selling it.
And then you have the people that think they are entitled to take any media that they can! You can tell them by their matting call. "I it isn't my responsibility to make your business model work!"
I really don't mind paying for my music. I don't mind buying or renting DVDs. Heck I don't even rip the DVDs I get from NetFlix. But I want to record shows off my TV for my own use and I want to put my DVDs on my hard drive and my iPod. Oh and I don't want to pay bunch for my digital music. Even $.99 for a song is a bit silly folks.

Re:DRM will fail always.

[Anonymous Coward]

You think hosting is free? TPB's public trackers are easily the most heavily used in the world, they require numerous staff and significant datacentre fees in several countries to keep running. They also face constant legal threats, being followed by private investigators etc. Finally any profit they do make would most likely be sunk into the Piratbyrån and hence help fight for sane copyright terms etc.

Re:DRM will fail always.

[Anonymous Coward]

You think hosting is free? TPB's public trackers are easily the most heavily used in the world, they require numerous staff and significant datacentre fees in several countries to keep running. They also face constant legal threats, being followed by private investigators etc. Finally any profit they do make would most likely be sunk into the Piratbyrån and hence help fight for sane copyright terms etc.

"It isn't my responsibility to make your failing business model work!"

Re:DRM will fail always.

[big_paul76]

Pirate's Bay is making money off of other peoples work. They Sell ads on their website they are not the good guys. I don't like the RIAA or the MPAA going after grandmothers, little kids, and college students and they are also not the good guys for sure.

I don't know, couldn't you make a case that TPB is engaged in a form of civil disobedience?

They are quite clearly stating that several things need to change on the copyright front.

And, they're serving as an example to the world that the US system of copyright is not a "natural law" like gravity or something, there could in fact be other ways of operating or thinking about this issue.

So they're making money off it? When did that become a sin? What, if somebody doesn't take a vow of poverty they can't advocate for social change?

Besides, I have yet to have anyone rebut my point that copyright law was never intended to apply to private, non-commercial copying. I can say that conclusively because private non-commercial copying didn't exist when copyright law was written (or, at least, it was just cheaper to buy your own copy of the book/CD/Record/whatever).

So when people talk about "control of their creation", well, I don't see that anybody ever intended to give creators "control" over their creation at all. Copyright was most likely only ever intended to keep publishers from reproducing works and paying the creator nothing.

This idea that copyright laws (and things like 5-6 figure penalties for copyright violation) should apply to private, non-commercial copying instead of only to commercial operations is an idea that needs to be challenged.

Selling fragile goods

[SleptThroughClass]

Consumers don't like copy protection because it means they're buying stuff that is designed to break. You can't listen to your music if you buy the wrong player. You can't watch your movie if you're not using a certain cable. If the DVD doesn't like your equipment you'll get a fuzzy picture. If your CD gets a scratch you can't use your bookkeeping program. If you lose your code wheel you can't play your game. If you upgrade your computer you can't use your old programs or access your old files.

Inform but do not block

[davidwr]

You need to tell people what rights they don't have so they don't violate the law without being put on notice.

However, copy protection is wrong if for no other reason that you may interfere with a person's lawful right to copy.

Books do this quite well: They have a notice inside that says "copyright... all rights reserved." Most books can be copied with a regular photocopier.

One thing books do not do right:
Many do not alert you that you do have certain fair use and other rights.

Understanding of the "man on the street"

[The Empiricist]

As for the man on the street, Panaqqa wrote us with word that the Question Copyright site has posted an interesting video of ordinary people explaining why they think copyright exists. It's pretty clear that most people don't understand it at all.

I disagree. The people in this video get some concepts mixed up (e.g., patents versus copyrights, economic rights versus moral rights). But, they seem to get the gist of what intellectual property rights are supposed to protect.

People definitely seems to struggle with their ideal view of copyright protection and their desire for convenience and low cost. Some of the people seemed to go to some lengths to rationalize copyright infringement.

One of the arguments given is that the artists do not see much of a profit from their works. That is, because the content creator has a bad deal with the content distributor, the consumer can legitimately chip away at the content distributor's profits.

This is poor rationalization. The ability of content creators to make reasonable deals with content distributors is a result of supply versus demand. Content creators that are good at controlling supply (e.g., programmers, who control supply simply by not having an overwhelmingly large population, members of the writers guild, who control supply through unionizing, or established artists, who have managed to survive the fickle markets) are in a better position to establish favorable deals than content creators who do not control supply very well (e.g., new musicians, who seem to grow on trees).

Copyright plays an important role in controlling supply. If there was no copyright, new musicians would have to avoid playing their songs in public or otherwise distributing their songs. Recording studios could troll for good songs, take them without any compensation, and hire their own musicians or established stars to take the songs to the big time. The marketing power of the content distributors would be much more important than it is today.

Copyright transferability plays an important role in stimulating demand. If the copyrights were completely non-transferable, then the risk of investing in content would become very high, reducing the demand from content distributors. Again, the marketing power of the content distributors would be much more important than it is today.

What is the effect of widespread infringement by consumers? The effect is that the risk of investing increases, again reducing the demand from content distributors.

Content producers can try to cut content distributors out of the loop, but that only works if consumers purchase from the content producers. Infringing on the copyrights of works that are in the hands of content distributors does nothing for content producers.

Remember, that even if content producers get no royalties for their works (something that is common with programmers), content distributors have to meet some threshold of reward to get content providers to assign their copyrights over the the content producers. The more risk there is in investing in a content producer (e.g., because of widespread copyright infringement), the less demand there is from content distributors, and thus the worse the deals are for content producers.

Re:Understanding of the "man on the street"

[nakajoe]

Copyright transferability plays an important role in stimulating demand. If the copyrights were completely non-transferable, then the risk of investing in content would become very high, reducing the demand from content distributors. Again, the marketing power of the content distributors would be much more important than it is today.

It might be better to take a look from a bit higher level and ask why stimulating demand is important. More dollars flowing around is not better for its own sake. The benefit of promoting a particular piece of content at a massive (inter-)national level seems to fall on the few guys at the top of the media company rather than society at large. From a position of social good, if creative work A really is so great, won't it rise on its own merits by word-of-mouth without organized marketing?

With our current systems of digital content production and distribution, I'd take the position that there is no longer any need for a large investment in content by a distributor at all.

Re:Understanding of the "man on the street"

[The Empiricist]

From a position of social good, if creative work A really is so great, won't it rise on its own merits by word-of-mouth without organized marketing?

Possibly (quick thought: wouldn't it be nice if our presidential candidates were to rise to the top by word-of-mouth and not by aggressive, expensive campaigning?). Copyright infringement tends to reinforce the power of existing players though rather than opening the doors to new players. Why download or purchase (at a cheap price) the songs of unknown artist A when you can download the songs of well-known artist B for free? Sure, there may be some people who just download works at random (perhaps within a preferred genre), but those people tend to be in the minority. This tends to drown out the ability of independent artists to get people to listen to their works.

Lets say that nobody infringed on the copyrights held by record companies. If the average album sold for $15 and nobody downloaded the songs illegally, then that would provide an opportunity for smaller record companies or independent artists to entice consumers with albums selling for $10, $5, or less. But when consumers who are unwilling to buy the album for $15 just download the songs, they have less incentive to look around at alternative sources of entertainment.

With our current systems of digital content production and distribution, I'd take the position that there is no longer any need for a large investment in content by a distributor at all.

With our current system of public water treatment and indoor plumbing, there's no longer any need for investment in the bottling and distribution of water in the United States. 'nuff said.

Re:Understanding of the "man on the street"

[nakajoe]

Copyright infringement tends to reinforce the power of existing players though rather than opening the doors to new players. Why download or purchase (at a cheap price) the songs of unknown artist A when you can download the songs of well-known artist B for free? Sure, there may be some people who just download works at random (perhaps within a preferred genre), but those people tend to be in the minority. This tends to drown out the ability of independent artists to get people to listen to their works.

Definitely, in the short run. But, there will only be so long a given artist holds real popular sway unless they keep reinventing themselves. Even genuinely good artists don't stay at the top of the stack forever.

With our current system of public water treatment and indoor plumbing, there's no longer any need for investment in the bottling and distribution of water in the United States. 'nuff said.

True--but hey, as long as we're arguing theory, right? \(^_^)

Copyright shouldn't be enforced on individuals

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that its wrong to enforce copyright on individuals who swap files privately and non commecially. Ignoring copyrights has nothing to do with paying, honesty, morals or whatsoever. It has to do with a law dictating how I am allowed to use computers at my home, what the contents of my emails are allowed to be, whom I send a tune or a movie, on how many PCs I install a application, and so on. It invades the very core of my privacy and tries to censor my private communication. How in all seriousness can you expect anybody not to hate THAT? While I dont have anything against commercial copyright, I strongly refuse to accept an restriction of my private "digital lifestyle". Copyright law enforced on private communication is kinda the same as islamic sharia law enforced on sexuality, so anybody "intellectually honest" will just keep ignoring it.

@ Zonk

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty clear that most people don't understand it at all.

You must be new here.

copyright and "copy protection" are different

[mbaGeek]

At a basic level it is necessary to provide "intellectual protection" as an incentive to innovation.

This is easily proved by the fact that China (no "intellectual protection" at all) is a world leader in piracy but isn't a world leader in new product development (state censorship might explain a lot - but in any case there is no incentive to "think" at all). The current system may not be the best way to do it, but there needs to be some method

Software copy protection on the other hand is irritating to consumers. Anyone else remember all of those idiotic methods tried in the 90's? Match up the wheels (or search the manual), find the code, enter the code THEN play the game.

Requiring the game cd be in the drive is still common (and still irritating) - I've always been on the "if they want to steal your software, then there isn't much you can do about it" side of things

How many years have brick and mortar stores tried ways to eliminate shoplifting? Better to not irritate your paying customers than to worry about some vague idea of "lost potential profits"...

It is possible to http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/539013/how_can_you_make_money_giving_something.html make money giving stuff away, but that is another subject ;-)

When the cost of production reaches zero

[kevinbr]

People no longer see the value in buying a record from 1968 as digital format at a high price. The digital cost has effectively gone to zero.

What copyright holders refuse to accept is perhaps with the consumer aware of the value, that they simply not prepared to but the music at the price asked.

I am an example, I travel all the time, and in my earlier life I spend thousands of dollars on movies. Now I cannot see movies ( I live in France and most DVD's seem to be in French Dutch and German etc) because I travel and frankly having invested lots of money in kids's DVD that get scratched, I am fed up with the price and the infexibility of delivery.

Now I download a digital files because I can. I would pay 5 Euros a film - no interest in Blue ray etc. No one will offer me a site where I can download a film and pay.

Please don't blah blah stealing to me. I am willing to pay. If they are so inflexible that they refuse in a capable world to sell me their product how I want it, and I can get it for free, well I can and will do this.

When they bother to ask me, perhaps they might learn there are many different ways people will pay.

When the cost of duplication is zero, be careful in how you price your product.

They have no clue.

copy protection doesn't work (and may hurt you)

[Vellmont]

I've recently been recovering data from some 20+ year old Commodore 64/128 disks (mostly interested in old papers). They were written using the word processors of the time, and can't really be recovered without them. I still have the old disks, and for the most part the data is still fully readable. I legally purchased the word processor many years ago, and still have the disks. My methodology was to recover the data to a modern PC running linux to an image file, and then run the word processor off an image file using an emulator.

Of course, I was thwarted by the copy protection on the disks. I couldn't get a proper image of them because of it. I wound up having to find a cracked copy of the word processor on some website (which took me all of 20 minutes to find using Google), and can recover my old papers perfectly.

It's very amusing to me that the CRACKED version of the software is actually more valuable to me than the non-cracked version. Re-buying the software (even if it was available) is useless to me, as I can't run it on an emulator, and thus transfer the data to somewhere useful.

This may seem like a special case.. but I don't think so. Even 20+ years later I can STILL get the cracked, pirated version of the software. The software was cracked many years ago, so it didn't really prevent much of anyone from getting it if they wanted to. I suspect if I had used a proper C64 copy utility I'd have been able to copy the disk anyway. The only thing it prevented was ME, the guy who bought the software from using the product as intended.

Re:copy protection doesn't work (and may hurt you)

[sjames]

It's funny you mention C64 software. That was from the last time copy prevention was tried and failed miserably. They tried everything they could think of including eccentric tracks, half tracks, fake tracks recorded between the real ones, everything. Yet there was no such thing as an uncopyable disk.

Once copying the disk got too easy, the better hackers started boot code tracing and writing replacement binary loaders to go from a disk that must be booted to just another program to run. In the apple][ world, you could get a card called the bus rider that could log every cpu interaction with the system, freeze the clock and take a system snapshot. Many schemes would include simple minded scrambling and even attempts to trip up debuggers. All could be bypassed by reading in and disassembling the bootloaders stage by stage.

Then the better ones would hack in extra features and put in funny fake copyright messages. The cracked software was far superior to the unhacked official version.

The motivations for wide distribution were primarily a mixture of gaining cred in 'hacker circles' and 'getting revenge' against the publisher for using copy prevention in the first place. Teen rebellion for the geeky kids.

Most publishers in the day wised up and realised that between the extra production hassles, licensing costs for the copy prevention, and extra support issues from ticked off legitimate customers, it was losing them money rather than helping, so they gave up on it.

Re:copy protection doesn't work (and may hurt you)

[Vellmont]

It's funny you mention C64 software. That was from the last time copy prevention was tried and failed miserably.

Yah, that's exactly why I brought it up. We've already been down this path in the software industry 20 years ago. Mostly because the data sizes are so much smaller, and copying is of course an inherent process to computers. It's not to hard to take the experiences of 20 years ago and put them on the current DRM strategy of the music and DVD industries. Of course modems and BBSes only multiplied this process and created an international distribution system.

The only real difference is that the distribution mechanisms of music and movies used to be limited by physical person-person exchange. You could of course copy a CD, copy a tape, etc. The quality was still pretty damn good (the music industry likes to put out FUD that it's bad.. but that's just propaganda). It was a lot harder to distribute the music though. You had to have a friend who had a copy, and nationwide distribution was much smaller (I'd bet limited to special niches like The Greatfull Dead).

Re:copy protection doesn't work (and may hurt you)

[sjames]

Yeah, the music and movie industries aren't used to copying worldwide being that easy.

Back in the day, you could download games from BBSes weeks BEFORE they went on sale in some cases. Even at 1200 baud, it didn't take THAT terribly long (probably less time than it takes to torrent a movie today). Since nobody was sure you actually could defend copyright on software, the consequences were few and far between. In those ways, the justification for copy prevention is not even as strong for music and movies as it was for software.

As for the quality of taped music back then, some people thought the tapes I made for them sounded BETTER than the original. The production master had to be middle of the road for a wide variety of listeners, we could re-equalize for a more narrow range of tastes. Multi-generation copying would certainly degrade quality, but usually if a freind of a friend wanted a copy, it would be made from the original so that didn't matter nearly as much as some would have us believe.

MS and the *IAA are happily driving consumer costs up by insisting on a great deal of un-necessary and ultimately useless tech to prevent copying. They remind me of people who install multiple deadbolts and heavy duty locks on the cheap hollow door.

One Sided

[headkase]

I'm going to quote myself from the comment I made there yesterday (comment 54):
The only reason copyright law was enacted in the first place was to "promote the useful arts". So tell me, how does locking up and extracting maximum profit from a work for up to 150 years "promote the useful arts"? Currently I can't build on by remixing or being too closely inspired by current works until long after I'm dead? Disney would never have had their Snow White if the Grimm Brothers had been able to exercise this level of control. It's an ironic situation.

Now with that said, if copyright was actually set to a sane level I'd have a lot more respect for it. Like 14 years - that's more than enough time to make a reasonable profit off of your work. And none of this eternity DRM. If your restrictions scheme doesn't have an expiry mechanism it should be outright illegal.

Re:One Sided

[cpt kangarooski]

It's to promote the progress of science. The useful arts is what patents deal with. English changes a lot, the clause was written back in the late 18th century, and well, there you go. But take a look at the then-meanings of the words in your convenient pocket OED, or just look at the structure of the clause itself, and think about which field has terms like 'prior art' or 'state of the art technology.'

Copy protection, in an absolute sense,

[DavidTC]

is needed for copyright to work at all. There must be some barrier to copying, or copyright vanishes magically into thin air. Barriers to copying, as is pointed out by many comments here, are like locks, keep 'your friends' from copying, even if they don't stop your enemies.

The problem is, of course, at a certain point, it doesn't matter. If people can infinitely copy the work with the lock broken, copyrighted works do not have a barrier to copying beyond a trivial investment of time. (And the tools can be near-completely automated.)

And, without this barrier to copying, copyright does not exist. I don't mean in a moral sense, or a legal sense, I mean in a practical sense. There is no such thing, in society, right now, as copyrights on music. The laws involving them might still exist, but the concept itself exists more in absence.

As DVD copying gets more practical, there will soon be no such things as copyrights on DVDs. Right now it's at the edge, and has been delayed by the lack of a Napster designed to share DVDs to launch the idea into the public mind, enough bandwidth, and the fact you'd have to burn them, on double-density DVDs even. I give it another five years.

Note to people who are about to argue why we, morally or practically, need copyright: I didn't say this was a good thing. I'm just stating facts.

So, 'copy protection', as in, actual difficulty in copying, is needed for copyright. OTOH, all 'copy protection' and DRM schemes on computers, do not actually provide that, so they are rather pointless.

Re:Copy protection, in an absolute sense,

[Anonymous Coward]

What about ethics as a barrier to copying? How does one's conscience fit into your argument?

Re:Copy protection, in an absolute sense,

[Garwulf]

"is needed for copyright to work at all. There must be some barrier to copying, or copyright vanishes magically into thin air. Barriers to copying, as is pointed out by many comments here, are like locks, keep 'your friends' from copying, even if they don't stop your enemies.

"The problem is, of course, at a certain point, it doesn't matter. If people can infinitely copy the work with the lock broken, copyrighted works do not have a barrier to copying beyond a trivial investment of time. (And the tools can be near-completely automated.)

"And, without this barrier to copying, copyright does not exist. I don't mean in a moral sense, or a legal sense, I mean in a practical sense. There is no such thing, in society, right now, as copyrights on music. The laws involving them might still exist, but the concept itself exists more in absence."

That is a very bad misunderstanding of what copyright is and does. If the most important thing copyright handled was between the distributor and the end user, then you would be correct. But that's not what copyright was really built for.

When it comes down to it, copyright is a legal framework defining the relationship between creative artists and their distributors. It allows a creative artist to determine how their work is distributed, and to set terms with a distributor of his or her choice, and provides a legal recourse if that distributor abuses that relationship. This is what allows creative artists to be able to submit their work without having to worry about protecting it (in short, to avoid having to use DRM just to get it to a distributor).

So, copyright does exist with or without DRM, and it is very important.

Re:Copy protection, in an absolute sense,

[DavidTC]

It doesn't.

Re:Copy protection, in an absolute sense,

[DavidTC]

You are correct about copyright still being useful between distributors and artists, so in a sense there is still functioning copyright. That has nothing to do with difficultly of copying. So amend what I said to end-user copyright no long existing with copying is infinitely easy.

Or, to put it less confusingly: Difficulties in copying made copying restricted to large companies instead of random people. Large companies tend to follow the letter of the law, at least contractually.

Easy in copying unrestricts copying by random people, who follow the law only sometimes, if it's not something they feel like breaking, and especially not if no one else is following it and it's 'victimless', aka, unnoticeable without the police looking for it. (re: Speeding.) As they clearly don't feel like following copyright, copyright for them snaps in half.

Obviously, large companies will still follow any existing law.

2 things they don't get

[bechthros]

it is the nature of digital to lend itself to being copied. the benefits and liabilities are indivisible.

they opened pandora's box when they invented cd's and dvd's to make everybody re-buy the same content they already owned. the genie will not go back into the lamp. if they had just stayed with analog tape, infinite perfect copies would not be possible.

i like digital stuff. i use it everyday. but i am under no illusions that anything digital is ever truly secure. if a human can lock it, a human can unlock it. it's that simple. the entertainment megacorps are *finally* falling victim to their own greed, laziness, and bad business practices. maybe the system does work after all.

Re:Copy protection, in an absolute sense,NOT CORRE

[Nom du Keyboard]

As DVD copying gets more practical, there will soon be no such things as copyrights on DVDs.

This is not correct. Copyrights don't disappear just because copying is easy. Copyrights never prevented copying. From the very beginning, you could copy by hand any copyrighted book. What copyrights allow is to seek damages against those who violate them. Only the copyright holder may freely sell their work for money in the open market. Others who try with unauthorized copies face civil penalties. So just because you can copy something doesn't mean that the idea of copyright has suddenly vanished.

The NBC guy is right

[Walles]

Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, says that [...] we should be [sic] 'identify workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive and that fully respect other interests such as privacy and fair use.

A simple way of doing that is to legalize file sharing for non-commercial purposes.

It's obviously workable (just change the law), I can't see how it would be considered "unflexible", it's effective, it reduces piracy (it would be hard to label lawful file sharing "piracy"), it's unintrusive (most people won't notice the change) and it fully respects other interests such as privacy and fair use.

I'm glad your big TV companies realizes this :-).

Apple TV, my spouse, and DRM

[zerofoo]

Last night I showed my wife the beauty of Apple TV - she thought the Movie trailers were a really cool feature.

Then she asked "why can't we download these movies right now"?

The movie and music industries need to realize that restricting content only shrinks the market for your products. With every instance of artificial restrictions, I can easily name many situations where the distributor of that content lost a potential sale:

Movies released to theaters - OLD model good for teens, not good for parents with young kids, a home theater and high speed internet. I would love to see new releases, but we can't really get to the theater (and we hate going there anyway). Why not let me "rent" the movie at my house? (I have digital cable with on-demand movies, but the list of movies is not current with new releases.)

DVD region codes: I've seen schools and libraries pass on content only made available to other parts of the world due to region code restrictions on DVD hardware.

Online distribution of digital media mostly sucks - too many competing DRM formats makes buying media confusing. If I buy a track on iTunes, my Audiotron player in my living room can't play it. (Yes I found a way around that, but most "normal" people won't).

etc, etc...

I would gladly pay for all the media I consume, if the distribution companies made that possible for me. DRM is the worst possible solution to the media industry's problems - it costs them money, hurts legitimate customers, doesn't stop piracy, and hinders the growth of their market. ANY MBA that paid attention in business school would see DRM for what it is; an industry-sinking boat anchor.

-ted

Re:Apple TV, my spouse, and DRM

[slim]

Last night I showed my wife the beauty of Apple TV - she thought the Movie trailers were a really cool feature.

Then she asked "why can't we download these movies right now"?

The movie and music industries need to realize that restricting content only shrinks the market for your products. With every instance of artificial restrictions, I can easily name many situations where the distributor of that content lost a potential sale:

Movies released to theaters - OLD model good for teens, not good for parents with young kids, a home theater and high speed internet. I would love to see new releases, but we can't really get to the theater (and we hate going there anyway). Why not let me "rent" the movie at my house? (I have digital cable with on-demand movies, but the list of movies is not current with new releases.) The practice of staging release times (in general, theatre, then aeroplanes, then rental, then buy-to-own media) is pretty well established, and I'm pretty sure the justification is that it maximises profits. At each stage in the chain, the later release would take away sales from the earlier one, if they'd come out at the same time, and not vice versa. e.g. People watch a movie in the theatre (because they're keen to see it and there's no other way), then later buy the DVD. With a simultaneous release, they'd just buy the DVD and stop there. I'm sure the studios are bright enough to stop this as soon as it becomes profitable to do so.

So the answer to your wife is -- 'because they think they can make more money by making us wait'.

DVD region coding is a slightly different thing, in that it's about distributors setting prices based on specific markets, and being able to stagger publicity campaigns (to spread spending over time, and to utilise resources that can't be duplicated, like actors for personal appearances and interviews). For a while it looked as if DVD region encoding was dead in the water, since it felt as if everyone (in Europe at least) had a hacked player -- but now that DVD is mainstream, the vast majority of consumers play the game -- while those who care and can be bothered (I like importing Japanese DVDs), can work around it and not get hurt. Actually it's worked out quite well.

Re:Apple TV, my spouse, and DRM

[zerofoo]

Agreed, the movie companies are there to maximize profits, as are all businesses.

But are you really maximizing profits by not selling something?

I'm sure the movie industry would sell more "tickets" by offering the movies in theaters and through on-demand channels. The movie companies need to revenue share with theaters, why not revenue share with the cable companies? My model assumes that on-demand prices for new releases would be similar to theater prices.

Sure, when two people go to see the movies, the movie company sells two tickets. I'm not exactly sure how you price on-demand new releases to compensate for multiple viewers.

Most people like us I speak to, forget about many new releases by the time they make it to the on-demand services.

I can't believe their current business model maximizes profits. Movie companies are either stupid, or they are trying to keep movie theater owners happy by giving them exclusive access to new releases.

-ted

Impossible and Impractical

[mlwmohawk]

The problem with copy protection is that it is totally misunderstood by those attempting to use it. It is 100% perfectly reasonable and possible to prevent a 3rd party from decoding your data. It is 100% unreasonable and impossible to simultaneously allow access to your data and expect it to be impossible to copy. People who use your DVD or music MUST be able to access the data in order to use it. Once you allow access, it is impossible to prevent copying. The mere act of "using" data, at the OS level, is copying the data. Basically, if it can be used, it can be copied.

The impractical part is that this a classic impossible problem but the record and movie companies fail to grasp the simple limitations that facts dictate. It is a classic entropy problem, copying digital data requires almost no resources, therefor it is going to happen. Controlling the copying requires exerting energy and resources. The amount of entropy (copying) if greater than the big companies, even with their considerable resources, can fight.

They need to realize that they can't control copying. They have been trying since the first cassette recorders came out decades ago. Hell, they've been trying since printing presses came out. The trend is, and always has been, to make copying and production easier and cheaper.

The trick is to figure out a new business model. Duh! I'm pretty sure oil lantern produces were fighting tooth and nail against that horrible intellectual property destroying light bulb thing, but that's progress!

Copyright and DRM should be mutually exclusive

[danlor]

The point of copy right is not to temporarily restrict peoples access to information. It's designed to guarantee ownership, credit, and monetization to those who created it during their life time.

Copyright laws were designed to prevent the destructive nature of ideas like DRM. The ideas behind DRM are not new. Just the D is.

So here is the deal... DRM is inherently illegal. It grants perpetual copyright to any item encoded with it. Anyone know how your are going to play your itunes music in 2108? How about playing a record from 1908. One is interesting. The other is impossible.

The locks make copyrighted works "expire". How exactly are works supposed to become part of the public lexicon if they are scrambled when they get there?

Well...

[TheAngryMob]

I don't know about DRM, but the voice in my head tells me that RESISTANCE is futile.

Re:Well...

[thomasdz]

I don't know about DRM, but the voice in my head tells me that RESISTANCE is futile

No no, INDUCTANCE is futile, Capacitance is silly, and resistance is sad-but-looking-up

Re:Well...

[the_B0fh]

Digital Resistance Movement?

Lets just be honest, shall we?

[Richard.g.k]

Contrary to what a few people like to say, the overwhelming majority of people downloading music off bit torrent/p2p are NOT doing it for 'convenience' and wouldnt pay for the music on ITunes even if it didnt have DRM. Most of the people downloading music are doing it specifically because it means they get it for free.

Re:Lets just be honest, shall we?

[kindbud]

Contrary to what music industry public relations like to say, the overwhelming majority of people who are inconvenienced or outright robbed by intrusive DRM are people who have already paid for the content through publisher-approved channels and just want to use the content they paid for. Most of the people paying for the music do so specifically because they thought they would get something for it.

Re:It's not much of a copyright protection system.

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Yes, copyleft should be protected exactly as much as traditional commercial, closed source products and for exactly the same reasons. If a limited time guarantee that people will follow the GPL is enough to get developers to release their work, then that's a fair deal. Once the time limit is up, anyone is free to take that work, build on it, and release it in whatever form they see fit (including without the source code, if they want). This is the copyright bargain, and the free-as-in-FSF world is as entitled to its protection as anyone else.

this argument applies elsewhere as well...

[buddyglass]

...such as with regard to whether I should bother to lock my car, considering anybody who really wants in can just break a window. And whether we should have police who incarcerate people for breaking into cars. Clearly we have both, and people's cars still get broken into. These measures don't eliminate break-ins, but they almost certainly lower their frequency. Same deal for copy protection and DRM. If you make it enough of a hassle for people to copy your stuff, creating a situation where someone has to be highly technical to do so, then less people will copy your stuff. The kicker here is that it only takes one highly technical person to create a tool that many less technical folks can then use.

Re:this argument applies elsewhere as well...

[Todd Knarr]

The only difference is that locks on cars give the owner of the car control over access and keep people not authorized by the owner out. DRM is about giving the distributor control and keeping the copy owner out. Imagine a car where the locks were under the control not of the car's owner but the dealership, and one of the explicit features of the lock system was the ability to let the dealership lock passengers out of the car unless they'd paid the dealership for the right to ride in that car. That's DRM.

If you think that's wrong, note the recent statement by the RIAA's attorney that if you've bought and paid for a CD and rip it to an MP3 to use on your own personal MP3 player, not giving copies to anyone else or anything, that's illegal and they need to stop it.

Re:this argument applies elsewhere as well...

[buddyglass]

DRM is put in place by the owner of the intellectual property. Buying a CD does not make you the "owner" of the songs on that CD. You own the physical media containing a copy of that intellectual property, and you have certain legal rights regarding what you can do with your copy.

Re:this argument applies elsewhere as well...

[Todd Knarr]

No, but it makes me the owner of that CD. When I buy a book I don't own the copyright on the story but I do own that copy of the book. When I buy a car I don't own the trademark on the car or the design or anything but I do own that car. Same thing. And that is exactly the point: I have certain rights regarding what I can do with my property (that specific copy of the CD), and DRM is designed and intended to interfere with those rights to the benefit of a third party who is not the owner of that copy anymore.

Re:this argument applies elsewhere as well...

[buddyglass]

Yes, you own the physical media. Someone else owns the "information" that media contains. Hence my analogy with the car. Applying DRM to intellectual property is comparable to me locking my car, in the sense that both myself and the IP owners are attempting to erect a hurdle that deters theft. The key word is "deter" in place of "prevent". That's what people miss when they raise arguments like, "DRM is stupid because people are always going to break it, so they should just give up." That's like saying, "it's stupid to lock your car because plenty of cars get stolen every day that were locked."

Furthermore, DRM doesn't limit what you can do with your physical media, it limits what you can do with the information it contains. There is law on the books that governs what you can and can't do with your copy of that information. If you feel DRM interferes with your legitimate legal rights, then that's one thing. In most cases, though, DRM merely attempts to thwart those who would go beyond their legitimate legal rights and infringe on the rights of the copyright holder.

Re:this argument applies elsewhere as well...

[Todd Knarr]

Not quite. I do own that copy of the information the media contains. Well-established in law: if I own a book, I can sell that copy including all the information it contains even if the copyright holder objects. Well-established with CDs too, as Garth Brooks found out when he tried to demand royalties on resale of his CDs and the judge ruled "No.".

Just because you own the copyright doesn't mean you also own every copy you've made and sold too.

Re:this argument applies elsewhere as well...

[buddyglass]

Just because you own the copyright doesn't mean you also own every copy you've made and sold too.

Did I say it did? The DRM I'm familiar with doesn't prevent anyone from selling media. I've bought used computer games, DVDs, etc. and never had a problem. What it may seek to prevent is someone purchasing media, making an exact copy of the information it contains, then reselling the media.

Re:this argument applies elsewhere as well...

[Todd Knarr]

You aren't keeping up on things, then. Almost every current DRM system is aimed directly at preventing the file from being played on any device except the original one it was bought for and preventing the transfer of the file to anyone else. Whether a new copy's being made or the original is being transferred fully... isn't even a consideration for the DRM system.

As I noted, the RIAA (through their attorney) has explicitly told Congress that an individual taking a CD they own and putting songs from it on their own personal MP3 player for their own personal use is illegal and DRM needs to be able to prevent it. The protections on DVDs are considered by the major labels and studios to be a complete and utter failure.

Greed is the reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Greed is the real problem.

You, the movie consumer, are a very greedy group of people.
You, the movie makers, are a very greedy group of people.

Netflix has and is the answer! Movies as a service. They have made it easy to rapidly get the movie you want. You are free to watch it or just return it. Once the urge to be in physical contact with the movie is satisfied you will realize that you just wanted to watch it anyway. You really didn't want to have a copy that you have to lug around like baggage from now on.

I am a satisified Netflix customer with no urge to pirate movies since I can watch them as I please.

I Agree with Cotton

[mkcmkc]

I think a "reasonable and effective" solution to piracy would be to simply repeal all copyright laws. No more piracy--problem solved.

The bane of the legitimate user

[mist]

Copy Protection. What a curse on the paying customer. A serious pirate gives it maybe two seconds of thought, before applying the latest crack or hardware copier that's most likely been released way in advance of the thing being copied.

Meanwhile, the legitimate user, who has *paid* for the privilege of using said software, is greeted by splash screens (which the pirate removes), DVD requirements (where the pirate can just use a no-DVD version) and, in the case of DVD Videos, annoying and patronising messages which cannot be forwarded-through telling us not to copy DVDs.

It's infuriatingly annoying as a paying customer to be treated like tomorrow's pirate. I resent it, and I'm damn sure it has turned some people away from making legitimate purposes and towards piracy because, to be honest, the pirated versions would be easier to use, and less patronising.

Spot on.

[babbling]

What I always find incredible is that there's absolutely massive industry that isn't doing any experimentation. I think almost all other big companies experiment with different ways of doing things so that they can find what works best and do that. How come the record companies are not doing any market research to figure out how they could maximise their profits? They should experiment with a few albums and see how different techniques might affect sales. Sure, no two albums have the same sales signature, but there are ways of managing that for such experimentation.

Re:Spot on.

[PitaBred]

Why experiment when you have congressmen in your pocket? Hell, Universal's CEO is so fucking incompetent that he can't even keep up with being the leader of a business that might possibly change. That's your reason right now... I don't find it incredible. I find it sickening.

Re:Spot on.

[babbling]

Well, most large businesses at least do marketing experiments with the intention of maximising profits. Even with congressmen appropriately paid off, marketing experimentation could be valuable for the record companies. Paying off congresspeople is not a substitute for revenue rising by 200%.

Blind leading the Blind

[Phoenix666]

If the legal expert on the industry side of this debate, Mr. Cotton, is any indication, then it's clear why the content industries are shooting themselves in the foot. The man responsible for advising his clients on copyright in the digital age has no understanding of technology. Isn't that odd?

Would you hire, i dunno, a finance lawyer who knew nothing about finance? Would you hire an international trade lawyer who had never been outside of Sycamore, Illinois? No! Yet here the labels and studios are letting a handful of clueless characters in expensive suits strangle their businesses.

It's almost as though they've dynamited every track leading to Grand Central so the cluetrain cannot possibly arrive at the station.

no incentive to pay

[myfigurefemale]

why would i pay to download on itunes unless i have an ipod? i can't play songs i legally bought on my mp3 player from itunes, but every one of my "pirated" songs play fine. so there is no reason for me to pay for downloads, as they only work on my computer and 99% of the time i listen to music on my player. yes, i know there are other places to buy mp3s but i'm not interested in services that expire if i stop paying. i'm willing to pay only for artists i know i like. when i want to experiment, i download THEN buy the cd if they're worth listening to. if i couldn't download, i wouldn't listen to the artist at all. same goes for movies. i don't have ten bucks to see a movie in theaters that's horrible anyway. if i couldn't download, i would wait till it came on tv or i could rent it. the system has been set up so that huge companies make the majority of the profit - they will have to recognize that this needs to change if they want to stay in business at all. in fact, i'm more likely to buy when i know the proceeds benefit the artist and less likely to buy if they're on a major record label or already extremely wealthy. for example - i'll pay full price for my friend's cd but i would never pay full price for a madonna cd. neither she nor record execs need my $15 bucks as badly as i do.

Who is not being honest?

[walterbyrd]

I have seen posts on slashdot before that say stuff like: "I only download to see if like the song." But, I am not seeing any posts like that today.

If we really want to be honest, then let's admit the recording companies, and other companies, are just as dishonest in their own way.

Copyright = Most Important Law Ever

[cmattdetzel]

According to Congress, Copyright Law is the most important set of laws ever written. I say this purely from a damages standpoint: for antitrust violations, patent infringement, securities fraud, toxic torts, and other socially detrimental acts for which civil remedies are provided, often the greatest measure of damages afforded by law is trebled (3x actual damages). With copyrights, however, that number can be 150,000x actual damages. Undedr the methods proposed in the PRO IP Act, someone caught with an iPod full of pirated songs (30,000 songs, let's say) can face a maximum penalty of ~$4.5 BILLION in statutory damages. Somehow, this seems a little ridiculous--to put it in perspective, most record companies average less than ~$700 million in sales. So the "theft" mentioned above is valued at more than 3x TOTAL Revenues for some companies! And in patent infringement or antitrust cases, the injured party has to PROVE damages. Not so in the case of copyright - it's strict liability. My personal feeling on this is that Congress should go back to the drawing board--i.e., the Constitution--and limit copyright protection to the "Authors" mentioned in the text of Article I. Musicians, movie studios, and more importantly, publishing clearinghouses != authors as the term was used in 1787, and so should not get the same protection granted to AUTHORS. But this is what happens in any system where elected officials rely on private money to campaign for office--only the wealthiest and most powerful interests will receive representation, no matter how invidious or destructive their goals may be.

Re:Copyright = Most Important Law Ever

[Anonymous Coward]

But this is what happens in any system where elected officials rely on private money to campaign for office--only the wealthiest and most powerful interests will receive representation, no matter how invidious or destructive their goals may

Yeah, reject government-supported protoculture. Only accept real culture from real authors.

you're an example of what i am talking about

[circletimessquare]

people who don't get it

"cost of production" translates into what nowadays?

the price of a laptop

congratulations, you fail it. where it=the way the world is trending

enjoy your obsolescence

Re:you're an example of what i am talking about

[Anonymous Coward]

> "cost of production" translates into what nowadays?
>
> the price of a laptop

Never mind instruments, equipment, time, expertise...

Re:you're an example of what i am talking about

[Microlith]

Like I said, a dime and two toothpicks. Serious consideration of production costs never come into play with some people, never mind that a laptop can't do anything on its own.

Oh and I suppose you're gonna film that movie with the camera built into your laptop's lid?

Note to Rick Cotton: copyright is a bargain

[Russ Nelson]

Copyright is a bargain, not an actual "right". A "right" is something you could stop other people from doing to you. Since you can't stop Alice from copying to Betty, nor Betty copying to Cynthia, you have no "right" to prevent copying. No, copyright is a *bargain*. The public gives up something (the right to copy) for a LIMITED period of time as an incentive for creators to create. Creators have unilaterally abandoned their end of the bargain by seeking to control copying forever. The public is, IN RESPONSE TO THE ACTIONS OF CREATORS, taking back its right to copy.

Don't like that? Uphold your end of the bargain and see what happens.

Popular misconceptions

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Sorry to be the one to break this to you, Mr. Cotton, but the only approach you're going to find that works is making your product inexpensive and easy to use.

The problem with this argument is that it overlooks the fundamental nature of all intellectual property: it always cheap to share it after someone's produced it. In an Internet-enabled world, the marginal cost of distribution is close to zero. However, that doesn't pay the rent for everyone who produced it in the first place, nor reward investors who supported the guys who made it but also supported many other who didn't.

Giving people a fair reward for producing and sharing their work is what things like copyright are (supposed to be) all about, and I've met few people who found this idea unethical when they thought about it. Indeed, when they thought about it, most people I've talked to have found the idea of ripping someone off rather unethical. As the article demonstrates, most people don't really understand the motivation behind copyright. They assume that when they rip things off it's just big business that loses out, or see copyright infringement as a victimless crime because "no-one lost anything". Once these people start to consider the many smaller players in the system who personally lose out as well, or someone points out that "big business" is what's supporting their pensions (or not), only a minority of people seem to look at things the same way.

This isn't to say that I know lots of people who support the industry practices and abusive copyright-related laws that have become so common in the recent past. But if the people I've talked to are at all typical (who knows?) then almost everyone would be willing to pay a fair price if it's genuinely going to the people who brought them works they find useful and/or enjoyable, even if they know they could rip the same content illegally for free.

Re:Popular misconceptions

[mini me]

Solution: Raise the capital to cover the cost of production plus a tidy profit before producing the work. If you can't raise the funds, it probably wasn't worth producing in the first place.

Re:Popular misconceptions

[Dirtside]

it always cheap to share it after someone's produced it.

Yes, but physical distribution of the bits isn't the only cost to the consumer. The time it takes to find a good-quality version is a cost, too, and if a person knows that they can get New Album X from legit-music.com for $5, they'll be more likely to just go there and spend the $5 and have the album quickly rather than try to hunt for a torrent. But if it's $15 or $20 for the same album, well... maybe they'll buy a few albums, and then torrent the ones that they aren't that excited about, rather than just picking them all up for a few bucks each.

Also keep in mind that there's a lot of different segments of the potential customer base, and some of these segments want to have lots of music but can't afford it. High school and college students, for example, have a lot more desire for music than they have money, so they're the bulk of those who copy without buying. Older folks have more disposable income (and less free time) and are more likely to buy instead of copy.

However, that doesn't pay the rent for everyone who produced it in the first place, nor reward investors who supported the guys who made it but also supported many other who didn't.

No shit! I think we're all pretty clear on the idea that if you copy content instead of paying for it, no one gets paid. I'm not trying to justify copyright infringement, I'm just trying to explain it.

They assume that when they rip things off it's just big business that loses out, or see copyright infringement as a victimless crime because "no-one lost anything". Once these people start to consider the many smaller players in the system who personally lose out as well, or someone points out that "big business" is what's supporting their pensions (or not), only a minority of people seem to look at things the same way.

I haven't found this to be the case, but then I suspect neither of us has done any legitimate scientific research on what people perceive as fair.

The fact does remain that nobody loses anything when casual copyright infringement occurs; I'm sure you're as familiar as anyone with the idea that if I have an apple, and you take my apple, I no longer have an apple; but if I have a book, and you copy my book, I still have my book. Now, if you had to choose between copying and paying, and chose copying, then conceptually someone's losing out on income they might have gotten; but those are not the only two choices. The choices are actually:

- copy without paying: Everyone has what they had before, except now I have a copy
- pay: I have a copy and less money, and you have more money
- neither pay nor copy: everyone has what they had before

For some people, "pay" is not an option, so if you remove "copy without paying" as an option, then the only remaining option is "neither pay nor copy". While that may seem fair, it's not ever going to happen.

The best we can do is:

- Encourage people to support those who actually play a valid role in creating copyrighted works. If there's no way to pay for the content and only support those who deserve it, then encourage people not to acquire the content.
- Try to take the middlemen out of the equation; this will lower prices since you're not having to pay as many people (many of whom are useless)
- Get rid of DRM schemes, which are all doomed to fail

Another thought: Railing about the unethicality of CCI (casual copyright infringement) basically does no good, except maybe to convince a few people who might copy to buy instead. But for a lot of people, if the price is $15 for an album, it's not worth it to buy it, but it's worth it to copy it. Well, you might also convince those people to not copy it, but they're still not going to buy it, which accomplishes nothing. At least if they copied it, they'd be exposed to it more and might be more willing to buy that band's albums in the future, or see their live performances.

Google Video on Copyright History

[Anonymous Coward]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6283435552434112856

çopy protection does work ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

Two - in the case of car and home locks - deterrence is enough.

This works amazingly well with software as well. I witnessed the sale of a chemistry app at a university bookstore. The app was required and low cost (under $20 IIRC). The first quarter it had no copy protection and the ratio of books to apps was about 15:1. The next quarter it had copy protection and the ratio was nearly 1:1. Many people will pirate if they can do so easily. The conventional wisdom that low prices will deter piracy are wrong. Hacks were quickly developed to remove the copy protection, it was an off the shelf solution used by other commercial products, but the sales remained near 1:1 in subsequent quarters.

The slightest roadblock to piracy, making a normal disk copy fail, will deter many and sufficiently incentivize them to buy a low cost product. Hacks to remove the copy protection don't change this.

Re:çopy protection does work ...

[maeka]

The point I was trying to make, and did not describe adequately is this:

Unless I have something unique in my house (Hope diamond in my bedroom), deterrence is enough, as my neighbor presumably has just as many valuables as me. My neighbor's house works well, in economic terms, as a perfect substitute.

This often is not true of software, movies, or music.
If an attacker wants access to (for example) the new U2 single, the fact U2 DRMs their songs and Radiohead does not is no deterrent. Radiohead is an imperfect substitute.

Re:çopy protection does work ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

I had gotten your point. I just wanted to emphasize that contrary to popular opinion a minor bit of deterrence works quite well with software as well. The myths that copy protection does not work because it is crackable and that fair pricing deters piracy are popular.

FWIW. The good that I described had no perfect substitute, was crackable, yet copy protection largely worked. Unlike the hope diamond, the U2 single and the chemistry app are of sufficiently low value that a little copy protection incentivizes a customer to buy rather than crack.

Re:çopy protection does work ...

[mirkob]

the difference is that in your example only a few hundreds of chemistry students are interested in the program, if it was the only chemistry program in the world ( equal to the only cd of a music author that interest millions of people in the world) then is only a question of time before someone cracked it and put it on the internet for free...

at that point only the fact that it is cheap and easily obtainable could guarantee that most of the students buy it instead of downloading it.

if the students felt the program is overpriced for their needs and it is more difficult to install and use than the pirated version cause of the DRM... then you will se the drop in sale!!!

consider we always talk of something unique and whit out competitors, as any music product is. there are similar work maybe, but it is none the less a monopoly.

Futile

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can play any piece of media, even once - you can copy it. How easily or well you can do this depends, and these factors usually improve over time from the point that copy protection method is developed. However the fact remains, if you can play it, you can copy it. Copy protection is therefore a flawed idea to begin with.

Not needed entire life of software.

[Kaptain Kruton]

While this may not be true for media such as movies and music, I once read an interesting article on copy protection on software (or more specifically, games). Most software made for the average consumer makes the most money when it is still considered new or modern. Look at PC games. When they first arrive, they are 50-60 dollars. However, 9 months later, they are 20-25. Wait even longer an they are in the bargain bin for 5-10 dollars. The original manufacturer is not making any money from that. The game manufacturers know that the copy protection will not be permanent. To try and make one that protects the software and is still usable by the general public would be, for the most part, futile. However, if the copy protection protects the software long enough for the profit to be made before it is cracked, then its job was accomplished and it was not futile. The same concept applies to other software that updates is produced by companies that frequently produce new versions. If the copy protection can last for profit to be made on the current version before the next version arrives, then the copy protection was not futile. On the other hand, copy protection on things such as hd-dvd was futile. The idea that a copy protection method would hold the entire life of a group of products on a standard that expected to be used for many years is foolish. The copy protection on HD-DVD was cracked before it even became common in most homes. Copy protection is not futile when used in the correct circumstances. However, it can be a waste of money and futile under other circumstances. -My $0.02

Us vs Them

[RichMan]

The copyright argument always seems to be framed in the consumer vs the producer space. When in reality we are all producers. Any solution must address the fact that anyone can be a producer and is entitled to produce their own unquie work and fair use of other work for parody or indexing (see recent Harry Potter Compedium of Facts).

All the channel lock DRM stuff does not allow individuals to be producers. Which is also more likely with the increased power of technology.

Myth: Fair pricing prevents piracy

[AHumbleOpinion]

it is further held hostage behind walls of ... overpricing ...

You dressed up your opinion quite nicely, but it fails a reality check at various points. One is that pricing contributes to piracy. I witnessed the commercial distribution of low cost software to university students. Piracy happens regardless of price and fairness, it only needs to be trivial to copy. The slightest hiccup, copy protection, works. See:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=418746&cid=22051616

Your customer is not your enemy

Neither are they your friend. They will steal from you if they can easily do so when anonymous and getting caught has a near zero probability.

Re:Myth: Fair pricing prevents piracy

[AKAImBatman]

overpricing

I think you'll find that it is customary to use brackets around an inferred term if it does not appear in the source material. In this particular case, I think you'll also find that I never stated nor inferred that overpricing was the problem. I stated that high price in concert with unfair terms lead to a devaluing of the product that made it undesirable to the consumer.

iTunes was successful despite its DRM. Part of the key to its success was that the DRM was not intrusive and thus not devaluing to the product.

At the risk of sounding cliche, all you have done is produce a strawman argument and then successfully knock it down.

Re:Myth: Fair pricing prevents piracy

[AHumbleOpinion]

"overpricing"

I think you'll find that it is customary to use brackets around an inferred term if it does not appear in the source material.

You wrote:
"In many of the instances that content is provided digitally, it is further held hostage behind walls of incompatibilities, digital restrictions, overpricing, poor terms of services, and other devaluing options. All in the name of "protecting" digital content."

In this particular case, I think you'll also find that I never stated nor inferred that overpricing was the problem.

You wrote:
"The preciously few times that digital content is loosed upon the populace at a fair price and fair terms, it blooms and propers. Which (if we are to be "intellectually honest") means that the failure to prevent copyright infringement is a failure to provide what the average consumer wants."

At the risk of sounding cliche, all you have done is produce a strawman argument and then successfully knock it down.

I'll see your cliche and raise another: pot, kettle, black. ;-)

Re:Myth: Fair pricing prevents piracy

[AKAImBatman]

You wrote: overpricing

Fair enough. :)

I searched the text looking for that term (since it was out of context) and didn't get any results when I checked. Ah, the wonders of the find function. :-/

In any case, my point still holds. Especially here:

The preciously few times that digital content is loosed upon the populace at a fair price and fair terms, it blooms and propers.

Fair price and fair terms are the cornerstone of the capitalist market. Combined they make for a valuable product. If you offer DRMed content at a price above what the market is willing to pay for it, then you can expect that no one will purchase it. As an example, this happened with several MovieLink titles when they were testing the waters for newer movies. The rental pricing was set higher than the nearest Blockbuster, thereby ensuring failure.

That's what I'm referring to when I speak of overpricing and fair prices. I'm NOT referring to the complaints about iTunes music being too expensive at 99 cents a track or other nonsense arguments. I believe that content producers have a right to make money as well. My only point is that it should be what the market can bear under terms that provide value to the market. Which is why I referred to your argument as a "strawman" as it was not the intended meaning at all.

Re:Myth: Fair pricing prevents piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you should be careful about generalizing a specific situation where students are required to use a product to fit the discussion of this article.

For one, you're talking about a software product rather than audio/video recordings. Product activation and copy protection are forms of DRM, but they're not the same as the types of DRM being discussed for audio/video. The issues are similar, but there are significant differences.

Also, you're talking about students, who definitely are not typical consumers. When I was in college, we did all sorts of things to get free stuff, and this was long before internet piracy became mainstream. We'd join Columbia House/BMG, get the 12 CDs for $0.01/ea and then file a change of address to someplace in rural Africa (which would prompt them to cancel the account to avoid taking a loss on shipping the remaining 6 "full price" CDs). We'd buy a single movie ticket and have the person who entered the theater legally open the exit door for the rest of us. When one of us got a job at a sandwich shop where the owner treated workers particularly bad, we'd go there, order a ton of stuff, and our friend at the cash register would charge us the minimum $0.50, which was indistinguishable from a legitimate transaction when viewed on the surveillance camera. In short, we were cheap bastards who'd do anything to avoid spending money since we had so little of it to begin with.

So generalizing a situation where a poor demographic is required to use a product to a situation where a somewhat richer demographic uses a product it doesn't need to use is somewhat of a specious argument.

Copy protection an alternative to copyright?

[FellowConspirator]

If access controls and copy protection schemes exist, surely they should be considered as an alternative to copyright. A DVD typically has a region code that restricts DVDs to being played back on hardware that comes from the same market, and CSS encoding that prevents basic access to the media. Both absolutely abridge the rights of the copy holder/licensee with regard to copyright -- they are infringing, as it were, violating the terms of the contract that copyright is.

In this case, the copyright holder's systematic violation of the terms of copyright ought to cause the work to lose protection.

Hasn't been solved in 30 years

[Anonymous Coward]

I was around for the birth of the PC, back in the early 80s, and the struggle between copy protection and copy protection breakers has been there since the beginning. By the mid-80s we had programs that you could use to copy programs with copy protection, namely copyiipc and copywrite. These would get around all the different protection schemes used by software manufacturers, like the INT13h tricks, or messing up certain sectors so that a regular diskcopy didn't work. Every time a new version of copy protection was introduced, there would be a new version of copyiipc and copywrite. Of course, no one paid for these programs either.

These days it really just deals with license keys and hacking license keys, but frankly the entire battle is futile, just like trying to protect mp3s.

The fact is, however, that people who don't want to pay for software will NEVER EVER pay for it, no matter what. They will probably just not use anything rather than pay for software. Trying to monetize those people is totally futile.

What you need to do is make the other people who copy programs feel morally wrong for doing so. Get those people to pay, and I think that's the only way to do it. Have licensing that embeds peoples names into the software, kind of like a watermark, so if they give it to their friends, it will show the name, etc. Stuff like that. Trying to prevent copy protection is completely futile and has been an ongoing battle for the past 30 years.

Why is copyright suddenly unfair?

[AHumbleOpinion]

"This copyright things is all wrong and unfair. It no longer serves its original purpose. It needs some severe reworking, such as reducing terms to 5 or 10 years."

Really? Why is copyright any more or less unfair now that goods are digital in nature rather than physical? Why wasn't it unfair when the photocopier made copying sheet music trivial? When the cassette tape made coping vinyl records trivial?

If the length of copyrights were 5 or 10 years, guess what? There would be very little "unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content" online.

There would also be a significant drop in software development, the profit incentive being undercut. Since a previous post was so successful in dressing up personal opinion with econ 101 I guess I'll do the same. :-) Demand for software decreases, supply will decrease. How does less software contribute to the useful arts and sciences? By protecting the profit motive, copyright's actual function, the useful arts and sciences are promoted. Digital media has not changed this.

Re:Why is copyright suddenly unfair?

[QRDeNameland]

Why wasn't it unfair when the photocopier made copying sheet music trivial? When the cassette tape made coping vinyl records trivial?

Well, for one reason, both of those things invented prior to the 1976 Copyright Act, when copyright was still 28 years plus the option of a single 28 year extension. That and the subsequent changes to the laws have made copyright far more unfair to the public since then (terms of life of creator plus 75 years, and no prohibition of new legislation extending terms after the fact), regardless of the nature of technology.

Another reason is that those technologies were not crippled to prevent these things, so people using them for fair use reasons were not restricted in any way. (Not that the content industry didn't try to squash these technologies even then.) The fact that they have mandated at least some DRM on newer technologies *and* DMCA has made it illegal to circumvent DRM even for legal fair use purposes makes the situation much more unfair than when photocopiers and cassette recorders became available.

Re:Why is copyright suddenly unfair?

[skeeto]

Every 20 years, copyright is extended by another 20 years, so copyrights have been getting worse. This is why I said "no longer".

Why is copyright any more or less unfair now that goods are digital in nature rather than physical?

First of all, copyright exists to promote the arts and sciences, not to make anyone money. It is a tradeoff made by the public, where they give up some rights (being able to copy works) in order to encourage authors to make works. After a short term, those works would then fall into the public domain, where anyone could use them to derive more creative works. A big, full public domain of free material then gets built up.

Now to answer the question. Originally, copyright had no effect on individuals. No one had the ability to make mass reproductions. To copy a book, an individual had to hand copy it, since individuals didn't own printing presses. Copying two books took twice as long as copying one book. It wasn't worth it. When it came to copyrights, the public wasn't actually losing anything, since they didn't have the ability to excersise those rights in the first place. Copyright was an industrial limitation, to keep publishers from publishing books before the author got a chance to make some profit.

This is different in the digital age. We all have printing presses now. Copyright needs to be reevaluated.

Demand for software decreases, supply will decrease.

Thanks to the digital age we have, the software supply is infinite. Really, copyright creates an artificial cap on this infinite supply. Another way to look at this, I guess, is that there is a limited supply of unique software. But why does demand go down? People won't stop needing software if copyright law changed. I am not sure that the supply-demand curve applies well to creative works, anyway.

Copyright encourages authors to not only create works, by providing a profit motive, but needs to also allow works to fall into public domain so that they can be used to create even more works. Copyright fails the second part, along with the unreasonable restrictions on personal freedoms. The public is the important side of the deal, and should be getting the bargain. Copyright law is backwards right now.

I don't want to plagairize, but I read this article: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/reevaluating-copyright.html a couple years ago, and I was using things I remebered from it in writing this.

Re:Why is copyright suddenly unfair?

[PitaBred]

All of which led to an INCREASE in the useful arts, as you said. Which is what copyright is intended for. Copyright isn't there to guarantee people asinine profit to investment ratios. It's there to enhance culture.

There wouldn't be a drop in software production... people still need software. And 5-10 years is more than the useful life of most software. Except Windows XP, but hey, that's actually how copyright is supposed to work. Microsoft doesn't need protection if they can't make anything useful and new. I'd almost even settle to let service packs update copyright. Point is, there's plenty of room to profit... we don't need to prop up a failing, inefficient business model with laws. Let the business model fail. Business will still continue.

Re:Why is copyright suddenly unfair?

[funaho]

There would also be a significant drop in software development, the profit incentive being undercut

On the software side almost nothing 5-10 years old is useful anymore and certainly not traded online in any significant volume. Even on the music/video side of things there's rarely anything old available, unless it was just re-released on DVD. As fast as things are outdated and replaced in our modern world 10 years is a lifetime. It's all about "0-day" these days.

I'd also like to point out that there could be another upside: imagine if all those interesting TV and movie projects that are currently in limbo because of uncertain, missing or just plain uncooperative copyright holders were suddenly free to be made, because that old stuff on which they are based has fallen into the public domain as the founding fathers intended? Copyright as it exists right now, with its insanely long terms, can stifle innovation even more easily than it protects it.

Personally I think the entire entertainment industry has built itself up into a huge bubble and now they're trying desperately to keep it from popping.

Re:Why is copyright suddenly unfair?

[HTH NE1]

There would also be a significant drop in software development, the profit incentive being undercut. Or an increase in production and innovation so as to keep having fresh new product available rather than coming up with one big idea and raking in free money for the rest of your life plus 75 years.

By overly protecting the profit motive you kill the motivation to continue to innovate.

In the computing field, copyright duration can reduced to only 10 years with no ill effect because by 10 years it would be obsolete anyway, of interest only to collectors and other historians. Cut it back to 5 years or less and you'll see far more rapid advancement in the state of the art.

Re:Why is copyright suddenly unfair?

[jedidiah]

When's the last time you bought a 5 year old or 10 year old piece of software?

The notion that the original copyright term would discourage SOFTWARE development is beyond absurd.

Demand for luxury items is very elastic. Demand for entertainment items falls off DRASTICALLY.

This is especially true for software, where there is always a new version around the corner.

Debate winner by default...

[jwiegley]

anyone who is intellectually honest must 'acknowledge, confront and speak []

Right of the bat, this guy loses. This is a fallacy of appeal to either ridcule or flattery. It tries to bias the reader to agree with his conclusion on the basis that anybody who disagrees is stupid or dishonest. It ignores the presentation, truth and analysis of any facts about why protection is good or bad.

Nobody, who is intellectually honest, *must* acknowledge the truth of anything just because of who or what they are. In fact, I would argue (though, I won't present supporting premises here) that anybody who is intellectually honest has the responsibility to actually evaluate the truth, consequences and ethics of any issue being presented in order to understand the situation as well as possible. Even if one side of the argument is unpopular or traditional. This is the only way that the best decisions for the future can be made on issues such as these.

Must agree? Hardly! Skepticism is a healthy and prudent attitude.

MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject, but I should also note that Thomas Babington MacAuley saw this coming a LONG time ago... and delivered the following in 1841 in British Parliament when a bill proposing copyright extension to a length of 60 years was being debated:

At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.

And yes, indeed, the whole nation *IS* now in on the plot. Why? Because, as the parent rightly notes, creators have broken their end of the bargain. No one expect you to uphold your end of a contract once the other party has broken it and defaulted on it; why should the public, then, uphold its end of the copyright contract when big copyright interests have unilaterally broken their end of the bargain. Grant and consideration - we GRANT copyright holders exclusivity of copying in CONSIDERATION for the deliverance of their work to the public domain. Since copyright holders have decided to refuse to provide the CONSIDERATION bargained for (by constantly lobbying for longer copyrights, even on extant works), they HAVE NO RIGHT to the GRANT promised them.

So... if you want to be intellectually honest, you must acknowledge, big media, that by pressing for ever-longer copyright terms (including and especially arbitrarily lengthening terms on on already extant works) YOU DECIDED TO VOID THE COPYRIGHT CONTRACT. Complaining now that the public is not holding up its end of the bargain of a contract YOU VOIDED is a bit disingenuous - YOU defaulted, YOU voided the contract with US, NOT the other way around... and since YOU are the side that is in default, WE THE PUBLIC are no longer morally or ethically bound to respect the contract (and would in fact, be fools to do so).

Re:MOD PARENT UP!

[Russ Nelson]

Indeed .... I've made a pointer to the Macaulay speech on my blog: http://blog.russnelson.com/economics/macaulay-on-copyright.html

$2 grand

[circletimessquare]

well within the grasp of your average earnest middle class western teenager:

$1 grand HD camera
$1 grand laptop with editing suite

that's called progress: what previously took an entire studio system to produce now can be done in a teenager's bunk bed

it's progress

copyright is dead

Re:$2 grand

[big_paul76]

Well, judging from your sig, I'm inclined to take you at your word when you talk about up-front costs of making a low-budget flick.

While I completely agree with you, the same lowering of the barrier to entry that's happened with music will eventually happen with movies, too. But even if it didn't, it wouldn't matter.

The MPAA types don't actually have a piracy problem, and never will. There's no way to pirate the "seeing it on the big screen" experience. Even with ass-hats with cell phones and kids who won't shut up, there's still some movies I'd rather see on the big screen.

So, when MPAA types talk about "if you keep pirating, how are they gonna pay for the next 'Spiderman' movie?" (or the next 'Fight Club', or 'Blade Runner', or whatever...) they're making, at best, a highly mendacious argument. They're in a totally different position than the RIAA, who I think really DOES have a reason to be worried about P2P.

Copy Protection, thy name is Futility

[fudgefactor7]

Here's the deal: We're really talking about consumers and copy protection, not government level data security. And for every copy protection schema out there, the numerous and intelligent (not to neglect dilligent) people have found a method of copying the protected media. From Beta, VHS, CD, DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray, *all* of them are copied/copyable. The only possible solution that would potentially work would be a governmental-level sort of protection. That's expensive and really waste of resources. Copy protection is about deterring rather than actually prohibiting copying. And it doesn't work. Everyone I know...everyone...knows how to copy all the latest stuff. And here's the key: they're not what I'd call techies, they're everyday users who tired of the BS from businesses interfereing with their ability to play an MP3 on their latest doodad. They're not selling music illegally downloaded, they're not breaking a moral code against stealing (they are breaking several bad laws, however; but that's another tale.) If you empower the user, you get loyalty in return. All this copy protection crud costs money to impliment, raises prices, and really doesn't do what's it's supposed to do. Why bother?

laptop, instruments, equipment, time, expertise...

[circletimessquare]

well within the grasp of your average earnest middle class western teenager

$2 grand at the very most

anything else i can help you with today?: cost of investment is negible. go ahead and agrue that point, make yourself look like a bigger fool

it's called progress: copyright is dead. the unstoppable march of technological improvement walked right over it, rendering it unneeded

It's a deterrent

[KillerBob]

That's all. A deterrent. Kinda like encryption or MAC address protection on a wireless network. It's not going to keep out somebody who wants in. No amount of encryption is going to keep them out if they really want to cause me grief. But it is going to keep out the casual drive-by.

Likewise, copy protection on DVDs or CD's.... it's not going to keep out the people who want to copy it. Nothing's going to keep them out in the long run. But the overwhelming majority of users don't know how to circumvent it. They don't even know how to circumvent DVD's CSS system, despite it being broken a decade ago. Basic copy protection will significantly reduce the sales lost from having no copy protection at all.

They could also go a different route entirely. On the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix DVD, the 2nd disc contains a DRM'd WMV of the movie, and there's a code printed on an insert in the box that can be used to license it. It's a step away from having a full DVD rip on the 2nd disc, but when a lot of the "piracy" that's happening is so that people can play their movies on their portable devices or media center PC's (and other Fair Use/Fair Dealings "violations"), it will help reduce the problem.

Re:It's a deterrent

[Cajun Hell]

Basic copy protection will significantly reduce the sales lost from having no copy protection at all.

But how? Just just said...

On the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix DVD, the 2nd disc contains a DRM'd WMV of the movie, and there's a code printed on an insert in the box that can be used to license it. It's a step away from having a full DVD rip on the 2nd disc, but when a lot of the "piracy" that's happening is so that people can play their movies on their portable devices or media center PC's (and other Fair Use/Fair Dealings "violations"), it will help reduce the problem.

But only a subset of players can use those files. Without WMV codecs, you have to use the (now defacto, thanks to the CSS crack) standard format (the DVD itself) as your source.

But the overwhelming majority of users don't know how to circumvent it. They don't even know how to circumvent DVD's CSS system, despite it being broken a decade ago. Basic copy protection will significantly reduce the sales lost from having no copy protection at all.

And there's the problem. If someone doesn't have the expertise to crack the DRM on a DVD, then the only way they'll be able to play the movie they bought, is to use someone else's (someone who does have the expertise to defeat CSS) copy. At that point, why bother buying the DVD? People might not know how to download and install a DVD player/ripper, but they'll know how to download a cracked media file.

For DRM to be successful (i.e. cause more sales than it prevents), it needs to be easier for a user to crack/play it, than it is for them to download a cracked media file.

It's a deterrent, alright. It's a deterrent to purchasing.

Roots of Copyright

[Tanubis]

Some history on copyright: The problem was meant to address was that it took a lot of time and effort to set type for a book (this was back in the days of the first printing presses), and the owners of the presses didn't want to risk printing books that people wouldn't buy. This meant that whoever was the first person to start printing a new work was at a disadvantage against their competitors. If Oscar Wilde approached them with the first copy of his first work, they would have refused him because if it flopped they'd have lost money, and if it took off everyone else would just start printing copies as well. The original purpose of copyright wasn't to protect artists at all - it was to protect printing presses that wanted to try printing something new. This kept the literary world of the masses from stagnating. The core of copyright is based on the fact that there is a high start-up cost to publishing new works. This has been somewhat skewed in modern-day. Most of the time, it's quite inexpensive to record a new CD for mass-publication. For books, the cost is near-zero (how much does it cost after a book is written to produce a million online copies?) A lot of money often gets spent tweaking the sound, applying effects and cleaning out noise, but in the end it's still quite inexpensive when compared to the profit from a successful artist. The real money that gets spent in the creative industry these days is actually in advertising and marketing. A new artist comes out that sounds mediocre, but big industry wants returns and so they push massive advertising dollars at it to make it sell. This is why so much of today's music is arguably garbage - because the media industry knows that quality of sound (aka: the quality of the copyrighted ideas) isn't what makes something sell, it's pushing enough advertising at mediocre music to get 13 year olds to treat it as an entrance into "the cool crowd". There's good music out there, but generally I find it's the stuff that started (or even survives) with very little in the way of advertising money put into it - this is because the driving selling force behind it is the quality of the work. Copyright needs a lot of rethinking, and perhaps scrapping entirely. Something needs to replace it, certainly, because we want artists to be able to create new things. But the INDUSTRY behind the artists is based on pushing crap products with marketing, and is fighting to keep itself protected. This industry is not needed by the artists to distribute or create their work. Music is cheap to mass-produce, books are free to mass produce. - it should either adapt to the needs of the artists and the needs of consumers, or disappear altogether - but enough power and money is concentrated in it that this will take quite a while.

Bogus

[HermMunster]

This lawyer has a bogus argument. In fact, he's an extremist. He'd have children reporting on their parents.

Remember 1/2 of all cases represented by lawyers are lost. That means that at least 50% of their arguments are wrong or improperly handled. I'm not saying that all lawyers loose 50% of their cases. I'm saying that there are two sides and one side always looses.

Now, consider this guy is attempting to turn brother against brother, mother against daughter, etc., in an attempt to get us to protect their profits. He's attempting to say that peer pressure should be used to influence those around you to keep them from doing something questionably illegal.

He's an idiot. He'd have lost his case in court.

No way will copy protection ever work. These guys are in a dying industry. If music ceases to be made and if these guys go bankrupt and out of business I couldn't care less. Even if all music stopped being made (and I'm a music lover) it wouldn't bother me one bit.

As far as buying CDs goes. I used to buy a few CDs every pay period about 10 years ago. I stopped when I found out that the RIAA was suing people. I also found out that only a tiny percentage of money was being given to the artists and that the music industry as funding elaborate parties for themselves, etc. These guys were like the kids given the keys to the house while the parents are away and they used that time to throw a wild party that ripped up the house and then the parents had to pay to fix it all up. The kids say "chock it up to being parents".

These guys are incredible liers. They lie to the Judge, they lie to the opposing party, they lie to the jury, they lie to the spectators and they lie to their clients (that's the worst offense).

I will not support any company that is a member of any organization that improperly influences government to protect their industry. Fucking compete you assholes. Stop trying to get protection. There are lots of new companies that are competing and making good money. So you are no longer a billionaire made off the backs of the artists. Who cares. Get a new job and earn an honest living and let the artists now reap the rewards of their talents.

But the end result is the same, isn't it?

[maillemaker]

>If I shoplift a CD, the proprietor no longer has that CD. If I infringe your copyright you still
>have both the work and its copyright.

But the end result is the same: I had something of value, and afterwards it no longer has any value.

If you steal my physical CD, I can't sell it anymore. If you infringe on my copyright and distribute a bajillion copies of my CD for free, I can't sell it anymore either.

Re:But the end result is the same, isn't it?

[maxwell demon]

If you have a horse carriage business, and I invent the car and sell it, then your horse carriages will soon get worthless. Am I a thief for making your horse carriages worthless?

Now you will tell me that inventing the car wasn't something illegal, but copying the CD and distributing copies is. True. But that still doesn't mean it's theft. Deception is illegal and will also lose you money if you fall for it, but it isn't theft either.

Name things after what they are. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement, not theft. This is not a statement about the legality, morality or whatever of it (as I said, deception isn't theft either, but that surely doesn't make it legal or morally acceptable). This is just a statement about using the correct term, instead of abusing a wrong term.

Re:But the end result is the same, isn't it?

[init100]

If you have a horse carriage business, and I invent the car and sell it, then your horse carriages will soon get worthless. Am I a thief for making your horse carriages worthless?

Of course you are. Horse carriage manufacturers have a right to earn money for their work, and by facing competition from your cars, you are stealing their profits. You should go to jail for putting the starving horse carriage manufacturers out of business.

If it wasn't obvious, the above is meant as sarcasm.

Re:But the end result is the same, isn't it?

[maillemaker]

>If you have a horse carriage business, and I invent the car and sell it, then your
>horse carriages will soon get worthless. Am I a thief for making your horse carriages worthless?

No, that is just obsolescence through innovation, and that's a good thing.

It's different when your mousetrap becomes valueless because someone else bettered humanity by inventing a better mousetrap, THUS ELIMINATING DEMAND FOR /YOUR/ MOUSTRAP. It's another thing entirely when when someone comes along and just devalues your asset by making it available to everyone for free. It's not like demand for my asset went away, or you did the legwork to make something better that people preferred instead. Copying my asset and distributing it to the world just makes it worthless, in terms of being able to sell it.

>Name things after what they are. Copyright infringement is copyright infringement, not theft.

I never claimed otherwise. I just said the end result is the same. This is like saying stabbing me to death and shooting me to death are two different things. Yes, of course they are. But in the end I'm just as dead.

Not Mutually Exclusive

[angus_rg]

This shouldn't be an or. Something that is needed or not needed can still be futile. I think we can all agree in most cases it is futile, regardless of your stance.

Here's an interesting solution...

[swordgeek]

The industry should release material that is free of copy-protection and DRM in general, and factor copyright infringement (i.e. so-called "piracy") into their prices. The credit card companies lose millions (billions?) a year to fraud, but they stay in business by making enough profit to justify the risk.

If the media doesn't like that model, then they can just close up shop, and quit producing any content. I'm sure that the artists will find a way of making themselves heard, if that's what they want.

In other words, the problem is that the industry would rather penalise all users than factor in the cost of abuse, like they should. They want to eliminate reasonable risk from their profit model.

Re:Here's an interesting solution...

[Forbman]

Well, in the 90's, the software industry went through what the music industry is facing. Companies came up with all sorts of interesting tweaks to prevent their softwares from being duplicated or installed on multiple machines. Such measures included deliberately screwed up directory structures, deliberate "bad blocks" installed on floppies, special files that had to exist on the floppy to allow installation (e.g., Lotus 123), but that could only be put back on the floppy by the approved "uninstall" process, or Aldus' trick of license management enforcement over AppleTalk.

It got to the point that as each new technique was put into place, the marketplace got more and more pissed off, to the point that people who did want to comply were increasingly forced to "crack" the techniques just to legitimately use what they'd paid for because said techniques didn't work on their legitimate computer systems.

Software companies eventually saw the light, and relented on their tactics. And Microsoft coyly encouraged "piracy" to get Windows and Office virally installed virtually everywhere, only later cracking down and actually enforcing license counts, etc. (Remember when the registration card for MS software had no place to put like a serial number, registration key, etc. on it?) once they needed to start rattling everyone's cages for $$$...er, I mean, upgrade.

Eventually, it did get to the point where AutoCad, for example, realized that it wasn't a big deal if random user could get a copy of its system for free. The $$$ was in add-ons, support contracts, books, training, etc., things that legitimate users would still need to pay for. Most of the people copying the software weren't CAD or architecture firms. They were people doing it just to do it, or wanting to get a copy of it to improve their skills to someday be in a position to "go legit".

Only the computer gaming industry seems to be stuck in "copy protection" (i.e., SecureROM) these days, but today's techniques are usually overcome easily enough anyways, with the right software and occaisionally right (forgiving) hardware. At least most of the techniques used now don't wreck your computer, such as by thrashing the disk head, etc. And the attempts to try these measures have failed rather publicly once people catch on to it, thanks to the Interblags.

It finally seems like the music industry is finally waking up to the inevitability of failure for what they've been trying to do. The ones that will grasp onto not worrying about all the freddy freeloaders, and cater to those who are still willing to pay for stuff by providing things worth paying for, will move on. Those stuck in the old models will die their fitting deaths.

Me, personally, I find it frustrating that they spend so much energy on trying to stop the "1000 papercuts" of file sharing, while doing little or nothing about global counterfeiting (true piracy) of their products, or trying to honestly get back to figuring out new ways to provide value to people willing to pay for it instead of trying to milk a dying business model for all its worth.

Re:Here's an interesting solution...

[swordgeek]

Agreed, although I might suggest that the heyday of idiotic copy protection schemes was earlier than the '90s. Stupid dark-red on light-red codes to enter into a program, decoding wheels, hardware dongles, and other such things were the bane of computing in the 8-bit days of Atari, Apple and Commodore.

Something else that most companies eventually figured out, especially producers of commercial software (your AutoCAD example is an excellent one) is that the people who pirate their software are not going to pay for it. If someone is playing with AutoCAD in their basement, drawing up plans for a computer desk, there's no way they're going to spend $600 for it. If they can't get it for free, they'll use something else. As soon as someone decides to publish a drawing or manufacture a product drawn in AutoCAD, they are DEFINITELY going to be buying a license, because they've just become a valid profit-making target of piracy.

Groups like the BSA do their best to confuse the issue, by claiming that every copy of software in use that wasn't paid for is a copy of software that WOULD have been paid for if piracy were stopped. In fact, it's a copy that wouldn't be used at all--no real financial gain for the companies.

And as you point out with your '1000 papercuts' comment, the software companies know this. They could stop almost all piracy by going after the shops that actually burn, print, and bundle copies of Vista with forged activation keys that sell for $20. They could also continue going after end-user piracy, but concentrate their efforts in areas where it's a problem. Instead, they go after the markets (North America, western Europe) which have the highest compliance in the world, but also where they're likely to get some profit for persecuting piracy. Most importantly, they're fighting in a market where rigorous enforcement won't just turn people away from their product--they don't want to lose their market share, paid for or not.

What software has done, music is trying to do: Make both piracy and fighting piracy profit centres, without hurting the penetration (and profit) of the product in the first place. In actual fact, the basic business model is failing, so they're having a hard time making a profit from legal sales OR piracy, and are trying to push anti-piracy as a profit generator because it's soon going to be all they have left.

Intellectually Honest

[localman]

anyone who is intellectually honest must "acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content..."

I will agree wholeheartedly with that. But at the same time anyone who is intellectually honest should acknowledge, confront and speak to the absurdity of infinite copyright extension, the industry's use of exploitative contracts, and the generally abusive tack they take with honest customers.

No, two wrongs don't make a right. And most of the people who steal the stuff aren't doing it on any kind of crusade. But the big copyright players have been and continue to be such dick heads for so long that citizens who might otherwise look on copyright violation as a type of theft don't really give a shit about it any more. And that includes me.

Also, when you make completely brain-dead innovative content that panders to the lowest common denominator, dumbing down our culture instead of rising to the occasion and doing something great, perhaps even important, with all that power... well, you end up with a bunch of brain-dead customers who don't give a shit about anything anyways.

You pissed in your bed, now sleep in it.

Cheers.

Re:Intellectually Honest

[localman]

Uh... remove the word "innovative" from the last paragraph for a little more sense. What would "brain-dead innovative" mean anyways? That they're innovating new ways to be brain-dead? Hmm... perhaps that is what I meant.

Cheers.

The answer to the question I think is both...

[Anonymous Coward]

Copy protection probably is required, Piracy is rampant - eg Photoshop CS3 was cracked 2 days after release.

BUT

At the same time, I think it's absolutely futile trying to protect software - just about very system I know of has been cracked - in many cases astonishingly quickly.

Quite what the answer is from both the creator (who quite reasonably wants some money for their work) and the purchaser (who equally reasonably doesn't want some draconian situation is) I don't know...

Answers on a postcard?

Protection of Intellectual Property

[Grampaw Willie]

the protection of intellectual property ( copyright, patent ) has been known as "the lamp by the golden door"

it is creativity placed in service that furthers the improvement of the human condition. placing new works inservice required venture capital and venture capital is available when there is a reasonable expectation of a good return. copyrights and patents are used to the returns on such ventures reward the rightful parties. without such assurance there is no point in risking capital to bring forth the development of creative works.

this is the lesson of experience

and as Dr. Franklin noted "experience is the only true test of any proposition"

only un-educated fools would see any reason for any discussion regarding the usefulness of patents and copyrights.

Re:Protection of Intellectual Property

[cpt kangarooski]

I agree that copyrights and patents are good ideas. However, do you think that the current laws in those fields are ideal? If not, do you think they should generally be revised in favor of more protection, or less? Isn't it possible that the human condition is also improved by unrestricted access and use of creative and inventive materials? If so, isn't it possible that we have too much protection right now, and that we could aid humanity by diminishing these protections; while it might reduce the amount of investment (though remember that the economic value of these monopolies might not scale linearly; going from 0 to 1 year is worth far more than going from 1 million years to 1 million and one!), the increased benefits to the public could easily outweigh whatever public losses there happened to be. If it would be for the net public good, why not do it?

Needed AND Futile

[droopycom]

Futility is needed...

used to be in the buiz...

[micromuncher]

...and back in the mid 90 we had lots of research to show that the cost of copy protection rises geometrically where the cost to remove copy protection rises linearly. Restated; the more effort we put in to protection cost us much, much more than the cost (and time) to break. This was software copy protection, but the parallels to DRM and such are the same. Anything protected can be unprotected - and when you couple it with studies that show protection doesn't impact (or negatively impacts) consumer choice... it isn't economically viable. People who buy, buy. People who try, buy. Those that steal will steal regardless.

Re:used to be in the buiz...

[Grampaw Willie]

... and those who steal will be caught and punished

like locks...

[Tom]

Just like locks, copy protection can be useful to make it clear to people that you don't want your stuff to be copied. At the same time, you must realize that anyone who seriously wants in, will get in. Either through the lock or through the window. One way or the other, you can't keep someone dedicated and with know-how out. You can raise the bars, like banks do with their vaults, but there is no guarantee and different from banks it's enough for one guy to break in and you're open to the entire world.

So if I were making commercial software (which I'm not) I would install some copy protection that I know anyone with a clue can break, but that reminds my honest users that it said "one install per license" or whatever the agreement was. Speaking of that, I also wouldn't tempt my honest (paying!) users and grant them liberal licenses, like multiple installs as long as you only use one at a time (for those with a desktop and a notebook) or cheap family licenses, etc. - making an effort to offer those who are willing to pay an option they are willing to accept will go a long way, and probably work better than installing a better lock.

If it is encrypted it must be decrypted at a point

[EkriirkE]

And if it is decrypted at any point, as it must be for you use, it can be saved in that state - or at least captured.

*Intellectual honesty...*

[Xodmoe]

Is that like "jumbo shrimp"?

As with the barbarians at the gates of Rome who only wanted the land and crops originally promised to them by the emperor, your customers only want easy access to the content you promise them. No one has proven that they are not willing to pay for that privilege.

I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. What seems to have happened here was the media business model that most of us grew up with is now obsolete. At the time you're referring to, Romans were dealing with civil war, outsiders in numbers large enough to damage the infrastructure, moral decline, religious upheaval and infectious, contagious diseases that their medical technology couldn't begin to handle.

We aren't living in the best of times. ...certainly not an intellectual golden age in my country, but life could be a lot worse.

Limiting copyright will harm open source ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

First of all, copyright exists to promote the arts and sciences, not to make anyone money. It is a tradeoff made by the public, where they give up some rights (being able to copy works) in order to encourage authors to make works.

Forgive me, but that is a quite intricate dance. Copyright exists to promote the useful arts and sciences, but financial reward was the intended mechanism of that promotion. I think it is somewhat disingenuous to suggest that profit is not an intended component of the system.

Originally, copyright had no effect on individuals. No one had the ability to make mass reproductions. To copy a book, an individual had to hand copy it, since individuals didn't own printing presses.

I'm seeing more dancing here. Intermediaries did own printing presses and these would be the alternate suppliers to the mass market, much as people pirated their music via Napster at one time rather than rip it from borrowed CDs themselves.

Copyright was an industrial limitation, to keep publishers from publishing books before the author got a chance to make some profit. This is different in the digital age. We all have printing presses now. Copyright needs to be reevaluated.

That makes no sense, how does an increase in the number of unauthorized publishers change anything? Whether the "printing" is done by an unauthorized publisher or a modern individual the author has no chance to make a profit. Why was it wrong to deprive authors of this revenue in the pre-digital age but OK in the digital age? Copyright existed to give an author a chance at profit so as to encourage authors, how are digital authors rewarded for their effort if they are deprived of profits?

"Demand for software decreases, supply will decrease."

Thanks to the digital age we have, the software supply is infinite.

You have severely misunderstood. The supply is new works created by authors. The demand is paying customers. The removal of copyright reduces the number of paying customers, therefore fewer authors will create new works. This includes open source authors. Keep in mind that many open source authors are subsidized by organizations that profit from patent and copyrights. Destroy these revenue streams and the subsidization of open source will also be destroyed.

So only the hobbyist developers remain? Not really, they are discouraged as well. Limiting copyright will harm open source by effectively removing the GPL for example. If as suggested copyrights should expire after 5 years and the works enter the public domain then corporations would be free to offer derived works and not share their changes. This would surely offer further discouragement to GPL authors who chose the GPL over BSD specifically to prevent this.

In short, I do not think you have thought these things through very far. Things are far more complicated than you suggest.

Re:Limiting copyright will harm open source ...

[skeeto]

The removal of copyright reduces the number of paying customers,

I never suggested removing copyright, just reducing the length to something reasonable. This way, if a company wants to continue making good profits, they must continue creating things that for customers will pay for. I bet that companies will still be able to sell their software very well after it has entered the public domain anyway. People like shrink-wrapped boxes, physical media, and convenience.

Intermediaries did own printing presses and these would be the alternate suppliers to the mass market

I am sure very few people had printing presses. Because there were few that could mass produce books, it would be easy to prevent them from copyright infringement as they would be easy to spot. Before computers and copying machines, copyright law was simply something individuals did not have to worry about at all. It was a wonderful tradeoff.

how does an increase in the number of unauthorized publishers change anything?

More "unauthorized publishers" means people, from the public who is supposed to be main group benefitting, are negatively effected by current copyright law. The public gets less from the deal.

Why was it wrong to deprive authors of this revenue in the pre-digital age but OK in the digital age?

We are talking about law, not right and wrong. These are two unrelated matters.

Limiting copyright will harm open source by effectively removing the GPL for example

I am sure that cost would be worth the benefit. Copyleft turns copyright law upside down, so the stronger copyright law, the stronger copyleft is. Richard Stallman, the man behind the GPL (I am sure you know), said this about copyright lengths, "In my own field, computer programming, three years should suffice, because product cycles are even shorter than that."

Hobbyist developers will always be there regardless. Free software is how they scratch itches. As for GPL software falling into public domain, they could and would be turned into proprietary software. However, we have BSD software works like this fine. There are corporate contributers to OpenBSD, for example.

This is off the top of my head here, but maybe there would be a rule about software falling into the public domain: once distributed software falls into public domain, the source code must go with it. Maybe this could only work with registered copyrights. This would help balance propreitary software against GPL once things fall into the public domain.

In short, I do not think you have thought these things through very far.

Actually, I am plucking almost all of these ideas from various Richard Stallman essays (if I am understanding them properly). This is someone who has spent half his life thinking about these things. :-)

Source for RMS quote: Misinterpreting Copyright.

Re:Limiting copyright will harm open source ...

[bersl2]

Free software projects are often a moving target. The copyright to newer versions is updated every time an update is committed.

Also, if authors want their revenue, fine. But the only way, IMO, that they can do this without losing it to the "pirates" is to get all the money up front. Once the worms are out of the can, good luck getting them back in.

...addendum

[Xodmoe]

...certainly not an intellectual golden age in my country

...nor an artistic or generally imaginative one.

heh

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember as a kid my dad would say "locks only keep out honest people." So copy protection is really designed to stop the normal, non-techy people from bothering (not necessarily honest, but don't know enough to bother). Copy protection is definitely futile for those who set out to conquer it.

Where you /in/ that video?

[Vainglorious Coward]

video of ordinary people explaining why they think copyright exists. It's pretty clear that most people don't understand it at all.

I disagree. The people in this video...seem to get the gist of what intellectual property rights are supposed to protect.

You disagree because apparently you don't understand why copyright exists either. The purpose of copyright is not to protect "intellectual property rights" and your guff about copyrights' role in supply and demand is just a red herring. Copyrights exist to promote the useful arts and science, for the benefit of society as a whole. Encouraging producers by extending certain (limited, supposedly) monopoly rights is (one) means to an end, but it's not the end in and of itself.

Re:Where you /in/ that video?

[The Empiricist]

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. U.S. Const. Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 8.

Copyright secures for a limited time an author's exclusive right to the author's writings. The ultimate goal of providing such protection is to to promote the progress of science. Whether people are thinking about the ultimate goal or not does not mean that they do not understand the purpose of copyright at all.

If this were a discussion of fair use rights and whether they are strong enough to ensure that copyright does not impair the progress of science, then it would make sense to focus more thought on the ultimate purpose of securing these rights. But it is hard to see how the progress of science is seriously impaired by suggesting that consumers do not have an inherent right to free and convenient copies of copyrighted works.

Re:Where you /in/ that video?

[cpt kangarooski]

Well, remember that there are three equally important kinds of progress. 1) The creation and publication of original works; 2) the creation and publication of derivative works, and; 3) no restrictions as to what anyone may do with those works.

In an ideal world, we'd max them all out: all the works that could be created would be, and there would be no copyrights. Sadly, we don't live in this world, so the best we can do is try to get as close as we can. Merely fully pursuing any one of these goals is one strategy (and in fact, if we abolished copyright, we'd be at 100% on the third kind). But since a trade-off from one goal might yield a greater or lesser increase in another, we may be able to get to a maximum which is greater than if we merely pursued only one of the goals. Copyright aims to do this: the idea is to temporarily give up a small amount of our freedom as to works (and thus diminish the creation and publication of derivatives somewhat) in order to spur on far, far more creation and publication of original works, and a small amount for derivatives). The trick is to not overshoot, and take away too much freedom for too little net gain. Of course, that's what has happened.

So yes, attacking the idea that it would be ideal for the public to have free and convenient copies of works is contrary to promoting the progress of science.

Also, kudos for reading the clause correctly; so many people erroneously think that copyright is about the useful arts.

False Premises

[pdq332]

Unfortunately, the premises of the argument as described in the article are wrong. The question of copyright should not revolve around the axis of "lock up all the pirates" versus "gee, can't really stop those darned pirates". The question of copyright revolves around how far we as a society are willing to limit our own rights in order to provide a fair incentive to creators of content (music, movies, books, etc) to be creative. Copyright law does not exist in order to make mega-millionaires out of marginal talent or their producers. Nor does copyright law exist in order to fund a whole cottage industry whose sole existence is to defend copyright law. The question should rather be asked of NBC Universal and other entertainment industry heavyweights: Do you recognize the tidal wave of violations of fair use rights of citizens around the world by giant corporations, the wholesale trampling of our privacy rights by pervasive industry electronic monitoring, and the perversion of our very legal systems to the service of picking the pockets of presumed (but never proven) copyright "violators"? People are fed up, and think it is about time the law swung back over to our side. And if that means fewer mass produced media mediocrities, so be it.

Internet Analogies

[PMBjornerud]

I know we all love the car analogies, but it seems to me that to really make people understand this, you have to go even simpler:

Digital products, by definition, are represented by 1s and 0s. Because of this, it is no longer a physical product. It has become information.

By nature, information can be transferred. Also, you cannot prevent me from transfering some specific information unless you monitor all the information I send out. This means monitoring my mail, monitoring my holiday pictures, monitoring the video I took of my family during christmas. Unless you monitor ALL information, I will be able to transfer illegal information.

And pray that nobody ever finds a way to monitor and prevent ALL illegal information. If that ever happens, free speech will become illegal, and all your information is already monitored.

Good old paper mail is the best analogy still. You cannot prevent people from mailing song texts to eachother unless you monitor ALL their mail. This does not happen. (But don't tell the record companies, or they will get fuming over such a loophole...)

Re:Internet Analogies

[init100]

This means monitoring my mail, monitoring my holiday pictures, monitoring the video I took of my family during christmas. Unless you monitor ALL information, I will be able to transfer illegal information.

And you didn't even mention steganography, which would use legitimate content, such as your personal home videos, to hide copyrighted information that you are not allowed to share. An exchange of files would look like you and your friend is exchanging home videos, but it might really be copyrighted music tracks that is the real payload.

People that demand that we filter the internet for unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works really have no idea what they are talking about. It cannot be done.

Makes no sense

[Nerdposeur]

Usually they say something along the lines of "I don't care if I lose access to my music in 10 years, after all it's 10 years old so not important"

If you lose access to your music 10 years from now, unless you stop buying music today, it won't ALL be 10 years old. Some of it might be a week old. And if you DO still want it, you'd have to buy it again. You bought it. It should be yours.

He calls that a debate?

[big_paul76]

From NBC's position, fta:

3. Those who suggest that technological protections are not needed must, if they are intellectually honest, acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world on the broadband internet. This indefensible massive trafficking simply must be reduced in any kind of law abiding society.

So, he's asking us to concede, before we even start the debate, that private, non-commercial copyright infringement is a big problem and is just wrong because it's illegal? The unspoken assertion here is that there's no such thing as an unjust law? Where the fuck did this guy go to law school? I guess wherever it was, they didn't spend a lot of time focusing on history classes...

4. Another feature of this debate that should change is technologists disingenuously trashing technology. Too often, the same people who enthusiastically and unreservedly sing the praises of the infinite and wondrous capabilities of digital technology in virtually every other respect pretend that technology has nothing to offer and no ability to reduce the massive trafficking in wholesale infringements of entire works (certainly in the area of video, film, TV, games and software). It is categorically and demonstratively untrue and unworthy of tech champions.

Translation: Hey, all you guys who know way more than I do about this computer stuff, could you please stop pointing out the inherent flaws in implementing DRM technology? See, I need lawmakers and average joes to believe that my goal of stopping privacy with DRM technology is at least possible before I can convince anybody it's a good idea. When you guys point out that it's might not ever be possible (Doctorow, I'm looking in your direction!), it really makes this a hard sell.

Look, you know what was a golden age for us in the TV and movie business? Back in the days when movies only showed in theaters. You wanna see it, you pay us per viewing. We'd like to have the cash cow of home video sales, but we'd like to go back to the pay-per-viewing model.

content industries have inflated compensation

[big_paul76]

Actors... writers... everyone in hollywood is in for a wakeup call. Multi-million dollar salaries are going to be unsupportable very soon

Here, Here.

Before the 20th century, entertainers (musicians/actors/playwriters/etc) were somewhere around prostitutes on the status and income scales.

Then this gravy train came along at some point in the 20th century, where we gave away the "bandwidth" of radio and tv channels to a handful of companies, they spend the next 50-70 years getting rich beyond their wildest dreams on a scarcity of "bandwidth" (if you think of 'bandwidth' as # of tv channels or shelf space in the record store etc).

Now everybody knows you can get rich on selling any scarce commodity. But now, not only is the scarcity disappearing, but it's going away faster than any of the content middlemen ever foresaw.

One way or the other, the economics of the content industries is in for a shakeup. Besides, can somebody explain to me why people who work in the entertainment society get to work for a year or 5 years or 10 then be idle for the rest of their lives on royalties? I missed the section of the constitution where it guarantees anybody who works in the entertainment industry a mansion and a private plane.

No, because it means they get it for CHEAP!

[__aailob1448]

I don't know if anybody'll read this but:

People don't download illegally because it's free, they do it because it's CHEAP. In this case, it's monthly ISP bill + time wasted because of shortcomings of illegal method (fake files, malware, bad quality, improper iD3 tags, etc.) as opposed to the easier and faster (for most people) iTunes, Amazon or Allofmp3 to name a few commercial services. Of course, sometimes, the illegal method is actually more convenient (vastly more choice, No DRM or anti-piracy Cripplecode, earlier date of release, etc.).

Because of this, virtually all people are willing and able to pay some price. Many people think that iTunes and Amazon prices are good and spend $1/song. Many others would be willing to pay 50 or 25 cents for a song (AllofMp3 subscribers, for instance). A lot of people would buy songs at 10 cents, and they would buy a lot of them. Virtually everybody would pay a cent for a single because we'd just round it down to free.

Imagine now, a world where musicians released music online for everyone to discover using different voting systems and Amazon-like recommendations based on people who have similar tastes, good old word of mouth, scouting and sponsorship of promising talents, etc, etc.

Say that 500 million people in the world want to listen to american music (this is a conservative estimate). 100 million elect to pay a recurring $5/month for 500 songs of their choice without DRM, valid for all platforms+ unlimited streaming of any song mankind has ever made. The remaining 400 million simply buy music a la carte. 1 cent a song, a dime for an album. let's say they spend only $2/month on average.

You now have $500M + $800M = $1.3 Billions...a MONTH! That's about 15.6 Bn / year. Enough to give $100K / year to 100,000 musicians after 34% overhead expenses. This is without counting paid live performances, merchandising, sponsorships, ADs, commercial licenses which should all bring in a substantial amount of extra money. Heck, people could tip their favorite artists whatever they can easily afford too. It would also be easy to create additional services and features could be sold at a premium to those who can afford them. Ticket drawings, autographs, fan events, auctions, etc.

The point is, tens (or hundreds) of billions of dollars would still flow through to the musicians every year despite the ridiculously low prices of music. I think that something close to the vision I'm painting is inevitable. It will happen simply because it's the most convenient thing for humans. Everybody could listen to the music they like to their heart's content, whenever, however. It's custom infinite High-Fi radio station time for all.

An ancient sumerian that experienced walking in the silence, wearing a wireless headphone, and listening to any piece of music ever recorded would think it really cool magic. This shit is what we live for and we can have this before we die. Hopefully, we'll overcome the fear of change and pull it off. It depends heavily on a viable microtransaction system.

Locks and Keys Are Iron-y. Get It?

[severoon]

Unless a design defect is discovered in a line of locks, picking one (or creating a specialized pick) does not grant all would-be attackers instant access. The best it can do is lower the barrier to entry, it can make the task easier. Physical access, time, and a certain level of skill are still required of the attacker.

You've never played with a lock-pick set, have you? You can get past most knob-locks and deadbolts with a torsion wrench and a rake in under 10 seconds. The time investment required to achieve this level of expertise? About 15 minutes of playing around. The time investment to make your own lock pick set? Maybe a couple of hours if you go really high-end, but probably could be done in around a half hour if you know what you're doing.

Unless you're dealing with a tubular lock. Those things are, like, impossible to pick (unless you happen to have a highly specialized device called a ballpoint pen).

I remember one summer in college, rooming with a guy that went to CalTech during the school year. When I learned this, I waited for summer to begin with great anticipation, as I knew that every freshman is required to develop good lock pick skills at CalTech, and I would find a way to make myself the beneficiary of that knowledge. So it was almost a letdown when he showed me how to pick locks and within the half hour I was able to breeze through most locks I encounter in daily life as if they weren't even there. So much for a highly specialized skill.

can't stop piracy

[big_paul76]

If your business model depends on end users not copying your product, you might as well save everyone a lot of trouble and move on to another project. Copyright/Patent/Trademark may protect you a bit against some commercial competition. But you can't do much about end users violating them.

Here, here.

This line of reasoning is what leads me to my conclusion that a solution to this mess is to basically disregard private, non-commercial copyright infringement.

And to make the observation that copyright laws didn't intend to address private non-commercial copyright infringement anyway, since it basically didn't exist when copyright laws.

People spend a lot of time talking about "control over my creation", but I'm not convinced that was the intention of copyright laws. I don't see any evidence that copyright was supposed to do anything beyond protect authors/creators from publishers/producers.

Correction

[jabelli]

EAC used to have that feature. The author removed that feature because he was afraid German law would find it a "circumvention device" and subject him to prosecution. If you can find an older version somewhere, you can try it.

Having said that, I have a CD that claims to be protected, but EAC had no problem ripping it. It is, however, just a "non-conformant" CD, rather than multiple sessions.

You could also try IsoBuster or the like to see if you can extract the sessions individually.

Re:Copy protection, in an absolute sense,NOT CORRE

[DavidTC]

This is not correct. Copyrights don't disappear just because copying is easy. Copyrights never prevented copying.

I don't see how I implied they did. I said difficulty in copying prevented copying. (I am confused by how you're disagreeing with me here.) Copyrights are just preventing people from setting up large scale operations to overcome said difficulties.

From the very beginning, you could copy by hand any copyrighted book.

Not practically you couldn't.

What copyrights allow is to seek damages against those who violate them. Only the copyright holder may freely sell their work for money in the open market. Others who try with unauthorized copies face civil penalties.

As the other responder said, that is a valid point. Companies will continue to follow copyright amongst themselves, so it clearly still exists in some sense. So it's more correct to say the idea of things handed to normal people being subject to copyright is has vanished.

So just because you can copy something doesn't mean that the idea of copyright has suddenly vanished.

No, the fact that people are distributing TV shows and MP3s and movies continually on the internet means copyright is has suddenly vanished. Or is in the process of vanishing.

Copyright, huh, yeah, what is it good for?

[Motley Phule]

I honestly don't know!

1. Does it protect and encourage artists/authors/creators?

No, they're still on the breadline. Only the most wildly successful have any money. Everyone else is doing it for the love of it.

Sometimes the people who created the thing have sold all their rights, and someone else entirely can reap the rewards (for instance, Michael Jackson getting a royalty any time a Beatles song is played).

2. Does it help recognise authorship?

Kind of. That's not really its focus, but it does establish clear lines of authorship as a kind of by product of guarding its licenses so closely.

3. It protects the artist's work from being used in a way they would disapprove of.

HELL no. Quite the reverse. The copyright system itself, which places so much power in the hands of the people who issue the licenses (the record companies/publishing companies) tends to allow the works to be used in any way the highest bidder wants. So we have a situation where authors have movies made of books they have written which they get no additional money for (probably they sold the rights when the book wasn't so popular) and which they hate. Which most of us end up hating.

Now, what about the harms it does:

a) Makes what is, essentially, a very cheap product (a 25c cd or $1 DVD), painfully overpriced.

b) It creates large barriers to entry by ensuring that only record company approved/publisher approved products can have any success.

c) It creates massive profits for people who play next to no part in the creative process.

Its dumb and I hate it.

I don't think piracy is right, but I do think that it's inevitable. When you're charging so much for a pathetic commodity (a very limited license to own and use one copy of something that costs next to nothing to produce) it's bound to happen. Creators should get rewarded for their work. Quality should be encouraged. Copyright needs to be rethought.

We'd be better off without it.

[sco08y]

anyone who is intellectually honest must 'acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world'

Yes.

and that we should be [sic] 'identify workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive and that fully respect other interests such as privacy and fair use.'

No. Piracy is a symptom, not the problem.

What we need is a workable business model, one that makes life easy for consumers and hard for criminals. Companies selling big ticket items, like big DBMSs, already have a working business model because their clients are willing to accept careful monitoring. F/OSS "just works," as does custom software. Certain companies like Apple are able to tie software to hardware, another workable business model.

When you look at ones that *don't* have a workable business model, they have one thing in common: nothing they do is particularly irreplaceable. Movies, music and television are pretty obviously replaceable, and even most software would be replaceable if we had a genuine need. The other thing they have in common is that we'd probably be better off without them.

analog hole

[Phantom of the Opera]

example:

There comes that point, no matter how secure the path, they keys, the algoritm, etc where a digital signal must be transformed into an analog, human "readable" signal. That signal can be re-captured and re-digitalized (and with the right equipment in good quality too) Don't underestimate the goofieness. That analog hole is why they want to embed chips that can perceieve copyright in all possible recording equipment and criminalize equipment without it.
The real analog hole is our own memories and voices, and they'd want you to pay simply for humming a few bars.