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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.
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.
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.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
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.
Car analogies break down.
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
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.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
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.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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?
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.