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Chronicling the Failures of DRM
Barence takes us to PCPro for a look at the failures of DRM and a discussion of its impending death. Quoting:
"Luckily, DRM is dying, at least in the download sphere. Napster's Dan Nash believes that DRM-free is 'the general way things are going.' In his opinion, record companies 'have no choice but to adapt;' those that 'stick to DRM on a pay-per-download basis will not remain competitive.' In the US, Napster has joined Amazon in selling DRM-free content in MP3 format from all the major labels. ... Going DRM-free makes sense not just for consumers, but for the industry. Deutche Telekom says three out of four technical support calls its Musicload service had to deal with were the result of DRM. And when it offered a DRM-free option to artists they saw a 40% increase in sales."
Yes, we all know DRM sucks. and is broken, and no one wants to accept it (unless it is from iTunes..). Now, this is great for the end user to know - but even better if people in industry would pay attention!
The MPAA/RIAA want you to pay every time you watch or listen to their media. They feel that people don't pay often enough to hear the same old crap.
In the US, Napster has joined Amazon in selling DRM-free content in MP3 format from all the major labels.
A percentage of iTunes tracks are DRM-free, but certainly not all.
The big question is: why won't the labels allow iTunes to sell all of their tracks DRM-free?
Obviously the labels would love to eliminate the iTunes policy of 99-cent only pricing, but there must be something more than that.
It's about the cost. Most people would pay for legitimate music. But then again, when you have to pay for gas, rent, food, etc..., entertainment is way low in one's list of priorities.
If music was made more affordable and/or reasonable, it wouldn't be much of an issue, most people would pay, I'm sure of that.
The problem started off as "Music was too expensive" CDs where like up to 30$ a CD at one time during the peek years.
When the internet kicked in and the MP3 format was created, eventually download sites and peer-to-peer was the way to go for cheap (and free) music, so, obviously, the music industry lost revenues.
Instead of understanding and adapting their price model, they used DRM, and it made things worse.
So, it's coming full circle, they don't have much choice anyways. If they want to have a music industry, they have to work with the system and they need to adapt their pricing.
Basically, this is what's I've always understood about protection schemes in computing: It's made by man, it can be broken by man.
Copy protection and DRM will never work in the long run, there is always someone out there who can figure out how it is done and break it.
Has BD+ been cracked yet? I've heard tons about it early on (especially on slashdot), but nothing at all in the last few months. Is it possible to play a Blu-ray disk on Linux?
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
The thing I find most galling about DRM is that we've already been through the same thing, in the early 1980s, with the software "copy protection" wars.
Vendors of copy protection systems would sell their snake oil to software companies, the new uncrackable copy protection would get cracked within months of release, everyone who wanted warez could get copies, but the idealistic suckers who paid for theirs clogged support lines with problems, when the not-quite-standard disk formats turned out to be not-quite-compatible with many diskette drives.
On August 19, 1986, The New York Times reported that "At best, copy protection does nothing good for legitimate users and only annoys software pirates. At worst, it makes it difficult to install software onto a hard disk and to make backup copies that are vital if the original is lost or destroyed. It slows the performance of some programs and causes snarls in others. It can be a pain for networks of PC's hooked together to share data and peripherals. And, worst of all, there have been reports that some ''killer'' protection schemes have destroyed hard disk files, inadvertently or otherwise.... Software makers who have abandoned copy protection this year seem to be avoiding bankruptcy, and they have certainly gained goodwill. When the goodwill comes from big corporate buyers (including the Federal Government, which has refused to buy copy-protected software), it is likely that the losses from pirated software can be offset."
By the end of 1986, all major software publishers had abandoned copy protection, including the longest holdout, Lotus... but not before the failure of Lotus Jazz, a Mac program, which, according to John Dvorak, failed in part because its copy protection was too hard to break.
Why do we need to go through all this again? As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
From TFA, "The online music industry has evolved so that, while there are open file format standards - notably MP3 - the major companies have so far preferred proprietary or licensed file formats protected by DRM systems."
The problem with that statement is MP3 has never been an open format. It too requires a license to use. The difference is that the spec is public, so anyone can license the technology.
For an actual open format with freely available source code, check out ogg.
I "own" one or two audible audiobooks. Or used to anyway, I doubt I am still able to listen to them.
They lost me as customer. I will never buy from them again, unless they offer a DRM free option.
They _are_ losing business. There _will_ be other outlets that start in the audiobooks marked, and the DRM strategy will allow those other outlets to squeeze in where Audible otherwise hold the marked.
Most problems with MS windows are amplified by DRM. I have had system crashes at multiple occasions, and when trying to reinstall XP on a new HDD I run into issues like this:
- The version of XP you have is upgrade only, and can not be used on a clean HDD.
When trying to recover by installing from CD:
- The version of XP you are trying to install is older than what is on the PC (upgraded with service packs). This is for upgrade only.
I also have a test machine with multiple languages and test with different HW configurations. After using it for a few years, now, every time XP is reinstalled, I have to call MS to get the license key.
I agree with TFA: DRM'ed products will fail.
What a breeze to install Ubuntu.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Just out of curiosity, since you mentioned rentals, how would a song rental market work without DRM (such as Rhapsody)? From what I understand, you pay $15 a month to get unlimited music, but it is only playable as long as you keep up your subscription. If you wanted that particular model as an option (i.e., you normally get tired of songs a few months after purchasing them), how can a company sell you that model without DRM?
in addition, despite the 'death' of HD-dvd format, people simply aren't willing to go to Blu-Ray format, because you have to god forbid pay someone $80 for software(thanks slysoft for breaking BD+) to remove protection from the discs, so you can skip the 16 minutes of unskippable adverts they think you need when you just paid $30-40 for a stupid HD movie. maybe if there were easy to use tools, like a BD shrink, or maybe if BD players could play content without having to put it back in BD+ format... (currently you have to convert to h264, and watch on a ps3 or xbox 360)
dvd decryption software starts at 'free' and moves on up to $50, and dvd shrink is hugely popular even though it hasn't been developed in 2+ years (just check it on softpedia!)
yeah content 'owners' just don't get it, every insanely encumbered digital technology has failed, with the exception of DVD-roms, which have minimal, weak protection, that was easily cracked. Divx failed, HD dvd lost the support of studios when it's protection was cracked, but consumers didn't switch to blu-ray, and BD+ was cracked months later... and people still aren't switching (imo partially from the fact that BD+ while cracked, doesn't give end users a 'single click' method of burning it to a BD-r.)
people do pirate content, yeah it really happens,
it's been spiraling out of control since the 70's, when copyright became possible without 'submitting' the material to the library of congress. just as prohibition created the mafia, copyright extension created the 'modern pirate.'
the media companies have created multi-billion dollar industries distributing ideas, and they're complaining, because what people once got for nothing, they now steal because they have no money to pay for it.
you can't simply print wealth on a piece of paper, and give it out to everyone, if you try, you wind up with the situation that Zimbabwe is in now with 'hyper inflation.'
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
They pretty much own the audiobook download market
Talk about a market where DRM is going to be the least effective. The analog hole kind of sucks for music, because there is some amount of quality degradation which requires either hi-quality equipment to reduce, or haxor tools to strip the DRM digitally.
But for the spoken word? Anyone can crack the DRM on an audiobook and get satisfactory results, even a cheap-ass microphone sitting in front of a cheap-ass PC speaker will do fine.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Fortunately, we were able to resurrect his old PC, which was still in our boneyard, and run it long enough to export his DRM'ed files to WAV.
How long does customer data typically sit in your store's boneyard?
Honestly, no one would give a shit about DRM if it didn't interfere with normal music listening activities. If the end user were not inconvenienced by DRM, no one would give a hoot about it. The problem isn't DRM, it's greed. Consider this scenario: a fan purchases a song from an online store. That song can be authorized on any number of devices with nothing more than a password. The playing device never has to phone to a server. There are no limits to the number of copies that can be made, nor the number of devices that it can be played on. The DRM is an open format that any manufacturer can use. The only thing preventing anyone from listening to the song is a password. If this were the case, I theorize that it would cut out a large percentage of casual piracy, yet would never inconvenience the listener (save the initial authorization procedure which would only take seconds). Or course OMFG the RIAA might have to accept some losses in it's battle to prevent 110% of music copying. Oh noes! And, oh gee, perhaps an open standard would create a DRM that can be cracked. So what? In the end if they actually did a study of actual numbers I imagine they would find their sales went up, word of mouth would create new fans and sales, and the DRM would create just enough of a hindrance to prevent rampant theft, save for those who are hell bent on stealing all their music no matter what. The problem is that the RIAA and other groups like them see piracy in black and white terms. If it exists, they are loosing money. That is an immature way to view business and human nature. If they were willing to accept some losses as inevitable, they could recoup much more by lowering the DRM bar so that it is virtually invisible to the honest user.
Yes, it's been cracked. But there's no code out there that most of us can use. I think some commercial outfit made their own interpreter (BD+ relies on some embedded code, IIRC) and many of the details are still secret.
So it's cracked, but I don't know that you can play it on Linux.