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Federal Trade Commission To Scrutinize DRM
Ars Technica reports that the FTC is getting ready to take a hard look at gaming DRM, setting up a town hall meeting to be held on March 25th. They're currently recruiting panelists, and they say the meeting will, in part, "address the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations." The controversy over DRM came to a head in 2008 with the release of Spore and the multiple subsequent class-action lawsuits focusing on the SecuROM software that came with the game. Ars Technica says the town hall meeting will also look at "legal issues surrounding DRM" and "the potential need for government involvement to protect consumers."
These kind of stories swing both ways, and we've had literally dozens of "Finally the pendulum swings the other way moments" that have amounted to nothing more than blips across the radar... But I can't help but optimistically wonder if this is the start of a trend fighting back against corporate abuse of us, the customer? For several years now, I (and probably you) have been inured to new stories about corporation X doing new thing Y to screw customer z, and the news story hasn't even batted an eyelash because we're not surprised. Now the RIAA is backpedaling, and DRM is getting an appropriate scrutinizing. =) Its a good start to 2009!
Video games are by far the worst candidate for this discussion imho.
There is very little case law protecting consumer fair use with video games, as compared with audio and video.
This is a heavy bet on weak prospects.
Assuming the FTC does determine a need is required for video games, this will provide definitive and hefty leverage to expand it to music and video media.
If it does not, and it's a high likelihood the FTC determines it does not, it will be MUCH harder to press the issue on, for instance, the fact that blu-ray media will black peoples' screens at random due to undocumented HDCP issues.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Truly a case of Uncle Sam's left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, considering the recent creation of a Copyright Czar.
At least Apple is moving in the right direction, announcing yesterday that it will drop DRM from it's tracks.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4811674a28.html (and elsewhere)
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
I'm sure the government knows exactly what its doing. They will have a bunch of town hall meetings, do a lot of research and studies, collect a lot of money from large corporations and then come up with a centralized DRM server that everyone will be required by law to use.
It was my impression that any legal ambiguity surrounding viruses had been cleared long ago.
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/20/178259
Go read it. Seriously. The author has many good point, and this panel only highlights the points he makes.
The /. comments on this article are spot on, in the sense that most of them are knee-jerk reactions predicted all along the article. Sad.
At the very least, the FTC should make it illegal to advertise any product infected with DRM as a "sale" as opposed to a "rental" or "lease". As it's impossible to own them, that's false advertising.
Yes, that means that everyone from Wal-Mart to the local mom-and-pop would have to change their advertising, in-store displays, and receipt printouts. That's a problem for them to work out with their suppliers, though.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
When I hear that the Government wants to look into something to protect the Consumer I know it's going to be bend over time for the Consumer as the Government gets together with Business to screw us all over. DRM and all of that crap needs to go away but it won't, it'll get the government gloss over to mollify those of us who are angry, they'll give it a better Orwellian name and call it a day.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
The Government is getting ready to "Take a hard look at DRM". Hey, you never know. If they look hard enough they might find that EA started a 50 billion dollar ponzi scheme! Oh man, wouldn't that be great.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
I think you could make the argument that a recession makes for extreme competition, and its quite likely that it could turn out that DRM simply has to be dropped because a) it requires more money to actually DRM enable a product, particularly in testing, and b) there might be enough of a critical mass of consumers shopping for content based on the absence of DRM.
We won't really have a complete victory, though, until we see Microsoft drop entering those silly license key numbers for its products.
This is my sig.
I'd be fine if they'd just make retailers take returns. That's the problem right now is that you can't return games. So you buy a game, turns out the DRM doesn't work on your system, or maybe you simply don't approve of it. Well too bad, it's opened, so you can't take it back. That is bullshit. I'd be happy if the government just said "You are required to accept a return on any title that has DRM on it just as you would for any other merchandise." That way if the DRM screws you over, you can just take the game back.
Now of course they'd whine and bitch that people would use this to "rent" games. As in buy them, try them, then take them back. Possible, people are known to do that with things they want for just a little while. However that's why I'd require it only for DRM'd games. You want to release a game with no DRM, then it's fine to not take returns.
True on the farr use but there is a ton of case history involving computer intrusion. That's not what this is about.
Installing software(securerom) on my computer without my permission is clearly a criminal act.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Lately that's meant that industry heavies are busy trying to stuff the panel with their own 'experts', doesn't it?
And then three months after this is all done with, we'll start seeing stories about how a quarter of the panelists have been discovered as previously employed by one of the RIAA's shadow groups, in addition to several other panelists receipt of airline tickets to hong kong (as well as an all-expenses paid week there for a meeting) as well as other weakly disguised "gifts" being scrutinized.
What amazes me is they continue to get away with this same old game, time and time again. This wouldn't be a problem if the followup had some teeth to it. What do you do when this all comes to light after the event? Remove them from the panel? Fat lot of good that does after they've "made their recommendations" etc.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
There is very little case law protecting consumer fair use with video games, as compared with audio and video.
I'd have thought that was an argument in favour of starting with video games.
OK, so all DRM is bad, but the real horror stories (malware, limited installs, mandatory internet connections) have been with games.
The Spore case is a particularly clear example of DRM pissing off legitimate consumers while failing to deter (and possibly encouraging) large-scale illicit copying.
Also, whereas issues with Audio/Video DRM are normally to do with caselaw-based "fair use" rights such as format-shifting, the problems with video game DRM have been more fundamental "fitness for purpose" variety. I'm not defending audio/video DRM, but pragmatically speaking, audio DRM seems to be dying off by itself and "your lousy game broke my perfectly standard PC" is going to get more public sympathy than "why can't I watch HD content on Linux?".
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Bit I want to purchase it. I want the game and the publisher wants my money. I just don't want it bundled with the DRM. We're both losing out here!
But if I complain, and if they listen, and they release without DRM, we'll both be richer! Win, win!
I'm in Eastern Europe (Ukraine) right now on a trip. Walked into a DVD/PC games/PS2 game store. There were legal copies of a tiny number of games for sale at UAH 125 each (around $15, but this number is a bit warped due to the fact that the Ukraine currency has plummeted very recently) and a giant amount of games, dvds, etc for sale for around UAH 20 to 35 each, including all of the games that were for sale legally. curious, i went into another store, then another, and found that those dispensed with the formality of even having a few legitimate games. the selection of the games was far larger than you'd find in a typical best-buy. The shopkeepers made no secret of the fact that the games were not legal.
The thing is, it's not like these are little independent software stores run from the back of a truck. these are large multi-million dollar national (ukrain's population is about 50 million) professional chains selling this stuff.
Furthermore, at $15 (the price for the 'full' versions), the games are at least as affordable to the average ukrainian gamer as the $45 equivalents are in the USA. the situation where ukraine (or malaysia, or china, or you name it) is some poor backwater where we might as well just tolerate this since the potential users have no money. i mean, you have to have a serious PC to play most of the modern games, and serious PC prices are pretty much the same everywhere.
i asked the shopkeepers about business software like MS-Office. These were under the counter, but still easily available. one shopkeeper complained to me that his PC game business was down as people were flocking to the web to download stuff. a cousin of mine showed how through the university network (i mean directly on university servers) of ukraine's best university, she had access to from what i can tell tens of terabytes of films, games, software, etc just right there. this is a girl who drives a car better than most of you probably did at her age (19, new toyota land cruiser).
So, while slashdot obsesses over the attempts of companies to protect their own material and the inevitable over-reaches that happen in that quest, you might, just might want to consider that piracy prevention is a noble and fair goal to make people pay their share. we should be supporting sensible attempts at stopping the process wherein american and western european consumers basically subsidize the entertainment for the rest of the world.
What does the MAFIAA have to do with gaming DRM?
A DVD or Bluray player, right out of the box, implements DRM. It doesn't need modification, because it comes pre-crippled. When the user buys a shiny disc and inserts it (and executes code from it, in the case of Bluray) nothing unexpectedly bad can happen. The player device is not damaged.
On personal computers, though, the situation is altogether different. DRM isn't already implemented out-of-the-box; installing malware is the only way to implement it. When you install Spore, your software environment is damaged, even when you're not playing Spore.
FTC shouldn't talk about this as a discussion of DRM itself, because DRM problems will still exist regardless of anything FTC does. They should instead call it a discussion about malware that implements the DRM.
This is ultimately about what labeling conventions imply consent on the part of the victim. If there isn't informed consent, then what Spore's publishers did is a crime, so there should be both criminal and civil sanctions, just like there would be if the author of some spam botnet worm were caught. If there is informed consent, then the victim isn't a victim of crime, they're just a victim of their own stupidity because they bought Spore when they should have known better.
Hopefully the outcome will be that the FTC will say that any software that is sold over state lines, will have to have a label on the outside of the box and in all advertisements: "this contains malware and will damage your operating system if installed" in situations where that happens to be the case.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
When copyright is revoked and universal distribution of everything for free is the rule, there will be no more DRM.
Only free software will exist, because nobody will be able to charge anything for it anymore.
Of course, the quality might suffer a little and there might be a few less items out there, but it will all be free. Oh, and you might have to spend a week or so figuring out how to compile a game before you can play it.
Until some really smart people figure out how this can actually work it is going to be tough. People really want stuff for free and plenty of people are willing to buy things and post them for all to download. Of course, a lot of that is stuff bought with stolen credit cards... but the spirit is there. I don't see any turning back from the "it all should be for free" movement. At least until the last vestiges of decadent Western civiilization is wiped off the map.
Maybe they're sugar pills, or maybe they're dried blood serum of Ebola victims rolled into pills and personally cursed by the High Priest of the Church of Satan to weed the stupid from the world. All you know for sure is that you got them from some shady character on the Internet who's whereabouts you don't know and who is unlikely to ever make business with you again, making him far less trustworthy or interested in your continued wellbeing than the neighbourhood drug dealer. So the question is:
Do you feel lucky, punk ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
This post is really great, how it manages to remain on the edge of trolling, but you're not quite sure.
Well, I might be feeding the trolls today, but if the poster was serious, he also forgot that little thing, you know, what was it? "Totally destroying the resale value and second-hand market"? Yes, that's it!
That and GGP is nothing more than a thinly veiled troll as well. Pretty much all the +5's I remember from that were very simple.. "you, the author of this article, are either a moron or deliberately disingenuous"
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Allow me to translate:
Ars Technica reports that the FTC is getting ready to take a hard look at gaming DRM, setting up a town hall meeting to be held on March 25th. They're currently recruiting panelists, and they say the meeting will, in part, "address the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations."
A longer legal notice will be included with each product (alongside the warnings about not sticking a fork in electric sockets or using the device as a parachute when jumping from an airplane) thus making it less likely to be read by comsumers, less likely to be understood if they do read it, and written in a smaller font so it can still fit on the same amount of paper.
The controversy over DRM came to a head in 2008 with the release of Spore and the multiple subsequent class-action lawsuits focusing on the SecuROM software that came with the game. Ars Technica says the town hall meeting will also look at "legal issues surrounding DRM"
New laws will be written to protect the makers of Spore, SecuROM and other DRM enabled or enabling technology from the evils of class action lawsuits that would otherwise result when consumers find they can't use the products they have paid for.
and "the potential need for government involvement to protect consumers."
Consumers will be protected from the higher prices that result when people are able to use a purchased product more than once. By making sure people can only use a product one time, people will need to keep repurchasing the same item over and over, allowing manufacturers to produce larger numbers of the same item and sell these items at a volume discount.
The phrase government involvement may scare some readers, but don't worry! Those generous manufacturers, who only want to keep our prices low after all, will be watching the FTC, providing donations to the right lawmakers, all to make sure that consumer interests are protected every step of the way.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
When Windows XP was released, some big customers were worried about depending on an external instance for authorization.
Microsoft appeased them by releasing the "Corporate Edition" that didn't require remote authorization.
Guess what happened?
The "Corporate Edition" got pirated. Once again, those who pirate the software are bothered less than legitimate customers...
C - the footgun of programming languages
FAIL.
I bought Game X. I installed Game X. I consented to Game X I never knew that I was also installing SecureROM. It never tells you on the package nor in the EULA nor in the installer. That's unauthorized computer usage. That's completely criminal.
Consenting to something does not mean I'm consenting to everything.
I find being offended by me offensive.
So by loading a web page that has a silent trojan installer you consent to have your machine rooted and joined to a bot net?
You opened the browser. You went to the web page.
I find being offended by me offensive.
That is because you have been desensitized to the abuse your received.
About a week after my son's second birthday, I formatted his hard drive and gave him a copy of Ubuntu Linux. He sat down and installed his OS with no help and no problems. You, presumably a full grown adult, had to call the manufacturer to get help installing your OS. You were reduced to a lower level of competency than a two year old child.
The reason that you could not accomplish the same task as a 2 year old must be attributed one of the two factors that was different. 1) The person doing the install. Or 2) The OS being installed.
Now, while I like to think that my kid is exceptionally smart, I don't for a second believe that your intelligence is less than a 2 year old. That leaves the fact that you did have a problem with the software, and just didn't realize it.