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Gamers, EFF Speak Out Against DRM
Last month, we discussed news that the FTC would be examining DRM to see if it needs regulation. They set up a town hall meeting for late March, and part of that effort involved requesting comments from potential panelists and the general public. Ars Technica reports that responses to the request have been overwhelmingly against DRM, and primarily from gamers. The Electronic Frontier Foundation also took the opportunity to speak out strongly against DRM, saying flat out that "DRM does not prevent piracy," and suggesting that its intended purpose is "giving some industry leaders unprecedented power to influence the pace and nature of innovation and upsetting the traditional balance between the interests of copyright owners and the interests of the public." Their full public comments (PDF) describe several past legal situations supporting that point, such as Sony's fight against mod chips, Blizzard's DMCA lawsuit against an alternative to battle.net, and Sony's XCP rootkit.
Why bother to fight DRM? DRM is not the problem, the problem is that distributing DRM workarounds is illegal. Instead, why not go after the root problem, the DMCA?
Palm trees and 8
"DRM does not prevent piracy"
Which implies that piracy is an undesirable thing. Therefore we shouldn't be focused on DRM as the sole solution to the piracy problem, but as part of a larger set of steps to eliminate the problem.
Either piracy is a bad thing which ought to be dealt with, or it is a good thing which should be encouraged.
The EFF's point (as is typical for them) is full of rhetoric but fails to truly understand the issue. It's a shame they are on the right side because they aren't really helping.
I really wish people would stop the arrogant assumption that they can always work around whatever DRM manufacturers create, even when they all get together to work against the public. Breaking cryptography is HARD. Some crypto is UNBREAKABLE in any reasonable amount of time, using any known techniques. The UK's Sky TV, for instance, has been using the same crypto on their satellite broadcasts for years now, with no cracks available.
They're protecting their interests, of course. And like most firms guided by anal retentive lawyers, they don't know how to react decently, only "legally". But I think the concept of login / auth is fine. One might expound upon the idea by combining it with a shell of some sort - say, a VM - which contains only the game you want to play, and whatever security software it needs, and nothing else. That would prevent (or at least slow) hackers from cracking it up again.
But the root of all greevil is of course, humanity: hacking is too easy to learn, and the kids have the IQ far before they have the sense of responsibility. Try souping up education for a change. It's something that has to be relearned by EACH fewkin' generation! Our teachers should be well-paid and well-respected, instead they're downtrodden. And we think it's strange so many kids are so mentally fucked up? Unlimited corporate economics is at fault here, simple as that.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
The whole copyright agreement is to allow exclusive distribution rights to specific material or content for a limited amount of time, after which the works would be released to the public domain.
So far, the industry has managed to have copyright duration extended to unreasonable durations increasing the likelihood that after the copyright term expires, it will no longer be available for access or distribution. But that isn't harmful enough. Now they want to keep the works locked up in an encryption scheme that will likely make copyrighted materials extinct long before the copyright term expires as no one will be able to access it after the term expires.
This is a complete and total breech of the copyright agreement with the people of any given nation that respects copyright under law.
The politicians won't listen. Their ears will be plugged with earplugs made out of the lobbying money from the media conglomerates. They won't see a problem because consumers continue to buy and buy regardless of DRM in 90% of cases, and corporations continue to make money. There's nothing wrong with the situation, so far as they can see. That 10% that won't buy DRM'd media? Pirates. All of them. We just haven't caught and convicted them yet.
The only way to shut down the DRM monster is mass boycott. And I mean MASS. I mean you have to get your parents that don't know shit about DRM protesting. You have to get soccer moms, the 14 year old kids vulnerable to media hype and willing to buy anything, the exec with his iPod crammed with DRM'd tunes... get them ALL educated and more importantly angry enough to stop buying for a couple years.
It's difficult enough to appear very close to impossible.
I demonstrated it to my mother when she wanted to play a CD for me. At the time I had no CD player other than my PC. Her CD refused to play. I looked it up online, sure enough it had copy protection preventing us from listening to her CD she paid for. I showed her how to circumvent the protection (a little marker on the outside track), and she became incensed. She's not purchased music for about 5 or 6 years now. She was disgusted that people were treating her, one of the most honest people (to a fault) that I know, like a common criminal even though she gave them money for their product.
Find a way to make people feel that way BEFORE it bites them, and you'll have what we need to win. Until then, good luck. So long as the money flows, they won't hear a damn thing we say.
I think the fundamental issue is that the DMCA and DRM allows the "industry" to write their own laws.
With the DMCA and the anti-circumvention provisions, the restriction code has the power of law - circumventing it is illegal.
So they can ignore whatever fair use privilege we used to enjoy, because fair use privileges aren't guaranteed rights: if you can't make use of it for whatever reason - tough; they're not required to provide you with tools or systems to give you what you want, even if it could be legal.
So this all boils down to the fact that we've lost all fair use in copyright law (maybe not in theory, but definitely in practice), and as such, copyright has become completely unbalanced in favour of the copyright owners.
The tradeoff was: a temporary monopoly on distribution with some fair use exceptions, in return for a rich public domain later on.
Not only have we lost fair use, we've also lost the public domain part later on. Because the DRM on copyrighted works that end up in the public domain isn't going to magically disappear.
All we're left with is "a monopoly on distribution" - that's not what copyright was supposed to be.
Seriously? Gamers and the EFF? OK, I understand that perception != reality here, but in the media this could easily read, "criminals and hippies against DRM.". I mean, honestly - gamers don't have the best reputation in the media. Oh, those guys that get hopped up on caffeine and drugs after a round of GTA and go shoot people?" The EFF - wait, those are those commie hippies right?
Again the reality may be far different, but I would think those are the LAST groups you'd want being our main representatives in the fight against DRM.
It will just be like the copies of the old C64 games on a game archive: Only the cracked copies will still be around and usable.
There is some irony that the people who do most to preserve the use of a game for future generations are the warez guys.
Maybe in the future they will eventually get around to cracking StarForce games. Splinter Cell has been out for years, and there has yet to be a crack for it (or any SF protected game) that doesn't involve physically yanking out IDE cable out of a machine to any CD/DVD players.
> People act like consuming entertainment media is air that you need to survive.
Humans need to create art. It's what makes us human. Art exists to be consumed. We forget that at the risk of losing our humanity. The desire to create and share art freely is no less than a battle for the soul of humanity itself. There's nothing fucking pathetic about it.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
The best "DRM" I've seen was a shareware program that shipped with source code for UNIX based systems. The directions were to register it for $25, then set the REGISTERED macro to 1. Of course, you could do that without registering it, but it was obvious that doing so was an EULA violation.
Another example of this is iDupe, a program to find and optionally remove duplicate tracks in iTunes on OS X. When you register it, it has a very simple method to tell the program that it is registered (and not the shareware version). People setting this without registering know that they are violating the EULA. However, if you did register it, you don't need to keep an activation code, you just tell it that it isn't shareware and you have the functionality that you paid for.
IMHO, that's all that is needed. Make it where a user has to explicitly know that an action they are about to take is infringing IP, but if he or she chooses to, don't get in the way. More Draconian DRM than this won't stop the dedicated people who will just download a patch, or just grab the download from the usual warez methods.
Businesses and organizations don't need DRM to ensure license compliance. In fact, most volume licenses are not locked to a license server. However, the business will have hell to pay come a BSA audit, and the invoices for licenses are not greater or equal to the amount of licenses for stuff really in use at that site.
If you have to have a DRM system, look at Neverwinter Nights 1 and how Bioware (before getting absorbed into EA) patched out the CD-ROM copy protection. This did not affect sales in the slightest. The fact that the game requires a unique serial number when online is more than enough to get people to buy copies, especially if playing multiplayer worlds.