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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.
DRM Killer, available later this fall featuring SecureROM.
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 problem is that I don't see the political establishment listening to "a bunch of gamers and the EFF."
I think it tying together the Sony Root Kit issue with farms of own machines used for SPAMing, scaming, or organized crime would get a little attention.
The biggest problem I have had with DRM is that I rented Ratatouille last year and was unable to play it on a standard DVD player, unable to play it on two different computer DVD players, and of course unable to make a copy (which I only tried because I couldn't play it.) The disk cause me to have to unplug and plug back in my Toshiba DVD player to even get it to eject, it totally locked up the player.
Think Deeply.
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.
Now if they can't crack something and feel the need to resort to purchasing a solution then some crtpyo may be truly uncrackable. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/
How convenient. I just bought a copy of Left4Dead brought it home and tried to install it only to discover the CD key that came with the game was already in use (which is odd since the game was in a sealed package). So I went off to valve support to try and get the situation remedied. Their support is anything but efficient or helpful. So then I went back to the store where I bought the game to get an exchange. Wouldn't you know it they have a policy of not having anything to do with games that have been opened. So for the time being thanks to copy protection I'm out $50 for a legitimate copy of a game. Add this story to the big board. Next time I want a game I'll just download the cracked version.
I have nothing compelling to 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.
I do know of a couple that bought a Sony entertainment system. The system has the DRM built in. Now logic would tell you that as long as the DVD's are compliant with US rules as to format etc, then that DVD you put in the player should work. This is not the case though. They never know if the DVD will work in the DVD player. So half of their DVD movie collection wont play in the Player. They bought a second DVD player, and use this for those DVD's that wont play in the Sony.
Sony may argue stating that the movies wont play because they are pirated. They are not. They were DVD's bought from reputable stores.
This is how bad DRM has become. Consumers are at the mercy of manufacturers of DRM laden products.
The use of the word "piracy" to describe copyright infringement is as old as the 1709 Statute of Anne
--- when the Black Flag still flew over the Caribbean.
The geek is NEVER going to win this argument.
"The presence of unencrypted transport stream rips of HDTV broadcasts proves the existence"
Not necessarily. I've noticed that almost every HD cable box has a component out that supports 1080i. There are boxes that will capture this stuff (for Myth as one possible use). The 1080p rips out there likely came from BluRay cracks.
In many ways, it's like WMP files from MS. The one genuine crack disappeared pretty quickly, and has not been repeated. However, I'm not convinced it's because WMP is "hard" to crack, rather it's because it's just easier to rip a CD or use MP3's already "in the wild".
I like to think of breaking DRM like water in a vessel. The water doesn't need lots of ways to get out, it only needs one. And when it comes to music, it's not worth breaking the DRM. For video, it's worth it, so it's broken.
> 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.
While you're absolutely correct that ex post facto refers to criminalizing something after a person has committed the act, then arresting them, I would like to point out that the copyright extensions should have been unconstitutional for a very different reason.
I believe it was Eldred v. Ashcroft that pointed out that they were violating the "limited times" clause of the section of the constitution authorizing copyright laws by doing retroactive extensions. The only reason the Supreme Court didn't uphold that argument is because they thought there were enough other advantages to the law that they didn't want to upset the boat, though they indicated that they might not look so favorably upon another retroactive extension if there wasn't a compelling enough reason for it.
Of course, by the time of the next extension, who knows who the Supremes will be or whether they'll even care about those issues any more...
Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood today, but... what good are these discussions?
The whole DRM mess has been chewed over and over and over again, and we always get the same results:
* DRM or not DRM doesn't matter: piracy is around 80% either way. This has not changed for 25 years.
* Company managers are too reality-disfunct to realise this, and are willing to pay for (expensive) DRM systems to include in their product.
* Dito politicians, usually bought by the industry, and who are worthless by definition anyway.
* Nobody will do a boycott.
* We cannot change any of these points.
Possible solutions:
* Buy the original with DRM and live with it.
* But the original with DRM and download a pirate copy.
* Download a pirate copy only.
* Refuse any DRM games, buy from the indy market instead.
Note on the last point: I bought very very few 'normal' games in the last few years (I refuse DRM), but quite a few from these interesting small companies. Cheaper, ofter better (even if the graphics usually aren't), lots of fun, and you have the feeling that you're supporting the good programmers directly instead of some worthless CEOs 3rd Mercedes 500SEC.
I bought (and can highly recommend) games like "World of Goo" or "Galactic Civilization II".
HOWEVER: some indy games have now come out with DRM. Beware of these! A good example would be "Defense Grid". An excellent, cheap game, but sold only via STEAM or Greenhouse, both of which are a form of DRM not allowing you to play the game without internet access. And even if you install them on a different PC (eg at work, with net access) and transfer the registry info, it won't work as it's registered to your CPU ID.
(Yes, I'm very pissed off about this specific example. Particularly as the support from Greenhouse does not exist).
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/