Slashdot Mirror
Empirical Study Shows DRM Encourages Infringement
Hucko writes "Ars Technica has a story about a study by Cambridge law professor Patricia Akester that suggests (declares?) that DRM and its ilk does persuade citizens to infringe copyright and circumvent authors' protections. The name of the study is 'Technological accommodation of conflicts between freedom of expression and DRM: the first empirical assessment.'" The study itself is available for download (PDF); there's also a distillation here.
ARRRRR!
seriously who didn't know this was the case?
someone has to crack that DRM just for the sake of cracking it.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I never pirated any games until the day my storebought copy of Doom 3 flat out *refused* to work on my computer because the installer was convinced my setup meant I was going to make illegal copies of it. I got pissed off even more when movie DVDs started refusing to run in my laptop as well.
I hope the adjective "empirical" is not there to hide unscientific or statistically weak methods... She's a lawyer professor afterall... sort of a scientist who talks her results out!
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
Good to see someone has taken a scientific approach to this for once instead of hyperbole, exaggeration and assumption like we normally see (from both sides I might add).
Also, it's funny how DRM has become automatically negative. The reasons are obvious, but as I've said before many times, DRM can be a positive thing. I'll cite the much debated Steam argument again. Once I buy a game, DRM (positive DRM) allows me to redownload whenever I want, and to play it on any computer whenever and wherever I want. There are some advantages to DRM but of course they're over-shadowed by the many drawbacks and disadvantages from DRM's restrictive aspects.
And can we please not turn this into a "Steam sucks!" - "No YOU suck!" debate again? It was just an example.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
I just wonder how many people that 'matter' will pay any attention to a study like this. It seems like a little psuedo-psychology mixed in with a bias to me. Playing devil's advocate...
The RIAA better discredit Dr. Akester before this gets pickup by a major news source.
Actually I take that back. Everybody knows that there is now room for science and research when it comes to lobbying!
What was I thinking?
Well, at least some of them are starting to realize that no-one is going to buy anything that stops working if you ugrade (reinstall) your OS. Now all that's left is to make sure Cthulhu is well fed in the mean while.
Given the choise between Hitler and RIAA/MPAA I'd go for the first one - at least he knew when to shoot himself.
I stopped buying PC games about a year ago due to DRM technologies such as SecuROM and StarForce, because of the faults they can cause when burning CDs, which is an essential part of my job.
Last month I bought a new mid-spec laptop and went shopping for an "old" game that would run on it, and I settled on Civ4. After buying it, I discovered that it too uses SecuROM so I will not install it. Instead, I think it's morally (and legally?) acceptable to download a pirate copy without DRM.
A couple of weeks ago my girlfriend and I both bought The Sims 2. Neither copy worked! I've since discovered that the copy-protection on the DVD is known to cause installation errors, and one of the recommended workarounds is to install the disk imaging software Alcohol, and this indeed allowed us to install the game. Alcohol can of course be very useful for people who want to pirate games.
I feel like games publishers are pushing me towards pirating their products. I don't want DRM to harm my system, and if the only way I can play a purchased game is to pirate it then how long will it be before I skip the purchasing?
Here are the conclusions of the study:
1) Although DRM has not impacted on many acts permitted by law,
certain permitted acts are being adversely affected by the use of
DRM;
2) This is in spite of the existence of technological solutions
(enabling partitioning and authentication of users) to
accommodate those permitted acts (privileged exceptions);
3) Beneficiaries of privileged exceptions who have been prevented
from carrying out those permitted acts (because of the
employment of DRM) have not used the complaints mechanism
set out in UK law;
4) Article 6(4) of the Information Society Directive put an onus on
content owners to accommodate privileged exceptions
voluntarily. Voluntary measures have emerged in the publishing
field, but not all content owners are ready to act unless they are
told to do so by regulatory authorities.
My commentary:
1) As far as I can tell, DRM for the most part also hasn't had a noticeable impact on the uses not permitted by law. In other words: DRM only harms the customers, not the pirates.
2) As the record has shown in various court cases, the media companies are a bunch of assholes. Of course they're not going to care if little Ms. Teacher wants to (fairly!) use some copyrighted piece of work in hear lessons. They have "Power!! Unlimited POWAH!!!!"
3) What, there's a complaints mechanism? That would have been pretty good if people knew about it and used it.
4) Wait, what??? The DRM control freaks are supposed to voluntarily give up control? That sounds like a misunderstanding of human psychology. Also, quote The Matrix 2 (too bad they never made any sequels): "[Oracle] What do all men with power want? [Neo] ... [Oracle] More power".
We're accustomed on Slashdot to saying that the general public is not aware of the issues surrounding DRM and file sharing. However, this debate seems to suggest otherwise. I know the HYS debates are often full of ranting morons but it is still an audience of non-experts. Looking at the most recommended comments there seem to be quite a few people who know what's going on.
How did this get through the peer review process??! oh... It didn't
People prefer files that aren't troublesome to play and aren't tied to some publisher's good will, to files that are troublesome to play and tied to some publisher's good will. News at 11...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Not to be a troll here or anything, but where's the correlationisnotcausation tag? ;-)
My daughter wanted Ashley Tisdale's Headstrong on her iPod. (Please no comments - I'm ashamed enough as it is).
We can't get it from iTunes because we use Ubuntu.
We can't get the mp3 from Amazon.com because you have to be US resident.
We can't get it from Amazon.co.uk because you have to have a UK billing address.
We can't get it from Amazon.ie because that doesn't exist.
So I have a choice, buy the whole album on CD from Play.com or pirate it....
I'm getting a bit sick of this malarkey where I'm told what I can and can't buy with my money. Obviously, I accept the principle that Xyz has the rights to sell something in this market, but if Xyz won't sell it to me then I say screw Xyz.
So this news doesn't surprise me - the more you tighten your fingers yada yada yada...
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I'll cite the much debated Steam argument again. Once I buy a game, DRM (positive DRM) allows me to redownload whenever I want, and to play it on any computer whenever and wherever I want.
I'll see your Steam and raise you a GOG.com. No DRM at all, ever, and you can redownload your games whenever you want. Sure their catalog is still small and contains older games (although some are only 2-3 years old), but I'm hoping they'll go from strength to strength and I'm supporting them with my dollars
I'm still hoping to see LucasArts back catalog on there one day.
Macrovision made me buy a $20 box to defeat it when I bought a new DVD player in 1997 or so. My TV at the time was a TV/VCR combo, and the video inputs were subject to Macrovision "protection". I never recorded a DVD to video tape, never wanted to. I just wanted to watch movies on my new DVD player.
I was talking to the people from some software company about license issues and I said, "You know, I would feel much less like a criminal if I stole your software". The guy said, "Yeah, I know what you mean".
I have a high end car stereo that has the ability to record CDs and FM to a compact flash disk, I read the manual on the restrictions on how to do such a thing, and so I never even bought the media to test it out (yes this was a licensed Sony technology on an Eclipse stereo).
Its easy to say, "Screw DRM, I want my stuff free". But its also just as easy to say "Screw DRM, I want the stuff I pay for to actually work".
When put like that it is obvious to almost everyone, but how many people have bought huge amounts of songs from Apple and didn't realise they couldn't use them on other machines or devices because of the DRM? The majority of the population don't care because they don't get bitten, and when they do they just assume there's nothing they can do and go in to another cycle of getting bitten by DRM.
Since most people don't get bitten to a degree they notice (e.g. "I have to use my iPod? Oh well, I guess I like it anyway so that's okay" rather than "What? I bought music and I can't use it how I want to, like I'd be able to with a CD? That's just ridiculous!") and so the industry carries ever onwards, implementing mechanisms that won't affect the illegal copies but may affect some legitimate copies.
Do the pirates put that warning on there? No.
So the only ones seeing it are the ones who are paying.
And 10 seconds to the five year old who wants Spongebob Squarepants NOW!!!! IS a big deal.
But everyone honors the honor system. Well, at least honest people. But as long as you can catch and reprimand the few crooks out there, then you've got a pretty good system going.
Frankly, I don't know why watermarking isn't in higher use. It could even add an element of personalization ("This album / movie expressly prepared for John Q. Smith") and help communities self-police themselves so we're not wasting government money on DRM enforcement / investigation etc. If the studios find out who's redistributing their work, it's a simple matter to report and disable their account.
DRM only hurts ordinary users.
.
DRM stands for:
ordinary user: Digital Revolt Management
pirate: Doesn't Really Matter
.
Before long, for big media corporations, it will stand for:
Digital Regret Management
"DRM and its ilk does persuade citizens to infringe copyright "
Is this infringing on copyright? If what they want to do is covered by fair use, I don't see how it is. What is being done is violating DMCA by cracking DRM. They are separate issues, right?
Here's a report from the real world of DRM.
/. folks, I decided to release an eBook version without any security. It's a plain old unsecured PDF. I had to create an eBook because many people overseas wanted to buy the book but it's a pain to sell through Amazon.co.uk. Since I don't have to pay for printing or shipping costs, I priced the eBook at $10, which is $5 off of the retail price
As I have mentioned before, I have written and am selling a book for entrepreneurs, salespeople, project champions, and others called Elevator Pitch Essentials (http://www.elevatorpitchessentials.com). After much debate, and with the encouragement of multiple
Since I released the eBook, my hardcopy sales have continued to hold up. In fact, sales through Amazon.com have been doubling every month and I just got a volume order for 50 books. I have also sold 53 eBooks.
I think this has been a successful experiment in part because of the relatively low price. It seems that people think that's a reasonable amount to charge. From my own experience, I know that I have absolutely no problem paying $1 for a song.
P.S. Please don't crush my buzz by telling me it's all over the torrents (although that really may not matter).
What authors have put DRM on their music? I have only found record labels. You know, those guys that get all the money and do none of the work and threaten artists who even try to take the work directly to the masses.
So much of life was captured eloquently by Smythe's Andy Capp cartoons -- most of which are too impolitic to run in today's newspapers. (Smoking, drinking, thumping and getting thumped by your wife... oh my.)
In one of the classics, Andy sums up the entire public's reaction to DRM; After being berated by Flo for the transgression of having some unauthorized fun, he says to her: "Treat me like I'm a dog, and I'll treat you like I'm a dog." ...And proceeds to bite her waggling finger.
Ain't that the damn truth.
I think not...(*poof*)
i forget the guy's name, but he was a behavioral economist, and he was attempting to explain the recent economic meltdown in the terms of his profession, and why the whole notion of rational actors in a rational marketplace is a crock
one of his precepts was that all of these derivatives, while having an economic value, were not actually money itself, and so this abstraction allowed a layer of rationalization of immoral behavior by otherwise normal people
he crystallized this down to a simple experiment:
he put 6 cans of coke in a refrigerator in an office kitchen, unlabeled and unguarded. of course, the cans of coke slowly disappeared. then he put 6 dollar bills on a plate in a refrigerator in an office kitchen, unlabeled and unguarded. guess what? no one took the money
the whole point being: when value is made an abstraction, people can rationalize "theft" a lot easier than when the value of what you are taking is starkly presented. it explains a lot of the sticking points in the argument over "pirated" media
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Reading her bio is enlightening. Seems to me she is anti-DRM and anti-IP. So, an anti-DRM, anti-IP law professor does a study and concludes that DRM is bad. Big surprise.
By the way, "interviewing dozens of lecturers, end users, government officials, rightsholders, and DRM developers to find how DRM and anticircumvention laws affected actual use" is not necessarily empirical. I would bet that the methodology used was guaranteed to get the result she wanted.
If this had been a study by the .*AA, there would have been dozens of posts calling it bullshit, but because it goes with the beliefs of so many unethical slashdotters, it's ok. I am never surprised by the depths of slashdot hypocrisy.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
The pirates are not your customers (unless you go with DRM which makes your customers pirate).
with his most recent book, which was published as an unencumbered PDF. Sales of the PDF were very strong, and actually drove UP sales of the dead tree versions of all his books.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
You don't have to assume all PC games use DRM. ReclaimYourGame lists companies not using any form of securom etc. here is the link:
http://reclaimyourgame.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=14&Itemid=62
Disclaimer: I'm one of the companies on there.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
So, disempowerment encourages rebellion? Gee whiz, who'd a thunk it?
Great thing about capitalists, they can just ignore the lessons of history and the realities of the market, and use control and coercion to accomplish their aims. When will this world start to realize that the market is a power branch, and must be separated and regulated as such, and not allowed to corrupt government and culture with its survival-at-all-cost ambitions?
Cheap processed foods almost completely devoid of value, mind-poisoning media, pharmaceuticals to mediate the symptoms of our sickness and addiction, lies, damned lies... someone tell me the great benefits left to us at this time in history by these maggots?
-- thinkyhead software and media
Did the study even consider that more popular games might get pirated more, despite their DRM? And it just so happens that the more popular games usually have DRM while others are more likely to not.
You can't just look at the number of pirated copies and correlate with DRM. That is jumping to a conclusion. After all, did you see (insert shitty game with DRM) pirated more than (insert good game without DRM)? There are plenty of examples of the contrary. We don't usually see this, because the better games are more expensive to make and therefore have DRM protection. So in fact, it makes sense that games with DRM would get pirated more, but only in coincidence due to the games popularity.
I think a lot of people will buy something that is reasonably priced with or without DRM.
I think a lot of people will pirate or not buy something that is unreasonably priced.
The longer DRM exists, the lower that price gets however. Because once folks pirate something at $70 because of price + DRM, then they are more likely to pirate cheaper titles.
Some of my titles without DRM from the 1990's still work. I don't know if my titles with DRM work- I lost the original media or it broke. The non-DRM software I was able to back up in multiple places so I have not lost it. Of course Total Annihilation (which still rocks) was DRM'd but a crack came out years ago that allowed me to back it up.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Hypocrisy is stealing a hundred years worth of cultural content from every individual with a copyright extension, and then calling other people pirates because they take back a movie or an album.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Except that paying taxes, paying for goods, etc. are all required by law.
Circumventing right-restriction is authorized by the law in some cases (="Fair Use"). But regularly you can't do it.
Besides, DRM is useless and doesn't even fulfill the basic mission it was created for (stopping unauthorized duplication of content).
Case 1:
I'm about to go on vacation somewhere and I want to have a couple of movie on my portable driveless device (PDA, iPod, Netbook whatever), without needing to lug around a drive and a pile of discs. I need to shift formats (DVD/BD -> H264 or whatever the portable device takes) it's authorized by fair use in most juridiction. But I can't because DRM blocks it.
Case 2:
I'm a student making a presentation on a movie director. I want to copy a (reasonably) short segment of a movie to show as exemple to my audience. I can't, DRM blocks it.
Case 3:
I want to make a backup of a movie and keep the original in a safe place (that's actually a case I've been through : I have a mentally challenged brother who has a tendency to damage his favorite movies. It's important to him because otherwise he goes into an autistic crisis. Currently the originals are safely locked away, and copies loaded onto- and played from a server)
DRM blocks it (or would have if I haven't resorted to DeCSS).
Case 4 : ...and this list can go long...
I'm a Linux user (that my case also, actually). I want to play a movie I've legally bought on my custom-computer. DRM blocks it.
All are legitimate uses, which unlike the example of tax fraud or theft of goods should be protected by fair use by copyright laws in most jurisdictions. (Or sometimes are even normal uses like the "i just want to play it, but the system doesn't let me" cases. Fair use isn't required)
But aren't technically feasible because manufacturer of DRM solution only take into account the big 80% of their market : basic average user which buys a media to pop it into a certified player.
They just don't want to spend the additional resource to handle all the exotic corner cases in the remaining 20% even if those are exceptions covered by fair use.
-----
Meanwhile,
Counter-case :
I'm an EEEVVIIILL pirate (Yar!) and I want to get a movie for free, because I'm a free loader and don't want to pay for anything if I can get away with it.
I just go to whatever is the most popular torrent portal-du.jour and just click on a link.
That's it. Just. One. Click.
At no time did any form of DRM get in my way to stop me from doing this.
At no time would I be subjected to FBI warnings, advertising for up coming disc releases, etc...
In my series of example :
- DRM got in the way in lots of situation which are legal
- the sole time when a copyright-forbiden act took place, DRM didn't make any difference at all.
Copy protection worked in the previous decade because the only way to get an unauthorized copy was to copy the media yourself. If it's protected, only a couple of users where able to make copies and thus the propagation was limited.
Today, with the magic of the modern internet, all it takes is one single user to publish a torrent (and at the scale of internet among all milions of user, there's always at least one user having the necessary knowhow/equipement/social engineering skill/whatever to do it) and then suddenly the media becomes easily available to anyone connected to the intertubes, without any protection stopping it.
The Internet is good at making some content instantly available to the whole planet without restriction, and that's what make duplication-level protection obsolete.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
done by yours truly showed that the absense of DRM encourages infringement as well.
Sounds like a win-win situation, eh?
"DRM and its ilk does persuade citizens to infringe copyright" I haven't RTFA but I suspect this is correlation, not causation. The probability of property having DRM is correlated to its value, i.e. demand. Higher demand encourages crackers and the like to make the property available for pirating.
"If I can't remove the propaganda, I won't watch it at all, and I won't let my kid watch it."
You can remove the beginning commercials, but with product placement and other methods, you will still have propaganda. Splitting hairs, I know, either that or you really research your movies.
Needless to say, a NOP has found its way into the executable.
Did you scan/disassemble the EXE file and find ALL the routines in it that check for program modification and NOP those to? Then for REAL fun, the programmers could have used the ORIGINAL unmodified code portions (or a hash of it) for some sort of 'useful' purpose in the program. By patching out the DRM BS, you might have broken the program. The ultimate version of this is by placing absolutely critical bits of code/data in 'dongles' plugged into the computer. Very tough but not impossible to crack because fundamentally, DRM is pointless as the adversary/user has the three things he needs to use the content and get around the protection: data, key, decryption/deobsfucation algorithm.
If a large enough percentage of 'the masses' get smart enough, the big media companies will see DRM is pointless as it is routinely bypassed so they have to either adapt to a new business model they can profit from or go out of business.
Raise your hand if you didn't see that one coming...
Nobody? Well I'll be damned.
Since most people don't get bitten to a degree they notice (e.g. "I have to use my iPod? Oh well, I guess I like it anyway so that's okay" rather than "What? I bought music and I can't use it how I want to, like I'd be able to with a CD? That's just ridiculous!") and so the industry carries ever onwards, implementing mechanisms that won't affect the illegal copies but may affect some legitimate copies.
No, the industry is moving away from DRM. In fact, the major players (Amazon and Apple) don't use it anymore. So, you're completely wrong but you got modded up anyway. Way to go, moderators.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
If you've written a book, made a CD, produced a video, etc., that's downloadable & DRM-free, reply to this message with a description and the URL.
So, anytime someone creates anything, it immediately becomes "cultural content" and they automatically lose their rights? Or, is it that you believe that once something becomes "cultural content", whoever has the copyright immediately loses those rights?
Face it, you are just a greedy, selfish bastard who thinks anything he likes should be free for the taking and fuck the copyright holders because all they did was PAY for it.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Barrier to entry: Getting to the store with money.
People using the internet fall into 1 of 3 groups when faced with a 'paywall':
1) The people who CAN pay but DON'T just so they can keep their money in their pocket for later use out of greed or necessity. To a lesser extent, in this group are those who are TOO BUSY to stop what they are doing long enough to pay for the items they want.
2) The people who CAN'T pay but WANT to. They have just enough money for an internet connection or are borrowing the use of one, can't pay for anything and want the item anyway so they search for it online until they find it or give up and move on. The others in this group CAN pay but CAN'T due to the payment methods available to them for the items they want. Or they are simply blacklisted as a policy decision by the vendors of the items in question in resonse to fraud/theft commited against them.
3) The people who CAN and DO pay for the items they want, realize they are crippled with some form of DRM, and seek out and download a DRM-free version or 'patch' to use anyway as it is 'better' to them.
Excuses, excuses, excuses, eh?
The easiest way to make all these problems and wasted resources go all away is to:
1) Stop ALL use of DRM.
2) Make EVERYTHING online that is NOT a 3-dimensional object either free or easy-to-pay 'tipware' -- basically meaning PayPal or actual 'money in the mail'.
The only difference I see in 'poor starving artists' using the internet to make money and the successful ones with equal talent is the size of their advertising budget. It shouldn't be that way but sadly it is....
Apple and Amazon have dropped DRM on music because people use a variety of music players and they want more customers. Where is the drop in DRM on computer games? A couple of smaller players are trying it out because they know it's not worth the money and they realise that those pirating aren't really their customer base anyway, but the larger players like EA are still putting phone-home stuff in to games like Spore. Even Steam is basically just a huge "download-and-DRM" system and people seem to be assuming that'll last forever.
So I'm not completely wrong, hence the modding up ;)
Urm, early 90's didn't have a way to send copies to the masses?
It's the "en masse" part I'm arguing about.
No one here old enough to have used or at least heard about a BBS? (knocks 29 years or less out of the loop)
Yup, but back then not everyone had access to this.
You had to have an (expensive) modem, pay the expensive and sometimes even long distance phone bills, etc. We only had a couple of friends going on the BBS and everyone else passing copies around via sneaker net.
Today, absolutely everyone including your grandma is on the web. And the downloading is just a click away. No need to configure some XYZ-MODEM transfering scheme to better cope with the line noise on long distance calls. Just click.
Content has changed too. on BBS you could mostly find warez. Video and Audio ? Mostly un-heard of. Compression algorithms and computing power not available widely enough. It's basically Mpeg Layer III and MPEG-4 which both music and video to the masses.
The closest thing to transfering media over BBS I remember is MIDI tunes, ASCII art and ugly animated gif-quality-like porn animation made of 4 frames cycling.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
[quote]So, anytime someone creates anything, it immediately becomes "cultural content" and they automatically lose their rights?[/quote]
Yes. This is why we have copyright -- to [i]return[/i] some rights to the author.
Keeping in mind that copyright is temporary, DRM is intended to circumvent the public's right to the work after the authors rights have expired, effectively creating an unlimited copyright term.
Philosophically, DRM is a horrible horrible thing. The public has a responsibility to fight against it. After all, it's [i]their[/i] rights that are being violated.
Off topic, but still interesting: Excessively long copyright terms can also serve to take away the public's rights. As the Google Books case has shown us, authors and publishers don't necessarily have an interest in the preservation of works -- once a work ceases to be profitable, it can be allowed to disappear into time. They're under no obligation to keep the work available until the end of the copyright term. As rights typically come [i]with[/i] obligation, such a revision to copyright law should be considered. It would better serve the public interest.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Is that you, Captain Obvious? Thanks for posting to /. today!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
"Creating DRM that has any sort of security while still accommodating every legal use in every possible market is simply infeasible--though this does lead rightsholders to question the wisdom of DRM."
That needs to be reworded:
"Creating DRM that has any sort of security is simply infeasible - this must lead rightsholders to question the wisdom of DRM."
The problem is not a problem, it's a solution.
I agree with you about Steam and PC games, but your first post doesn't mention games at all.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
That is not what he said. Effectively, he said that "cultural content" give him the right to violate copyright. That is false. It is false even using the wording in your post.
The public also has a responsibility to respect copyright, which they do not do. That is why there is DRM. DRM exists soley because the public does not respect copyright.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Not quite, DRM exists because a portion of the public doesn't respect copyright. The majority does.
DRM violates the rights of the whole of the public. In raw numbers, DRM does the most harm.
Given how eager both consumers and producers are to violate each others rights, I'd say that the whole of copyright law needs to be evaluated and replaced with a more workable system.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Yeah, you can ask my old man. There was a local software rental shop in Flint, Michigan back in the 90s called "Player One" that used to rent PC and Amiga software. It was 1/4 the original price to rent the game or program for a week. Now, the Amiga was indeed a powerful machine ripe for gaming, but only a few developers (Psygnosis, Team 17, Electronic Arts, Gremlin, Bloodhouse) really understood how to deliver a quality game. A majority of the titles were watered down PC conversions that sucked big portions of ass. That didn't stop my dad. Even if the game was stupid he wanted to try and copy it. Even the games that sucked were usually copy protected in some way. He had several different disk cloning programs, including a hardware device designed to synchronize 2 disk drives. That usually worked, but still, coping a floppy disk was an adventure in trail and error that did give us a slight high when we were able to get a working copy. At the highlight of his piracy run he purchased a photocopy machine. Why? To copy the manuals of games that would ask: "What is the 8th word of the second paragraph on Page 27?" Yeah, he was that hooked. My hands still smell like hot toner.
"When you see a unixer brainwashed beyond saving, kick him out of the door." - Xah Lee
Fair was 27 years from first performance, publication or for unpublished works, the death of the author or inventor. Give us back Huck Finn and you can keep Slumdog Millionaire.
Or be unfair to the public and the public will respond in kind.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
the whole point of the experiment is the rationalization of immoral activity due to a layer of abstraction as to inherent value
your comment is nothing more than that very rationalization the behavioral economist is talking about. you articulated what anyone who took the coke, but not the dollars, was thinking at the time when they did what they did
so thank you for supporting the argument
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
that's him
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Who complains about DRM?
Presumably, those people who are affected by it.
So are pirates complaining about it?
The average pirate won't, because they're downloading something from which the DRM has already been removed.
This leaves non-standard pirates (stealing directly from a DVD, and not knowing how to download a dozen tools that will let them do so easily), legitimate users either being blocked from doing legitimate but questionable things and legitimate users who have been harmed by misfiring or broken DRM.
For the most part non-standard pirates won't be complaining much.
a. They're pretty small in number (most will d/l)
b. The tools to let them bypass the DRM and still rip directly from DVD are easy to come by
c. Why would they draw attention to themselves performing an illegal activity
This leaves us with two major sources, legit users possibly doing something questionable and legit users not doing anything questionable
Of the ones not doing anything questionable:
a. The DRM is not working as it should, it misfired and the user can't use the product they paid for
These users are owed a refund or patched working version
b. The DRM is not working as it should, it didn't so much misfire as crash or break the system (from poor design, one example being the apple cd drive bricking)
These users are owed a refund or patched working version of the product, PLUS compensation for the damage done to their system
The user did not buy the DRM, accepting a risk to their system, it was snuck into the deal, generally unannounced (or underannounced)
If you plant a booby trap, you take on responsibility for it, moral and legal
c. The DRM is actual malware, unquestionably, it seeks to do something broad like preventing ALL copying (including the user's own items, photos, their probably never going to take off garage band etc) perhaps it tries to only stop what it should but is a resource hog
The mere act of forcing this install is a malicious act of sabotage (their having a working, responsive PC isn't as important as our wishes...) and should be handled in court + compensation and replacement / refund per b.
Of the ones that are "questionable", legit users doing legit things blocked by DRM (fair use)
Research
Small quotation
Format shifting
Skipping commercials on disc (if I want them, I'll hit them WHEN I want them... on the menu that shows trailers of other movies, I actually do this a lot, but I want it at MY convenience) (The ONLY way in which this is questionable is having to break the DRM to do so, they got my $ when I paid for it, if they wanted more they should have raised the price. Also, I don't mind product placement in the material, but minutes of commercials? The same ones I saw while watching the last 3 volumes?)
Clearly the DMCA needs rewriting. The reason circumventing DRM is illegal is because supposedly you wouldn't do so unless you were looking to do wrong.
This is now demonstrably false, with all the legit uses above which are regularly blocked.
When you consider the massive hue and outcry over DRM, mostly from those who shouldn't care (and wouldn't if they weren't given a reason to) the case that circumvention demonstrates malicious intent is out the window.
Guilt should never be pre-supposed except in the most clear and obvious situations. It's questionable whether the evidence pointed to circumvention meaning that something wrong was happening before the DMCA, though the argument sounds good back when DRM was being sold as doing nothing but preventing thect.
Now that DRM is used for many purposes besides prevention of theft, purposes whose legality is questionable... DRM is no longer protection, it is coercion in all matters except for the actual prevention of copying. The burden of proof of whether a particular case of circumventions is right or wrong now rests with the pushers of DRM. There's one reason for t
Keeping in mind that copyright is temporary
Keep in mind that copyright is supposed to be temporary:
For over 200 years, the basic role of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has remained the same: to promote the progress of science and the useful arts by securing for limited times to inventors the exclusive right to their respective discoveries (Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution).
- USPTO
Note carefully that part about limited times, and the part about to promote the progress of science and the useful arts because by eliminating the former with ever extensible term length of copyright they've prevented the latter, which was its purpose. So it should be no surprise that people are ignoring the "exclusive rights" now that they serve to prevent "the progress of science and the useful arts", because the latter is what we must have and the former was just a tool, no longer effective, to achieve that necessary end.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Yes! I am also strongly against such form of DRM harming computer systems.
Bring back those red sheets with codewords and red plastic foil!
Ask them users a tricky question which can only be seen by layering both materials, while not affecting any modern computer system!
Although it's not patentable, examples can be found in any nineties game of Sierra, even in the form of hint books and more.
On a more serious note: DRM lacks serious user convenience.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
I think they all want a part of this too now you mentioned the RIAA...
DRM does not limit music only
DVD's, software, add-on and plugins, hardware, cars, GPS readers, pocket computers, entrance systems, remote controls and a lot of other proprietary systems utilize DRM, too often against the convenience of their users.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Perhaps not, but DRM is still a technology-wide problem and not just restricted to music.
Besides, if it wasn't for Apple and Amazon being big enough players to stand up to the big music companies then we'd almost certainly still have DRMed songs. There have been several comments from Sony execs recently that show they're not exactly the kinds of people to take the initiative and let people own stuff they bought by themselves. Also, there's still CSS on DVDs, even though it has been broken for ages, so most of the content industries aren't learning.
I routinely do it, as I refuse to keep CD/DVDs laying around to play a game, especially if I'm travelling and want to play a game on my notebook. Also some of the DRM mechanisms limit use of other applications and/or otherwise interfere with normal operation of my hw/sw, so they MUST be removed ASAP. Then there is the problem of the games playable under linux + wine, which in most cases is only possible(if they work at all) if the evil DRM is made to go buhbye, of course since I made the mistake of buying a new nb with an ATI dedicated GPU(4850), the ATI drivers do more damage than any DRM at this point, sadly. (Their windows drivers are kind of OK, but their linux/X11 drivers truly suck, but maybe the OSS drivers will save their bacon, otherwise I'd recommend staying far-far-far away from ATI products as they can't seem to understand the concept that while they may have some awesome GPUs they really-really-really need some halfway decent drivers to support that hw, along with dumping the BS of allowing their re-sellers to attempt locking consumers into "branded" genero-drivers which are update once a year or so. This can be worked around, but I doubt that the average consumer has the ability to do so, so I'm considering it yet another poor ATI/AMD decision.)
Anyways the upshot being at the end of the day, the "customers" of the "pirates" have fewer problems that the "customers"(read likely criminals) of the "legal" "pirates", so I send out a big thank you to crackers everywhere. (It's so funny, I have an original 3.5" disk version of King's Bounty which has a sticker prominently stating copy protection free... now, then, King's Bounty Legend... hmm...)
E-books: hmmm... I have several different devices(dedicated readers, PDAs, etc.) that I can and do use to read e-texts, so stripping the DRM is just a logical step, not to mention the fact that I'd really like to have access to these on future devices which may or may not require format changes which DRM effectively locks out unless removed, and that's even if those future devices still support that old DRM.
See how stupid your argument is?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
No, actually. I thought your last comment seemed hostile, but I didn't disagree with it. In fact, I don't see how anything you said contradicted what I had written.
Are you sure you're replying to my posts? Do you have me confused with one of the posters above?
Required reading for internet skeptics
...is that it is more than zero minutes.
You may enjoy or not mind that your time is wasted. Heck, please go watch that mandatory propoganda trailer "Copyright Violation = Larceny," which clocks in at 30 seconds. Even if you legally purchased your DVD, you still need to watch it.
Yeah, right.