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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!
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?
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.
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.
More like 5 minutes. You've obviously not had the misfortune of trying using a disney DVD when you miss the "fast menu" button window, before it goes into a ridiculous number of adverts that you cannot bypass.
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).
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.
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
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?
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....