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The Perils of DRM — When Content Providers Die
An anonymous reader writes "If you purchase music or movies online, what happens if the vendor goes out of business? Will you have trouble accessing your content? The question came up recently after HDGiants — provider of high-quality audio and video downloads — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. A consumer says his content became locked inside his PC. Walmart customers suffered a similar fate last year when the retailer shut down its DRM servers (a decision they reversed after many complaints). And if Vudu dies? Your content may be locked in a proprietary box forever. Time to start buying discs again?"
AFAIK no company that was not bankrupt got away with just cshutting down the servers. The options for viable companies seem to be
1. Refound all purchases (and have a net loss)
2. Remove the DRM (may be difficult/impossible, as content owners have to agree)
3. Keep the servers running (and have continuous cost for that)
It seems some companies have already realized that DRM is a losing game even for them, because of the additional cost and because it is a business they cannot simply back out of.
Now on a bankrupcy, it becomes interesting. In the EU, it may actually be legal to hack the DRM then. But basically I think your stuff is lost. If this happens a few times, customers will catch on. Many already have. In the end, DRM will die for good when this problem has become common knowledge.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I've lost my entire music collection due to theft twice, and my entire movie collection once. My current philosophy runs something along the lines of rip, compress (or not), put it on more than one HDD, take the originals, put them in a safe, put the safe in a bunker surrounded by monsters friendly only to you.
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If the DRM servers shut down, it would be legal to repair the DRM everywhere in the world, not just the EU. You paid for the stuff, so it is yours to do with as you please. That is what Sale of Goods means. Copyright Acts are on very shaky ground (100 year old law) compared to Sale of Goods (thousands of years old Common, English, Roman and Greek law).
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
its also about your motherboard going away.
think 'tivo'.
twice I've had a tivo die on me. and twice, you are not legally allowed to get your (possibly unseen, definitely paid for!) movies seen or copied over.
when my final tivo died, I gave some thought to fixing it and trying to hack the drives. I also thought about continuing my directv sub but thought about NOT wanting to repeat this all over again, so I cancelled my pay tv sub. I no longer have a sat tv feed (or cable) anymore.
DRM is bad and when it works, its somewhat acceptable; but when it stops working, you're screwed.
lesson learned. no more proprietary tivo boxes for me. not anymore.
no more pay tv? so be it. I can live without out!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I agree. As consumer protection, anyone selling DRM-encumbered content should have to put the means to crack that DRM into some kind of escrow which becomes publicly available on the event that they can no longer provide support for that DRM to their customers.
Anyone failing to abide by these terms should not be allowed to use the word "buy" in their storefront or marketing. If you don't get to keep it, you aren't "buying" it. It's false advertising.
I know someone here will take an even more hard-line attitude and say DRM itself should be illegal, which is fine. I'm not going to argue with you.
If you release your content in an encrypted/restricted format, you lose copyright protection. You're taking matters into your own hands. You're not benefiting society.
If you release your content in native format, you are afforded copyright protection. Your works will enter the public domain (some day), and you are benefiting society.
Sounds fair to me.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
The first thing - this is one of the reasons why DRM-protected media is doing bad in online sales.
People are aware of the limitations and problems.
And this is yet another reason why getting the media in formats that are secured for long-time use. Even DVD:s are better for the consumer since they don't depend on the availability of a server somewhere on the net, and can be used standalone. But the thing that really sucks with DVD:s are the copyright notice that you are forced to watch, which means that some people rips the DVD:s to get rid of that crap.
If the media industry had caught on the track earlier and offered music at a reasonable price without any crippling DRM they would have been better off in sales. There are people willing to pay for it, if they can get it. Going torrent works for some, but some of us wants a reliable and legal source for our media.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I always thought just saying "your business model sucks" was kind of a cop out. Look if their business model makes them enough money to stay afloat more power to them. If it doesn't and they die, that's just tough luck. You can't blame the business model on everything.
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'Back when Edison was offering music on wax cylinders you could buy, I avoided going with George Westinghouse scheme to stream music. I wanted to own it! but now I can't find a player for them.'
Should have gone with Victor Talking Machine media - you can still find drives for those. The EULA is a bit restrictive, though:
http://www.natch.net/stuff/78_license/
A lien is one legal answer that I can think of. The lien would need to attach at the time of the software purchase. It couldn't attach when the company goes insolvent, because those kinds of laws are invalidated by the Bankruptcy Code. It couldn't attach when the service shuts down, because the service would probably shut down while the provider was in bankruptcy and the automatic stay would keep the lien from attaching while the bankruptcy is going on. A lien is super good. It gives every creditor the best seat at the bankruptcy table.
The lien I'm thinking of would be a first priority lien in all the software and documentation used to administer the DRM system. Every customer would get the right to foreclose on this lien when the DRM unlock service is dropped by the provider.
This kind of thing would resonate with the legislature because it would REALLY resonate with the general public. This is a problem EVERYBODY can understand. Legislators have kids with IPODS too!
Another option would be a statutorily-mandated escrow system that puts the DRM in trust.
Presentation of these kinds of ideas would get the ball rolling. Maybe a better idea would be found, or a worse one. Anything is better than the current system.
This is a battle big media cannot fight, because they can't be seen to be claiming the right to fuck you out of your expensively-purchased media libraries so they can resell the same stuff to you later.
This is the kind of problem that gets fixed in a republic like ours. If you care, you should go for it.