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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?"
I never stopped! With a DVD I have "Digital Copy" on EVERY DVD without having to use the stupid number system and ask for permission, and it's legal. I don't have to rely on a content provider to stay in business, and I don't have some company somewhere with self interest telling me what devices I can and can't play back the content on. Well, I do, but I don't have to listen to them.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
...Yeah! Disks again, whatever...
...if what you "bought" was shallow crap that you will have lost interest in in six months, who cares if the DRM servers shut down after a year? And that describes 99% of the market.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
Maybe if the content providers would have used a sound business model that actually ATTRACTS customers instead of alienating them, they wouldn't have died in the first place?
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
http://xkcd.com/488/
I have some cd's that have been replaced several times, stolen, scratched,kids etc. At least with a cd you physically get something and you don't need to be online to listen to your tunes. What happens when internet is not available?
Its obvious that the only reason media companies fail is because of piracy. I pulled numbers out of thin air that show this
company would have made over $44billion a year if it wasnt for pirates. They should use more DRM, so much that every customer
needs a signed statement that promises no other person, animal, vegetable or mineral will see, hear, smell or even know the media
is playing. Activating the media should require a DNA sample.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
There should be some legislation that either forces companies to unlock your DRM'd content or give you back the money.
Walmart was not going out of business so both options were open to them. A company filing for Chapter 11 should just unlock content, that is swap the DRM'd files with unprotected ones. Labels/majors will probably say that unlocking content breaks the agreement in place with the distributor but the law should protect customers in the first place.
Never buy DRM'd content until some legislation like that is in effect: chances are that you survive most of the companies in this business and/or the DRM technologies they use.
As in "What You Shop Is What You Get".
Ezekiel 23:20
Not that I agree with this, but these companies that go under could argue that almost nothing you buy lasts forever, so your right to listen to (or watch) what you download should not last forever. If you buy tires, they wear out and you have to stop using them. Monitors eventually die, televisions eventually die, etc. So they could argue that you shouldn't expect your music or movies to be usable forever, either. Reminds me of the self-destructing DVDs they were going to market: You rent a movie, the disc itself becomes unreadable after a week or so of being opened, and you got to watch your movie but not keep it forever, yet you don't have to send it back.
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!
The analog hole will always be there for audio and video. Yes, it's a pain to buy a DRM'd song then hook up ye olde tape recorder to your speaker output before the vendor files for chapter 11, but it does work.
I'm more worried about games and other content that are different each time you use them.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The companies should be required (by law) to keep their servers running indefinitely.
That is after all the product they sell, if I buy a movie I expect it to play 20years later. Can't work the business model, don't do it.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Early phonographs and player pianos used non-electric power sources.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The question also came up when MSN Music stopped...
http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/23/microsoft-turns-the-drm-screw-on-msn-music-owners/
Would it be a DMCA violation to crack the DRM after the provider is unable to provide unlocking for legally purchased material? What if the company emerges from Chapter 11, or the IP is purchased by a third party? Could you then be sued/charged under the DMCA? What if you provide software/service (ala DeCSS?) to help other people unlock their stuff (assuming there is no official channel to do so)?
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
Well, those aren't exempt either if the industries get their way.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
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."
Every provider of digital content should be required to offer one of two options:
1. DRM-free content only - it is up to the consumer to keep backups of his contents or
2. a life-long guarantee for DRM-protected content. This has to be protected through third-party agreements in case the original provider goes out of business.
Yes, option 2 is costly but nobody has to use DRM in the first place.
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
Because that shallow crap is yours. It's the right that's at stake here, not the economical value or arts value.
Is it OK if I go through your home and throw away the things I think are crap?
One man's crap, another man's treasure. I don't know whether my daughter in the future would like to have a copy of Lipps Inc. "Funkytown" or Video Kids' "Woodpeckers from Space". But if she does, they're there. And playable -- not subject to whether a company has gone belly up or not.
This should get interesting when the bank auditors start to catch on to this. If judges force the continued operation of the servers in BK events to protect consumers maybe companies selling DRM'ed content will be unable to get loans!
This is the case today. Now there are a number of players whose interest it serves to keep things this way which is why it does not change but the lack of private loans available to federal contractors is a know issue. In a BK satisfaction of contracts with the federal government are senior to all debt contracts. That is to say the contract must be satisfied from the available funds if thats even possible before the most senior bond holder can get in line. Since federal contracts usually stipulate the money is returned plus penalties if the product or service is not delivered lenders usually have a problem with companies that work with the federal government.
Every wonder why government contractors are usually only big firms? This is a major reason, its only those firms that know they don't use and won't need private equity financing in the future. They either have cash operation or can raise the capital on the bond market. Hint for you bond investors, if you play in junk bonds companies that have federal contracts and are rated junk are probably junkier than ones that don't in terms of your odds of walking away with nothing at all.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
That's not the product they sell, if you'd ever bothered to read their Terms of Use.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
I don't recall Major League Baseball refunding accounts for their subscribers when MLB left their subscribers out in the cold. Maybe they restarted their on-demand recorded baseball viewing service with another DRM provider, but I'm referring to the people who did not continue doing business with MLB. Did they get a prorated refund for the service they were not able to use? I'm guessing that DRM-riddled services nowadays include language in the contract that says when the service dies the customer agrees to forfeit the remainder of their subscription fee, so it will be up to consumers to organize and make state/federal law that forces providers to give prorated refunds.
I saw this kind of thing coming when I thought about the implications of copy prevention ("copy protection" is pro-publisher propaganda) back in the 1980s, as I'm sure many posters here did. Without the freedoms of free software (one can only really implement digital restrictions management in user-subjugating/proprietary software) the implications of DRM are even more important (librarians take note!). Today I still think about the implications of DRM (1,2). As a result I only do business with media distributors that don't screw me or the people they work with (Magnatune, for example, has far better policies than any of the other more well-advertised media distributors). I mention this because /. posters all too often believe that one "votes" with their money and should spend accordingly. I don't agree that money should constitute votes, but I do think our spending reflects our values. Yet I don't see many posters on this discussion forum actually talking about spending their money wisely.
Digital Citizen
...something from my favourite book, "Harry Potter and the Dead Horse." But I can't it's DRMed.
Seriously, haven't we covered this topic to death? I think new methods of DRM are more news worthy than say an article highlighting the pitfalls of DRM.
My brother used to work for them!
He would always tell me how great they were, but he was just believing what the marketing team told him.
I always knew they wouldn't survive.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
gog.com is an example of how things should be done: you download the game installer and it's yours to keep. There's not DRM, no copy protection, you can have all the game installers on your hard drive or you can back them up on DVD, Blu-ray, another drive, a flash drive, whatever. if gog.com goes under, you can still install your games.
This is even better than having a (copy-protected) media, even if such copy-protection has been cracked. I always found it a hassle to even think about how to back up those CDs and DVDs. With gog.com, I have the installer files and can do with them whatever the hell I please.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.
Actually I keep players for most formats around, even including VCD and LaserDisk...
The big problem with DRM though is that if I have a LaserDisk and no player, I can jump on eBay, grab a used one, and it works.
If I have a modern gaming console that's no longer supported online, if it dies, I grab a new one, and I'll still never see my downloaded games again, just the initial release, unpatched versions of games on disc.
Today there is no incentive to get rid of DRM (if you listen to RIAA/MPAA).
If you go bankrupt there is no incentive to incur extra costs to disable the DRM on media that your former customers purchased.
And there is no legal ramification for not doing it either.
With time being infinite, the chance of a company going bankrupt is also infinite. Thus the chance of your DRM media paper-weight'ing over time is infinite.
Good luck.
Overall, it looks like some MPAA members are aware that there's a negative impact on sales from fear of losing access if the provider goes out of business. The RIAA, as usual, has no clue and blames it all on piracy. If the US economy totally tanked, with 78% unemployment and nine states declaring themselves People's Republics, and we faced 30,000% hyperinflation, the RIAA would declare all their projected lost sales were due to piracy. When the RIAA finds themselves in the dark, their first step is to insist all the Grues have peg-legs and parrots.
Who is John Cabal?
a) Buy it digitally again, but if you can, make sure it is a copy that is
clean in DRM terms.
b) Buy a hard copy. For anything I buy, this is always my approach. A
physical copy of something has a much higher chance of lasting years, or more
or less indefinitely if I keep it and am able to back it up. I don't do the
micropayment for digital downloads thing, and most likely never will. I'm not
paying tangible funds for something that could get lost in a power surge.
Hard copies are a little more durable, especially if, as I said, they're
backed up.
c) If you want to go the digital route, and a) isn't possible, pirate it.
Although I don't have huge moral problems with piracy, (as I generally feel
that, on balance, most content producers will generally at least break even on
any given pirated work, and usually make a large profit, even with piracy) my
general policy is that if I like something enough to really seek it out, I
will generally like it enough to buy a physical copy from Amazon and give the
artist something for their trouble. If it is an artist who I like a lot, and
who I'd conceivably buy from often, (such as Shpongle, if I had more money)
I'd possibly even write to the artist and ask them if they could make their
wares available from their own site, so that I could be sure that the lion's
share of my money was going directly to them, where I intend it to go.
In some cases (old/obscure stuff) piracy is going to be your only option, as
you may not be able to find the work via retail channels; however again, if
the work in question is something you really value, use piracy as a last
resort. If a creative person produces something which enriches your life,
then in my opinion they deserve to be paid for it.
I believe Valve said that they would link a chunk of code that would unlock all your Steam purchases if they ever went out of business.
There will always be a way for companies to get around statements like this that they have made: In bankruptcy, sell the "IP" to someone else.
And at any rate, is there really any evidence we should believe such statements?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
AFAIK no company that was not bankrupt got away with just cshutting down the servers.
Did Adobe Systems go bankrupt, then?
Adobe started its own ebook shop to promote PDF as a format for ebooks. I was one of those who got suckered in, and bought one PDF ebook from them. It could be read only with Adobe Reader on Windows and had to be incorporated into the "bookshelf". It turned out to be so riddled with restrictions (print at most 10 pages per 30 days, etc.) that I did not buy any others. Remote authorization from an Adobe server was needed to transfer the reading rights to another PC, or even to an updated version of the reader. About a year later, Adobe announced that it had achieved itrs promotional aims and was shutting down its ebook shop and authorization servers, and that all ebooks would be frozen.
They did provide a sort of solution for continued access: you had to make an archive of your Adobe Reader 5 software and bookshelf using a special tool. The process was destructive - it would delete the original files with the authorization codes while making the archive. This archive could then be restored onto another PC (destroying the archive). You were to be stuck with Adobe Reader 5 forever, with no hope of access if you changed to Mac or Linux.
My only option was to find and acquire a cracked version of the ebook I had bought, in order to read it once I left the Windows world completely.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Back when Edison was offering music on wax cyllinders 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.
But I learned my lesson. Now I buy the bands them selves, house them onsite, and have them play for me. But would you not know it? those ingrates have started dieing on me. Again I'm stuck with music containers I can play.
Damn you RIAA!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
We don't get to set the price? I'm pretty sure file sharing is doing just that. At some point the whining on both sides about the morality of this needs to end because frankly, file sharing is part of life now. It's not that people think the world revolves around them. They just care more about getting free stuff than your version of what's right.
This change is permanent, and isn't going to be changed by laws, DRM, shaming or any other tactic used by people who have a stake in the current model. We need to start thinking about how to produce and distribute content in this reality, not in the one we wish we were in.
Governments need to pass a law that states anyone selling DRM based media should have a plan in place so, if they go out of business, people who bought something from them won't lose their purchases.
The RIAA is not dumb. Its members are making a ton of money, despite pushing lousy products. They also know that if they can get people to accept lousy products, lock people in, and convince easily-bought elected officials that they need protection, then they will be able to make amounts of money in the future that would not be possible by simply competing on product quality.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
The whole DiVx disc thing made this an issue forever ago.
We still have not gotten past what we would do about DRM that 'turns off' when the company goes under.
What a responsible company should do is give out the software necessary to either negate that specific DRM or at least to facilitate the making of authentication methods to be used at home if it can't be negated as in discs like DiVx.
Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. George Patton
I used to believe so, but why then did extremely few people switch from DRMed iTunes to non-DRMed Amazon in the markets it were available (when Amazon had full catalogue DRM free, iTunes had most DRMed, and Amazon had great iPod/iTunes integration)? It apparently didn't matter enough to users to switch to a DRM-free service (which I thought they would).
Why is this effectively any different than the guy who can't watch his RCA Selectavision discs because no one manufactures the player anymore? Hello?! It's dead tech. You lose for making a bad bet. Buy a set of patch cables and port your crap over to your new system and suck up the generational loss like we ALL had to before the digital age. Or, buy new stuff from a more reliable vendor. Now, excuse me while I go listen to my 8-track!
Millions and millions of people think the music industry sells music at a reasonable price. Where do you think the music industry got all of its money?
Stupid kids spending their parents' money on Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus albums.
Team Content are well aware of the analog hole, and they sure would like to do something about it.
Not especially. The MPAA has recommended use of the analog hole as an argument against a DMCA exemption.
If the company evaporates without setting up a way for me to continue to use the things that I paid to use, then the directors of that company are guilty of theft, moreso than pirates, and should be prosecuted accordingly. OTOH, if they are able to set up a good transition, meh.
How long was Amazon DRM-free and iTunes not? iTunes Plus (DRM free) launched before Amazon, and before Amazon got popular they moved most of the music over to iTunes Plus.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
no more pay tv? so be it. I can live without out!
But how easily can you live without high-speed Internet access if the only provider of home high-speed Internet access ties its high-speed Internet access service to a pay TV service?
Speaking of RIAA, anyone know the links to some good CC websites? Always a good thing to post in a DRM discussion!
http://www.jamendo.com/
It really has lots of good stuff.
Alternatively you may find out that some well known bands make some of their songs available for free on their sites. For example Coldplay ( http://www.coldplay.com/ ) currently have an album available on their website. It usually requires your email and while I'm not sure it's CC (and I'm guessing it is not) it's gratis. Of course, it doesn't happen as often with games and movies.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
Now with CD and digital downloads each track will likely be sold only once to each consumer, and has no effective limited lifetime. But this is a recent effect. The idea of a DRM provider going out of business is really no different than a vinyl album wearing out. Music with DRM is effectively rented, or licensed, and I am sure most TOS read that way. In the case of music it is not any different from what has mostly been the case. Format shift from DRM to CD, with some generational loss, and move on. Kids have been doing this for ny lifetime, at least.
For movies, it is more tricky, but then movies have not had the freedom to format shift and control the content. VHS tape wore out quickly, and had copy protections very early on. DVD is a closed, annoying format, and was developed to maximize control of the rights holder even at the expense of the customer. This is where the battle might be fought. Certainly the situation with music not that different. What we might be able to fight is the real deterioration of rights we see in the movie content business. The fact that DRM can control on which monitors one can play a movie, or that movies can't be easily format shifted, is issue.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Just Say No, it's that easy.
We live in a society where the value of man has been reduced to the products he owns and consumes. This is a mantra which has been instilled since childhood and thus we have all been buying consumer products as an extension of our personality since we had money to burn. This is NOT an easy habit to break.
(Turbo Meme warning!)
In Soviet America:
Their business model makes them enough money to buy power, which they then use to try to stay afloat. If it doesn't and they die, they claw you with them on the way down, and that's *your* tough luck. You can blame everything on their business model.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Hi free slashdotter.
Too bad slashdot runs tracking by DoubleClick and if you happen to be on Windows, leaves LSO's. (Locally Stored Object cookies, which are not destroyed by "clear browser usage".)
Check out Ghostery and BetterPrivacy for firefox which make a great pair.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
That didn't stop the RIAA.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/05/riaa_sues_the_dead/
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The RIAA is not dumb. Its members are making a ton of money, despite pushing lousy products. They also know that if they can get people to accept lousy products, lock people in, and convince easily-bought elected officials that they need protection, then they will be able to make amounts of money in the future that would not be possible by simply competing on product quality.
So you're saying they are kind of like a drug cartel?
Ignore this signature. By order.
iTunes was there first. And it seems only a minority of users had problems with iTunes' DRM, so they had no reason to switch and re-purchase all their music.
Ignore this signature. By order.
No, they should be required, by law, to state prominently on the packaging, how long they plan to maintain the servers. And it should be considered a binding contract.
I don't care what the terms of the contract are, so long as they're openly stated. Everything has a value to me, including heavily drm'd music with no guarantee of longevity. It's just that something like that I would only be willing to pay very little for.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I've never actually bought any digital content. However I have received it for "free" on some DVD's. One is from about 5 years ago. Tried the content.
DRM servers are gone.
As for the anti-piracy crap on DVD's... What amazes me is even up here in Canada... WE GET THE FBI WARNING! (And Canada has it's own DVD's in most cases due to the bi-lingual crap, and they're publisher by other companies. Usually Alliance Atlantis. So many wonderful DVD covers ruined by having the title in both English and French on the front. Aesthetically horrible.)
Yes, we're receiving law enforcement warnings on our DVD's from a group who has NO jurisdiction up here whatsoever.
An RCMP one would be so much cooler. "But down that DVD burner, eh!"
Amazon launched fully DRM-free September 25th 2008. iTunes Plus was launched a few months before, but only for one label, everything else was DRMed. According to Apple they had complete iTunes Plus DRM-free catalogue by end of March 2009, but this intention wasn't announced before January 2009.
In Internet time, and if DRM was such an important factor, that is a lot of time to change which store you buy from.
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.
Flaimbait?
For suggesting that if you want to outlaw the ability of people to protect their copyright, you should also put teeth into the laws that protect their copyright?
It is amazing how hypocritical of you.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Yeah, some of my friends who were prolific mp3 downloaders during the Napster and Limewire heydays I have seen spent 100's to thousands of dollars on children's media.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
How long is the copyright term? Yeah, there's your problem - it's not always disagreeing with copyright in it's entirety, it's sometimes disagreeing with how it's been terribly mishandled.
I'm also assuming you mean criminalizing as in "treated like a murderer" for any copyright infringement at all - since it's already something you can be taken to court over with relative ease. I'll leave it up to you to see if you really believe "murder" = "copyright infringement", in terms of punishment.
Absolutely not. The solution for DRM is not other DRM. Content creators must wrap their heads around but two facts:
1. Customers pay
2. Pirates don't
When you make life difficult for your legitimate customers, they too will leave.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
To the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group,
re Digital Rights Management
Gentlepersons,
I am an author in a Commonwealth country, with recent experience in the trade-offs in copyright law and the relevance of digital rights management to publishing and can comment usefully on the subject.
I was the coauthor of a technical book, "Using Samba", published in the United States and Canada by O'Reilly and associates. Despite being made available electronically for no cost, the book was the outstanding seller in its class, and made me substantial royalties.
The History of "Using Samba"
This book was published without any form of explicit DRM, in a format suitable for printing from personal computers, with no limitations on distribution of personal printing, and with a license reserving only commercial printing rights to the publisher.
There was an implicit form of rights management, in that only commercial printers have equipment capable of printing and binding on sufficiently thin paper to make a manageable book: if printed on conventional photocopier paper, the book is over three inches thick. Printing small sections for reference on photocopier paper is perfectly practical, but large-scale printing is not.
This effectively reinforced the reservations in the license: printing for profit is both illegal and impractical, but personal printing, excerpting and copying is unrestricted.
The net result is that the book was widely used as a reference, and the on-line readers bought the physical book for its more convenient form in great numbers. O'Reilly has since published a non-trivial number of other books in this manner.
This experience allows me to speak to the questions the inquiry is interested in:
1. Whether DRM distorts traditional trade-offs in copyright law
An explicit DRM scheme affecting the electronic copies of the book would have negative value. It would in fact restrict the easy distribution of the book, making it less popular and discouraging persons from depending on it. This would lead directly to lessened sales of the printed book, and a reduction in my and my publisher's income.
Copying of the electronic form is encouraged by myself and the publisher, and the printing, use and wide distribution of extracts is desirable, as it causes sales of the entire work.
The author's rights management of ordinary commercial copyright law protects my publisher and I in countries which honor copyright. In those where copyright does not exist or is ignored, the cost of publication and shipping are such as to mitigate any counterfeiting printing attempts: the counterfeiters cannot profit by shipping them outside of the country, and so are limited in the damage they can do.
2. Whether new types of content sharing license (such as Creative Commons or Copyleft) need legislation changes to be effective
Using Samba was successfully published under a free content license, under the copyright regimes of the United States and Canada, without any required or desired change in that law. I do not see a need for changes.
3. How copyright deposit libraries should deal with DRM issues
Copyright and other deposit libraries, such as the National Libraries of the U.K., Canada and the United States should seek and retain unrestricted copies, offering suitable statutory protection to the authors or publishers.
4. How consumers should be protected when DRM systems are discontinued
Upon the expiry of the copyright, the deposit libraries should make the originals available for a nominal fee.
Upon the failure or discontinuance of a DRM scheme, the publishers should retain the option of republishing under a different scheme under ordinary copyright law. On cessation of publication, the co
davecb@spamcop.net
Millions and millions is pretty poor in a potential market of Billions and billions...
Sam "to lazy to register" Look
This archive could then be restored onto another PC (destroying the archive)
Was there anything to stop you simply copying the archive before restoring it?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Just boycott the shit. Problem solved. Serious, just don't buy it. I don't. Organize a boycott. Someone with popularity and charisma start a campaign. Start educating the ignorant masses that they are being raped, and that the rape will never end.
Those of you who see what is going on - what are you doing about it? Do you buy STEAM, iTunes, and all the rest of the DRM's crapola out there? If so, YOU ARE the problem. Do you email, write, or phone the companies responsible to bitch and bellyache every time something doesn't work the way you want it to? If not, YOU ARE the problem.
It certainly isn't fair that some of you give your money to the rapists, then come to forums like this to whine about how unfair it is. Don't unload on slashdot, or the myriad of other forums where people vent. Call the bastards who sold you garbage, and bitch. And, stop giving them your money. Why on earth do you give a man money, so that he can sit beside the pool at his mansion with his buddies, dreaming up new ways to rip you off, while the maid fetches another round of drinks?
Boycott all of them. MPAA, RIAA, all of them. Don't buy ANYTHING that has DRM.
Write your congressman, write your senator, write the White House. I have fired off no less than three emails to Obama regarding "digital rights" since he was elected. If 200 million more Americans were to do the same, we would get his attention. Hell, if only 10 million Americans flooded his mail box with concerns over DRM and other infringements on our rights, he would have to take notice.
Start talking and acting to break the monopolies that RIAA and freinds have. Stop bitching. Stop sending them your money.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Until the CD, music pretty much did have a limited lifetime. All other mediums wore out
Music was easilly copyable from the introduction of casettes so if you kept the originals for occasional use and the copies for playing all the time the lifetime was extremely long.
VHS tape wore out quickly
Really? I can't say I can recall ever wearing out a prerecorded vhs tape (blank tapes used for timeshifting is another matter), . Unless you are wating the same thing daily for months on end I don't see this as a practical issue.
What PC based digital copying did do however was threefold
1: it allowed home-recorded copies to be the same quality and nearly as durable (unlike cassettes which were vulnerable to wearing out and snapping) as the originals
2: it removed generation loss, suddenly if one person in a community had a copy everyone in that community could have a copy of the same quality.
3: make copying much faster, CD to tape copying basically had to be done in realtime, tape to tape could be done at about twice realtime. CD to CD with a PC could be done at many times realtime.
4: it opened the door for filesharing networks
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Do you still have a VCR that works?
Two (VHS+SVHS). I use them to record stuff from TV and cut out the commercials. Looking for a third (better) one.
What about a floppy drive?
I have an LS120 drive (which reads floppies), an USB floppy drive that I use with my laptop and some regular ones.
Laserdisk?
Pioneer CLD-2850. It may not be the best, but was the only one I could afford. It plays CDs too.
5.25"?
One 360KB drive and two 1.2MB ones. All work. The 1.2MB ones are currently in PCs that are in use.
8.5"?
Oops... Don't have any disks too, but would like to get a drive and some disks some time in the future.
10MB HDD?
I have a 20MB HDD, but it does not work (somebody stole a chip before I got the drive). I have a working 100MB 3.5" drive and a 1.2GB 5.25" FH drive. Would like to get a working Microscience HH-725 drive to borrow the chip from it and see what data is hidden in my broken drive.
Also formats you probably forgot to mention:
MO (3.5" up to 1.3GB, bought recently because the disks last very long), R2R analog tape recorder, cassette deck, record player (for 33.3 and 45RPM records), radiogramophone made in 1964 (plays all records, but I use it only for 78RPM ones, also to listen to radio).
Also, a cassette, recorded 15 years ago still plays fine, but a CDR recorder 10 years ago does not.
DRM is a fundamentally flawed idea
Yes it is, especially for audio. Even if I cannot break the DRM scheme any other way, there still is that tape recorder...
The RIAA, as usual, has no clue and blames it all on piracy.
Funny thing is, I don't know who they think cares. Those lovely ads equating car theft to movie piracy... did that convince anyone?
It would be one thing if they were going to lawmakers with this, but they seem to think that a public awareness campaign is the way to go.
The people who are convinced by that aren't pirating stuff. The people who are pirating have numerous ways of justifying it, some legitimate some questionable.
Seriously, why are they wasting this much effort? Morale boosting around mafiaa headquarters?
Stupid kids spending their parents' money on Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus albums.
I spend my OWN money on those catchy songs, you insensitive clod!
I think DRM providers have to give a possibility to save DRM licences on some personal and secure carriers - for example, behaves like banks - most of us have debit cards - its unique and personal and checked in terminals what DRM providers have to do it just supply a registered user with SmartCard (that stores your DRM licences) and appropriate USB reader http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_card
I don't expect Apple to disappear, but I still think of Requiem as essential - even though iTMS's music isn't wrapped in Fairplay DRM anymore. Their movies are still restricted, unfortunately. Up until recently I'd avoided purchasing movies through iTunes because of this; but recently I've experimented with a couple purchases that I immediately ran through Requiem (to free them up) and then transferred to my movie server (so I can watch them on our HDTV rather than on a computer screen). As long as everything gets backed up - and Time Machine makes that brain-dead simple - so far I've been happy with this approach. The quality is certainly good enough for my tastes, anyway.
I'd prefer to not have to order physical media at all anymore, and you'd think the media companies would actually prefer to get away from it too - but so far, with the exception of the music companies (finally), they still don't seem to "get it". Hopefully Apple or someone else will be able to help them realize DRM is, in the long run, actually not in their best interests - but that will require they get their prehistoric business models updated into something more suited towards the current millenium.
#DeleteChrome
What if companies say you won't be refunded and can't have the items back/unlocked if companies shutdown?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
ANY transport or format of music or data is similar to DRM. People who have CDs have to have a CD player to play them, which might seem trivial now, but it may be an issue in 10 years time. I'm sure that the HD-DVD owners are unhappy! Whatever format you obtain your material in, there is always the risk that it may not be playable in the future. I have a couple of hundred DVDs at the moment, it occurred to me that with shifting consumer interest that it may not be aging of the discs that kills them, it may be that I no longer have a machine to play them on.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Walmart may have "caved-in" to consumer pressure before, but ever since those announcements last year, I have been unable to authorize a second computer to play their DRM files and have also been unable to restore license backups made (and being restored to) WMP10.
I want to reformat, reconfigure and retask the computer the Walmart files are authorized on (moving the files to a newer XP system, also with WMP10, during that process) but have been unable to get the DRMed files to work on a different PC (which IS allowed by the licenses).
The DRM has also prevented me from swapping motherboards in that computer as well. Also tried to 'downgrade' it (some of the hardware), as it has more power and memory than it needs, but the DRM files refuse to play on a different motherboard/CPU combo (storage and addon cards remained). Because of the above, they won't reauthorize either. Windows works on either (no driver installs or reinstalls needed), and didn't even require a reactivation on the board swap (similar enough, I guess).
Walmart's customer service is of no help at all, only thing they ever say back is something along the lines of 'we don't support the DRM files any more'.
And no, I do not want to have to burn-and-rerip, the Windows Media files are bad enough already.
Millions and millions of people think the music industry sells music at a reasonable price. Where do you think the music industry got all of its money?
If you don't think the price is reasonable, then don't buy it and wait till it plays on the radio or something. The world doesn't revolve around you. You don't get to set the price at which other people sell their stuff.
Millions of flies can't be wrong, eh? They got all their money through monopolistic practices, screwing the artists, price fixing, selling music on crap media, and selling the same thing over and over again. For what it's worth, I agree with not purchasing crap. I saw someone on this discussion call a 320 kbps mp3 'high quality'. MP3 is so lossy, if they ever get a true music expert on the stand, all MP3's and other lossy compression should be considered a relatively 'low quality reproduction', and thus covered by fair usage under precedent from the betamax case. I wouldn't pay more than a few cents apiece for a song compressed using lossy compression, and I refuse to purchase media with ANY kind of active DRM after purchasing some PC games online and going through nightmarish hoops to install my own game on my own computer. I encourage everyone I know to adopt similar standards. Luckily, there have been viable alternatives, but at some point those alternatives will not exist, which will take our choice away. I don't think there is ANYONE who wants to see their favorite artists deprived of payment for their performances. Unfortunately, because of corporate monopolies and collusion, with the exception of a few attempts such as Eddie Vedder's attempt to compete with ticketmaster or the Eagles releasing their own album (unfortunately through exclusivity agreement with Walmart), 90% of the money generated by the artists goes to paper and pencil pushers and their colluding companies. The robber barons are back in full force, they're just hiding behind the veneer of corporations. Finally, I personally refuse to purchase any online music that is not lossless (see FLAC), DRM free, and accompanied by a license enabling me to download any song I purchased from the copyright holder in the case of catastrophic data failure as long as I live. I assert my right to fair usage of the CD's that I do purchase, including the right to back up media using lossless or no compression, and to even give my immediate friends and family low quality copies. I encourage others to do the same.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
This goes beyond DRM media offerings. This covers any cloud provided service.
An example is a client where a "knowledgeable" family member keeps pushing on-line backup as the ultimate solution, even claiming that other backups are no longer needed. Not that I would disagree with an automatic off-site backup, but you must allow for the company to go belly up.
In my research for them, I found that DataDepositBox.com is popular. However, from my communications with the company, it is clear that their admins are capable of changing your password and getting access to your key. I am not saying they are not a reputable service, nor that their staff are morally challenged. I am just stating the fact is that the company has the ability to access your data and they even claim they will provide your data to any government agency that properly requests it. Also, you will never have access to your encryption key, other than through them.
According to their terms of service, they only need to post information on their website prior to any discontinuation of service.
The key take away is that you must encrypt your data before you send it and there is always a chance they will not be there to provide your key to you when you may need them most. I am trying to explain this to my client, but they just bobble head what their family member told them. They seem to wish to ignore my recommendation of using an off-site backup along with a on-site tape or disk backup. The cloud is cool and slick, but you have to understand the limitations.,
The DRM issue is far worst for, from the outset, you are forced into a data lost potential you can never extricate yourself from. With all other cloud services, you have control of the data at some point. If, you lose anything, it is your fault. DRM just screws you over and you just await the ticking bomb to go off.
Bullshit. DRM is fascist, if anything, as it relies on governmental support of corporate monopolies to make it even a little bit effective. It's not capitalist (or socialist or communist) because it's not an economic construct - it's purely political.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
They're only "Designed by Apple in California". Most of the production is in large overseas factories.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
You forgot to read the second half "...without any crippling DRM" which is where they REALLY fails.
Reasonable price may exist online, but then you have to suffer DRM and unusable formats.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Really, #4 was the world-changer. Although you'd still hear some whining (after all, these are the people that whine about used record stores), I doubt you would have near the level of controversy if the technology had stopped at the CD burner. Although you do have the digital-quality aspect, the the level of personal music sharing would still be just that-- personal sharing. With the P2P apps and cheap bandwidth, though, music piracy became just as... even more... accessible than legitimate purchase.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Almost like Microsoft, then?
Hey, drug cartels push some pretty damn good products, thankyou!
Ahem, I mean... Honestly, I don't think the 'perils of DRM' are going to be much of a problem. If the content provider is alive, then you can just re-download or re-authenticate the media. If the content provider dies, then there's no-one with any interest in enforcing the copyright on the works, and you can just download a cracked / un-DRM'd copy without fear of persecution.
Of course, this assumes that all DRM is inherently crackable. That's because it is.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Those lovely ads equating car theft to movie piracy... did that convince anyone?
Nope. When will I be able to download my copy of a Porsche GT2?
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Well legally speaking, when a company that supplies DRMed content goes out of business then it's customers should be able to gain relief and pursue the administrators for resolution, obviously the customers should be considered creditors as the value of the games investments are held by the bankrupted company.
So the bankruptcy administrators should either pay for relocation of the DRM servers or, the shifting of the licences to a different provider or a patch to remove the now DMCA infringing DRM protection as a failure to provide access to the DRM servers actually does break the copyright protection method under law.
Obviously various governments and consumer protection agencies have failed to catch up to the digital age and are as yet not protecting the consumer as they should.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Make the directors of the failing content company responsible in criminal law for your loss of use due to DRM. We could even think up a technical decription of the crime. Something like THEFT. Unlike copytright violation, they DO deprive you of the use of the content.
Appealing, but more complex and harder to make work: stick every part of the distribution chain for the loss. Hard to attribute in case of a failure, but it might get Walmart thinking about even stocking anything with DRM.
And, while we are dreaming, repeal DMCA, too.
Clearly, they failed to read MY terms of sale written on the back of the check.
More to the point, have they actually realised that far from educating the public (downloading in not stealing - it is copyright infringement), they are actually involved in stealing to do it? The ad is unskippable which means that 30seconds of the DVD HAS to be played. I have a 8 disk set of a TV series which has 23 episodes. Watching one episode at a time, 23x30 = 690 seconds, or 11 1/2 minutes have been spent playing the DVD which do not relate to copyright notice, nor the programme itself. I watched them when I first brought them, and since getting married have been re-watching them with my new wife. In total 23 minutes of the ad will have been aired.
So how have they stolen?
1 - they haven't paid me to air the ad in my house (I think £10 is reasonable (actually I'd prefer £100+) per showing seeing as a 30 second slot on ITV probably costs £1000s...that's at least £460 they've stolen from me) - they could argue that they didn't agree to pay before the ad was shown and so do not owe me - fair enough, but
2 - to play the ad my DVD player has used electricity. It may be minimal just for my DVD player, but it is still electricity I have had to pay for and which cannot be got back - I no longer have it, the generating station no longer has it: it has been STOLEN.
3 - I also have a sound system and TV in use to watch DVDs which are also going to be using electricity during the unskippable ad - are they going to insist that I have them turned off during the 30 second ad so that they don't use any electricity? But that totally defeats the purpose of the unskippable ad as it is intended to be watched. Thus it is fair to say that the electricity that at least the TV uses is also being STOLEN.
But I'm not the only person who is likely to have bought this set of DVDs, and the unskippable ad also appears on other DVDs I have, so it is also fair to say that although they may steal a minimal amount of electricity from me, they will also be stealing electricity from others. It will soon add up to quite a bit of electricity they have STOLEN with their unskippable ad.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet;
A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell
Is there any reason I should believe your statement? An element of trust is involved with any statement.
With Valve however it doesn't matter, if Valve doesn't cough up the code someone else will. I choose to trust Valve's statement but I have a second option just in case.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
Really? Really?
If you're really that upset about a 10 second unskippable screen informing you of your rights as a consumer, I can think of plenty of less time consuming ways to get around it other than ripping the DVDs. Throwing popcorn in the microwave, talking with my girlfriend, yawning, staring at the ceiling, petting my cat... all things that take less time and effort than ripping a DVD to my computer, removing the copyright notice, and re-burning it. Oh, and the nice thing is, that these have the exact same effect - I don't have to watch the copyright notice.
So the bankruptcy administrators should either pay for relocation of the DRM servers or, the shifting of the licences to a different provider or a patch to remove the now DMCA infringing DRM protection as a failure to provide access to the DRM servers actually does break the copyright protection method under law.
I was just thinking.....if this is true (I'm not in the US and I don't know about DMCA) then all the companies are thinking one of the following things:
1. "We are invincible and always prevail"
2. "Our products are so bad, they don't deserve to remain after us".
In the case of 1, they should look in other domains for their beliefs. In case of 2....no more comments.
Oh, and this applies to games, music and movies.