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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.
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...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.
Exactly, why should we do the "right" thing when we are just going to get screwed for it?
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
http://xkcd.com/488/
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.
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.
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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That's why I just buy sheet music. That way I don't have to be at the stereo to listen to music. What happens when electricity is not available?
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?"
With a bit of practice, you can hear the score in your head. It takes a lot of practice, as it's about as hard as improvising a piano reduction of an orchestral work on first read.
I used to take orchestral scores with me to read on the train and found it a pleasant way to pass the time.
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."
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.
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.
> PERFORM BRAILLE MUSIC
The grues are lulled to sleep by your masterful humming.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!"
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.
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
The difference between this and with Circuit City's Divx fiasco is physical media. Those people who were sucked in by CC's idiocy at least have the hardware that can be hacked or made to work in some way. If I can recall correctly, your player was able to play normal DVD as well as gold and platinum Divx discs.
With digital media and DRM you have to rely on finding a software solution. But there is no physical media.
Enjoy! -Excalibur
Or, you can get a gun.
What good's a gun going to do if he's not there when the thieves come?