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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/
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.
All of those things stop lasting because of your influence upon them or because of your actions. Things do have a limited lifespan, but not an artificial one. A DRM company going under isn't because of your influence - it's because of their action.
Imagine LG going out of business and taking all of our LCDs, TVs, cell phones, etc with them.
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
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.
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.
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?
'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/
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.
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