DRM Content Drives Availability On P2P Networks

jgreco writes "The music industry once feared that going DRM-free would drive a massive explosion of copyright-infringing music availability on P2P networks. Now, a new study seems to suggest otherwise. The answer is obvious: if you can easily get inexpensive DRM-free content that works on your devices through legitimate channels, most people won't bother with the headache of P2P networks. It appears that users largely turn to P2P to acquire DRM-free versions of content that is distributed with DRM. The MPAA, of course, will not come away from this with the obvious conclusion."

Comments

and it's not just the music industry...

[DarkSabreLord]

How many more years of this before other industries like software (SecuROM anyone?) come away with the obvious conclusion as well? DRM doesn't do anything but restrict legitimate purchasers of the product, people who illegally obtain things don't have to deal with such inane restrictions

Re:and it's not just the music industry...

[LordAndrewSama]

Perhaps restricting the legitimate purchasers is the new reason for adding DRM. I'm sure game publishers like wiping out second hand sales, making people buy the same game twice for different computers, forced obsoletion, etc etc. They probably just use piracy as a cover, write off the 'losses' from piracy, then make money from well and truly shafting the purchasers.

Re:and it's not just the music industry...

[hairyfeet]

Yeah, it is sooo fun to pay $50+ for something that doesn't actually work (warning: language NSFW, but can you blame him?). And be sure to pay close attention to the shelves behind him. Notice what is on those shelves? See the thousands of dollars worth of games the guy has bought, only to have the vast majority not actually work?

I won't even buy at release anymore, because running a 64bit OS I have gotten that stupid "Insert disc in drive E:" bullshit (It IS in Drive E: you stupid &%^$^$&^$! And why did I buy big honking hard drives so your stupid company can make me change discs like a PlayStation anyway?) one time too many and now refuse to touch any game that I don't already have the cracks sitting on my hard drive ready to go. Is it any wonder why people pirate? Your DRM don't work morons!

And the worst part? The part that feels like a big kick in the nuts? It does NOTHING to stop piracy, it simply screws up your machine! Working PC repair I have thrown away more customers drives because the stupid DRM decided they must be a "filthy pirate" for daring to have a DVD burner (who doesn't nowadays? Hell even the shitty Dells come with DVD ROM/CDRWs now) or two drives and thrown one or more into PIO mode and burned them smooth up, meanwhile the pirates are laughing their asses off because unlike my retail discs which want me to keep switching discs and jumping through flaming hoops only not to work a good 60%+ of the time, their pirate versions actually work. No need for discs, or jumping through hoops, or DRM that can make your PC more unstable than Win98 with a bad VXD driver, nope, theirs just works. And they wonder why there are so many pirates? Try not kicking your customers in the balls, how about that?

Re:and it's not just the music industry...

[morcego]

DRM is just part of this race to P2P.
I always payed for my EBooks. They were cheap and easy. I get them in a few seconds, instead of having to wait days for delivery.
Ok, I live outside USA, so ordering paper books is always a exercise in patience.
Now, the last time I tried to buy an e-book, I've got a message I could not buy it because I was outside the USA. It was a restriction imposed by the publisher. Now:
1) I can't get those in my country
2) Even if I could, it would be a translated version (which sucks)

So my only option was to get a pirated version of the book. Took me 5 minutes, tops and, since I could not download that single ebook, I ended up downloading (and reading) other books by the same author.

I WANT to PAY for my content. But things get to a point where they simply won't take my money. And then they complain about piracy. It is just ridiculous. I contacted the bookstore and even the publisher to try and sort this out, but simply could not BUY the ebook.

Correlation != Causation...

[nweaver]

Basically, this is based on the correlation that "hey, most of the stuff through a trackerless BitTorrent setup is pirated movies/tv, porn, and software, almost no pirated music" and "you can get DRM-free music easily, but not movies/tv, porn, and software" as implying "its because of DRM that people pirate stuff".

Unfortunately, there are two problems here:

a) Music is not just DRM-free, its also SMALL. BitTorrent's strength is moving big files, while pirated songs are very small in comparison, you can just email em to your friends.

b) A lot of porn online is DRM free, so why so much porn in BitTorrent?

Correlation does not mean causation.

A note about the study

[Andorin]

Lest anyone think that TFA is saying that BitTorrent is used almost exclusively (to a degree of 99%) for copyright infringement, remember that this study focused on DHT-based, trackerless torrents. Legit torrents, like Jamendo and Linux distributions, usually use their own trackers. There's no reason for them to use DHT. So the study will naturally underrepresent legal BitTorrent content.

Also, the bit about DRM doesn't surprise me one bit. Nobody likes DRM except rights holders. It causes many more problems than it solves (which are very few already), not the least of which is perpetual content control even after the copyright expires. Far from banning circumvention of it, we need to heavily discourage (or outright ban) the use of DRM as we know it.

Re:Paying

[Angst Badger]

That, my friends, is tyranny.

And that, my friends, is hyperbole. This is tyranny. Choosing an iPod and iTunes over one of the many unencumbered music players on the market and then bitching about the well-known restrictions it imposes is just ordinary, garden-variety cluelessness.