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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."
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
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.
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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.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
I do not necessarily mind paying for music. I do mind being told what type of device I can play my music on. That, my friends, is tyranny. This leads me to another gripe: The iPod and its ilk. We bought the device, therefore we own it and should have the right to modify it to work the way we want it. This is very much like purchasing a car, truck, or motocycle and customizing it. We purchase the vehicle so we own it and can modify it (legally) to ways we see fit. In this day and age, it looks like we purchase the license or right to use something which stifles innovation and puts us even further technologically behind other countries.
so it's clear - unequivocably clear - that all music that people want ends up on P2P networks, for anyone to get hold of. thus it is up to the music providers to realise this, take realistic stock, take advantage of the opportunity, and make some money by providing people what they want!
it is only by NOT selling people what they want (DRM-free music) that they are hurting their profits!
so this is something that the BBC Trust could learn from, and also the HD video data providers. it's quite simple: there's not really that much difference between music and video. programmes _will_ end up on P2P networks, period. thus there is absolutely no point in driving up the cost of set top boxes by adding in DRM that's going to be bypassed, regardless.
Since I discovered that I can "sample" most games and movies on 'torrent, I've downloaded quite a few of them. However, relatively recently I learned about gog.com, and over the 1.5 years since I signed up, I bought 3 of the games (all DRM-free) available there. This is surprising even to me, as games and movies are a luxury for me, at the moment (wife doesn't have a job, so I'm a sugar daddy, even though I'm just a grad student/researcher). Yet gog.com makes it all really convenient: easy to purchase and download, great titles at very affordable prices, already packaged to run on Windows 2000/XP, and I will always have those titles in my online collection, so I can download them on any computer I like. All in all, I think companies that follow their example can make a decent buck.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
DRM does not work on some operating systems such as the one I (ab)use. It is so very strange that those who can not use legally purchased DRM content, and in most cases can't even do the legal purchase, look elsewhere.. isn't it?
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
I pay for music - because typically I look for specific artists or songs. It's easier for me to find it on Amazon rather than wade through piles of junk.
I would also like for the music industry to clean up its licensing. Let me buy music that I can play anywhere, in public, to any group of people smaller than, say, 100.
No strings, no fear, no stupid RIAA tricks. Come on RIAA, make it easy for us to be legal. You make it as hard as possible, with impossible convoluted licensing (you need a separate license for public performance and for copying a CD) so that it's nearly impossible to remain within the licensing restrictions and play the music I like.
Heck, I could make a strong argument that the music industry licensing is so convoluted that it is impossible to play music and be legal.
So clean up your act.
I don't think rights holders implement DRM to curb piracy (which it doesn't). I think rights holders implement DRM to make customers pay for the same media multiple times, and/or to tie them to specific devices, software or services. Why else would they be pushing it despite the fact that all DRM is cracked sooner or later? "Piracy" is just a convenient excuse.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
So I went out and bought the ultra Blu-Ray edition of the newest Star Trek movie. On the cover it was advertised that it contained a digital copy for me to use. Cool, I thought that I would just put the digital copy on my media server that streams to the various viewing centers of the house.
.mkv file of the movie. Plays perfectly on everything I want it to.
No dice.
The digital copy is DRM'ed up the wazoo, (and the quality is severely lacking) and will only allow itself to be played from certain devices and no streaming allowed. You must also register with the home servers before you're allowed to take the copy of the file off of the disc and it is limited to being on that one hard drive. You cannot reinstall it if you lose your data somehow.
So what did I do? I "acquired" a Blu-Ray rip
Eat me, movie industry. Offer me something that fits my needs, not yours.
Anonymous Coward: "This is slashdot. Accuracy is second class citizen here, unlike King Bias."
Agreed. It basically comes down to these choices:
I know you're joking (yeah, ok, most BT traffic probably is "piracy"), but my only recent use of the protocol was to download Knoppix; it seems they can't afford all the bandwidth to serve ISOs directly (unless you pay a small fee), so they've turned to Bittorrent... Precisely its intended use!
The reason why this works is rather simple: It's not a competition between something that costs and something that is free. That is only on the surface. I'll give my own rational: I hear a track I like on the (satellite) radio. Now, I can either spend the next 10 to 15 minutes wading through broken links, abandoned torrents, and spam sites to end up with something that has a high likelihood of not even being the remix or the quality I wanted. I could also run the off chance someone I know already has it and mentions it at some point, then spend a similar amount of time trying to exchange the media. Or, I can go to a central website, spend 5 minutes listening to previews and spend a buck for the track using a low hassle micro-payment system.
As the saying goes, time is money. If your customers have the disposable income that accumulates at a rate higher than the rate of benefit, they will often choose to spend that income rather than work for a benefit at a lower rate of return. And, then they have the luxury of spending their time on something more beneficial.
Someone mentioned porn? Pay for porn does not work because: ...which brings me to the public humiliation that is involved in acknowledging one's own sexuality, for IRL or online purchases.
- It is typically a significant monetary cost, two to three orders of magnitude. It goes from being petty cash to being a discretionary budget item.
- In the digital form, requires a month to month commitment. Human sexual desire typically involves a lot of spontaneity. You don't marry porn.
- Shyster websites will often not have the level of content implied and will keep charging customers long after they have terminated your subscription.
- The catalog is limited from site to site, and people are typically not going to pay the full fee just to see one spread.
- The record of your purchase is basically public (corporate) information that anyone can purchase.
-
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
I do not necessarily mind paying for music. I do mind being told what type of device I can play my music on. That, my friends, is tyranny. This leads me to another gripe: The iPod and its ilk. We bought the device, therefore we own it and should have the right to modify it to work the way we want it. This is very much like purchasing a car, truck, or motocycle and customizing it. We purchase the vehicle so we own it and can modify it (legally) to ways we see fit. In this day and age, it looks like we purchase the license or right to use something which stifles innovation and puts us even further technologically behind other countries.
Ok, so write your own firmware on the device and do what you want.. No one is stopping you.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Obviously RIAA and MPAA will commission a study of their own that will find that the reason people pirate is that they are evil and want to steal the property of their poor, starving artists. But of course the bias of the study is in favor of the rights holders because they foot the bill for the study.
OTOH, this study suggests that people just want to own what they purchase and use whatever means available to make the ownership permanent. But of course the bias of the study is
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
I understand what the article is implying. I used to pirate music, but then Amazon came along with decent quality MP3s that I can purchase at a reasonable price through an easy interface, and which play on anything. If I want something that can't be found on Amazon I still go P2P for it, but this activity is lessening as my library becomes more complete and Amazon keeps adding content. I used to pirate movies but then the Roku player came out and I was able to tie our Netflix account right into it. Now I get decent quality movies and episodes on demand, for no more ongoing cost than I was already paying for the Netflix account and an Internet connection. In other words, when things work to my benefit I spend money. When they work towards an evil empire's benefit I do everything I can to rip it off. So if you want me to spend money you've got to let go.
I like content
I used to buy content
But then you asked for money for every blank
So fuck you
I would like to see HD movies
But you said Macrovision is a must
And I can't upscale to my TV
So fuck you
I bought into HD-DVD
And picked up a few nice movies
But the content cartel said no
So fuck you
I have divx on every player
And terrabytes of storage
But I can't buy movies that way
So fuck you
My mp3 player does wireless
And its legal to share songs*
But the player won't do it
So fuck you
*In Canada
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
Your scenario could be accurate, but I think the more likely one is that DRM is sold to the company by the DRM maker and the company simply falls for it. The average high-level manager at a big company probably isn't an expert on software. When a company shows up and says they have a technology that can protect their property and has the tech-speak to back it up, then they'll bite. And honestly, DRM doesn't always fail. It took a while for Blu-Ray to be cracked after all, and even now it's still a hassle for most people to get round.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.