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A Brief History of Failed Digital Rights Management Schemes
antdude points out this article at opensource.com on the "graveyard" of digital rights management schemes — the death of each of which has left customers out in the cold. An excerpt: "There are more than a few reasons digital rights management (DRM) has been largely unsuccessful. But the easiest way to explain to a consumer why DRM doesn't work is to put it in terms he understands: 'What happens to the music you paid for if that company changes its mind?' It was one thing when it was a theoretical question. Now it's a historical one ..."
'What happens to the music you paid for if that company changes its mind?
Answer: It PlaysForSure (TM).
There's one highly successful "DRM" that can't be circumcised and what game companies have been started doing lately. It originates from Asia, where piracy has always been a problem, but only recently has been started gaining support in western markets. Many people hate it, many love it, but it's a direct result of piracy, and also what more and more companies will start using. It's free2play games, and other multiplayer games, and means dark times for single player gamers.
I think Valve succeeded with f2p in Team Fortress 2. It doesn't get too much in the way, and users can still get everything without paying lots of money. But there is incentive to do so. But then there's also all those Facebook games and other shitty free2play games which practically require you to pay lots and lots of money. It also means one can buy advantage in the game. But in the end, it is result of the widespread piracy and companies adapting to the situation, just like people always said they should do.
No music for you!
NEXT!
What happens to the music you paid for if that company changes its mind?
Well in the Apple iTunes case the audio quality was improved and the DRM was also removed.
The list shows gravestone icons both for those cases where companies stopped using DRM and left their users out in the cold, and for those cases where they stopped using DRM and let users get DRM-free tracks instead.
One is loss for the users, one is a win. Why are both presented as the same thing?
What do you mean it didn't work? DRM schemes such as Microsoft's "Play Anywhere" are abandoned and then the customer who paid good money for the music has to buy it again if they still want it,. DRM works exactly as planned and intended/
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I am surprised that SDMI is not listed. It was a complete failure and is utterly pointless now, yet many CDs still have SDMI watermarks and CD players still check.
Palm trees and 8
The consumer who has given it so much as the slightest bit of thought has always understood why to avoid DRM. It's the asshole proponents of such systems, and those who would support them, that need it broken down into small words and colorful drawings so that they may understand why we say "no" to DRM.
SDMI was not deployed, I was thinking of a different system (Macrovision). Time for that afternoon coffee (nap?).
Palm trees and 8
TFA only goes back to 1998. The history of DRM goes back much, much further than that, the only difference being that it was called "copy protection" rather than DRM. In the early 1980's, there was the first wave of mass-marketed personal computers: Apple II, TRS-80, etc. Software houses often sold games, for example, on 5" floppies in a format designed to make it possible to play the game, but to make it hard to copy the disk using the OS's standard tools. Computer users voted against copy protection with their feet. For one thing, there was no other backup format besides those unreliable 5" floppies, so if you couldn't copy it to another floppy, you were basically just paying to be able to run the software for as many years as the floppy was readable. Software houses started to realize how much users hated copy protection, so they stopped doing it.
Now we're just going through all the same stuff again, but with a new name, "DRM," and a new generation of computer users that hasn't wised up yet. They need to have their first experience of losing their investment in software, music, or whatever, and then they'll realize that they don't want to touch DRM with a 10-foot pole.
Find free books.
"DRM" the one thing in this world that turns me to breaking the law by using torrents. I bought it, ITS MINE. end of.
You cant stop the signal Mal.
DRM actually stands for "Digital Retard Monetization", because let's face it, you'd have to be daft to buy something with restrictions when the free and unlocked versions are even easier to obtain.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
>>It's one thing to stop selling music with a certain DRM scheme. It's quite another to tell customers that they won't be able to play it
They don't sell music any more. They sell temporary licenses to listen to music.
aaaaaaa
US federal Constitution was a pretty significant attempt at trying to keep the corruption out of politics. It was eventually cracked (it was cracked a number of times, a few times the problems have been fixed, but eventually it was cracked for good.)
The way they cracked it finally is by ensuring that not only Congress and Senate and White house had trojans introducing viruses, but they also broke the court system, especially the Supreme Court.
They used a distributed denial of law attack from all levels of government, including the Supreme Court and they were able to introduce all of the necessary 'back orifice' style tools into the system to make sure it cannot be patched again. They appealed to the self interest of the majority (employees) in order to pass legislature that at first only undermined the rights of minority (employers), allowing the government to grow faster and to take up more resources. They eventually used these back doors to grab enough power that they couldn't be stopped. They redefined money, government power, introduced regulations of businesses that were unauthorized allowing to sell more power to the highest bidders, destroying competition and creating monopolies/oligopolies. They violated every law that there is, every human right, every bit of Constitution and every bit of law.
Eventually the unavoidable thing happened, the resource consumption became 100% of what was available and the system started spreading its disease around the world, forcing/letting other systems (nations to pick up the slack of processing power - useful production). The system is now poisoned, no more useful production can happen in it, it's impossible to reform the existing government and it has to be formatted and reinstalled but it also needs a lot of patching, to ensure that the next version is less penetrable to these sorts of attacks.
Unfortunately the current batch of coders (the population) is so deaf blind and dumb it can't understand even what happened, never mind understanding the necessary steps that must be taken to fix the problem.
You can't handle the truth.
Requires internet to play. Wonder if it still works?
I buy only mp3 for this very reason. Once I have it, it's MINE. Just like the CD, cassette, or record I used to buy. I can play it on whatever player I want: car stereo, computer, whatever. That's the way music purchasing has always been... until DRM came on the scene.
I personally thank Amazon for their mp3 music store. They made it worthwhile for the artists to make tracks available in mp3 so Amazon gets all my music $.
Several years ago when I first learned of HDLC, I posted here into a thread about the "new" high-definition technology warning that there was a new connector coming (it became HDMI) and a new nasty form of DRM going along with it (HDLC) and that people should hold off because the early adopters were going to get screwed. The response was a lot of angry posts telling me that I didn't know what I was talking about, early adopters told me that their expensive TV sets could play HD just fine, and I was modded down, apparently so people considering buying an early set without HDMI and HDLC would not see my warning.
Now people who bought those amazingly expensive early "monitors" can't watch HD content from a Blu-Ray player or on-line streaming service on them (although they can enjoy grainy 480 line service). Why? Apparently we can get angry enough when a bank tries to charge $60 a year to spend our own money via a debit card, but we are not able to get angry enough with the content providers when they screw us and make it clear their intent is to buy congressmen to subvert the intention of Copyright as stated in the U.S. Constitution. So the content providers are going to keep screwing their customers. I'm sure that they would like to screw more people, but so far they have only figured ut how to screw the artists and the customers, aside for some random lawsuits that assume if you are not signing up for the screwing then you mist be a criminal.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It should contain every DRM scheme ever.
Anyone notice the games with content availability that go on with streaming Netflix? It's far worse than the few losses on content that have occurred with DRM.
As a result I only buy physical media (CDs, DVD, BD) or unencumbered digital files like MP3 or FLAC, or rent physical disks.
The idea of paying for a streaming service that you hardly know day to day what is going to be available is for the birds.
Because of copyright, stupid crap like this exists. It's time to get rid of copyright.
It's insane to call Apple's FairPlay DRM a failed system, as the item for this says. The system did exactly what it was supposed to do. It allowed Apple to start legally selling something that the record labels wouldn't allow without it and then it was taken away when the labels agreed to go without it. The system worked as advertised. It achieved the goals of building a market for legal music. And then it went away. It was very successful and then it was retired when it was no longer needed.
Without lube.
Further analysis would simply be tautological.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
From 2001: http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/browse_thread/thread/df4b4363d544f766/
"My question is: should software tools, protocols, and standards play a role in easing this required "due diligence" license management work (at least as far as copyright alone is
concerned)?"
Still not really answered...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"It's capitalism! It's about profits! Companies are not obligated to anything. They can be evil."
This is the kind of talk that makes me want to buy from capitalist companies from another, more ethical country. If DRM worked, it would still be a very bad thing.
DIVX - the reason I stopped shopping at Circuit City.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Here's a picture of the Sony PCM-F1 PCM processor from the early 1980s. See the little "copy prohibiting" light? This stuff's been going on for ages.
Everyone plays by same rules. If some 'players' cheat, be it bribery, theft, fraud or anything, then everyone should also cheat. Or risk getting abused by cheaters.
Copy all you want, take all you want, whine all you want, pay as little as you want or nothing at all. Big players are already doing it, little ones are already doing it.
Some players try to dodge their guilt by telling it's business/lobbying/fair use/not stealing/etc. Lets say it like it is: it's cheating and there should be no guilt because cheating is a norm.
The law is no longer the rule book. It got demoted and now it's just another tool for the game. Until things get fixed, we should look what other players do and play it like they do.
There was a drm stripping tool called requiem, part of the jhymn projecct by a coder going by brahms. It worked on video, but was a cat and mouse game with apple. I used it to free some purchased videos for linux viewing a couple years back. I don't know if it is still being updated. I just stopped buying till video drm goes the way of audio drm, hulu works well enough.
Steam is extremely successful and popular with users.
Since the article is creativecommonsed I took the freedom to post a German translation of it on my blog. Take a look if you like. Danke.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
It's probably legal because like steam they would have stated in their ToC that they are just giving you a licence to play the music, which can be revoked at any time
and how is THAT legal?
...prevents such revocation. you cannot deprive a "person" of property without due process. it's in the constitution. you'd have to go to court (not Congress) and it's doubtful that the SCOTUS would uphold your position.
I agree with you in principle, I just know how the lobbyists play this game...
Ask Me About... The 80's!