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The Real Purpose of DRM
Jeremy Allison - Sam writes "Ian Hickson, author and maintainer of the HTML5 specification, comments about the real reasons for DRM. They're not what you might think. Ian nails it in my opinion. He wrote, 'The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations. The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices. Content providers have leverage against content distributors, because distributors can't legally distribute copyrighted content without the permission of the content's creators. But if that was the only leverage content producers had, what would happen is that users would obtain their content from those content distributors, and then use third-party content playback systems to read it, letting them do so in whatever manner they wanted. ... Arguing that DRM doesn't work is, it turns out, missing the point. DRM is working really well in the video and book space. Sure, the DRM systems have all been broken, but that doesn't matter to the DRM proponents. Licensed DVD players still enforce the restrictions. Mass market providers can't create unlicensed DVD players, so they remain a black or gray market curiosity."
First, a study showing that piracy has a negligable effect on profits and now this? I officially decree today to be the day of "No shit" Stories!
Fuck it, I'd rather sell reefer than do pizza delivery.
DRM is an attempt to circumvent one of the primary functions of a computational device: Copying of data. The reason for this is money and power. One group thinks they deserve money or power over another group. This is the simple truth of all DRM, and I can explain it shorter than the article, and even the summary of the article. It is what it is.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/03/19/209213/study-piracy-doesnt-harm-digital-media-sales
I'm so confused. Goddamnit Slashdot.
I don't know about the video space, since I nearly never watch any.
But on the book side, it seems many E-readers can easily read PDF and other formats which makes for easy licensing. Never mind that it seems it isn't really the content producer who has a say over the drm on the sold book, doesn't amazone and the like usually have their own document type with their own DRM that their devices can read? It hardly seems like the content producer is in charge of that.
DRM is about maintaining artificial scarcity to keep prices inflated and control firmly in the hands of the copyright owners. Controlling the hardware is part of that goal.
Another fine excerpt from the DUH File!
And I'm so tired of all of this crap that I'm going to make money of other peoples creations until I die. And I'm going to feel proud of it.
But if that was the only leverage content producers had
were
DRM is about distributive control... but they've always had distributive control in one form or another anyways.
The purpose of DRM is to supplement the diminishing faith that the content makers have traditionally placed in the strength of the copyright claim alone to keep people from copying the work without authorization.
As copying has gotten easier and easier, the mere social contract between publisher and community, which essentially says that the latter will not copy it without permission, effectively granting the publisher a form of distributive control, has started to break down... people are no longer adhering to their side of that contract, and so it is inevitable that publishers will seek alternative means to protect their interests.
Before copyright itself, effective distributive control still existed for people who made content because the work involved in making a copy was very time consuming and difficult. At the very least, it involved sufficient manual labor and errors in reproduction that the counterfeits rarely obtained as much notoriety as the originals. This is hardly the circumstance today, where it's pretty much an an everyday occurrence to see movies that wer3e just released up on Pirate Bay within days or sometimes hours of release, for download by anybody who simply doesn't want to pay the cash to see it in the theater.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
DRM manages you rights in the same way jail 'manages' your freedom.
I have media players from China that will play most popular video formats and completely ignores any DRM scheme including Cinavia. I paid $40 for it w/ free shipping and no tax. It has no network port, doesnt rely on servies or logins or fees. You put movie files in, movies play out. Copyright as it stands now will not be able to weather ubiquitous computing.
Good-bye
Presumably this analysis is more meaningful in places like Canada where content creators get a slice of sales of blank DVDs and so on.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Not something we here in the USA give much thought to. But in the rest of the world, region-free DVD players are more than a curiosity.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm confused. Why would anyone care what a DVD player does or doesn't do, when there's a free, high quality, ad-free version of pretty much anything on the Pirate Bay (and countless other distribution channels) that will play on any device, in any way I want, whenever I want?
They can (somewhat, temporarily) control their own distribution channels. But once it's out in the open, any and all control over these closed channels is moot.
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
People who make IP are pissed when other people can easily copy and distribute their work for free. It is a VERY common Human emotion from creators.
DRM is nothing but a modern version of 'copy protection'. Or perhaps the idiot Hickson wants to argue that copy-protection sought by people like the Beatles, or used on VHS tapes, happened because the 'content providers' wanted 'leverage' over the people making the playback hardware.
DRM is a super-set of basic copy-protection ideas, that has vastly enhanced functionality ONLY because modern levels of tech make such functionality possible. Everything that DRM causes is a 'down-stream' consequence of tech possibilities, NOT the reason DRM exists in the first place.
All current legislative pressure (the actions of your government) insists that DRM must NOT relate to issues of hardware monopolies- the exact opposite of what idiot Hickson is saying. Hickson is like the idiots who try to argue that EULAs over-rule your 'first sale doctrine' rights.
Governments will only allow DRM to ultimately serve two purposes. 1) to stop illegal copying and distribution. 2) to allow media to be provided as a 'service' (where the data is no longer accessible when the service conditions end). Companies that use DRM do NOT get to trump the law of the land.
An idiot might ask "why then are so many DRM schemes associated with particular hardware". The answer is, of course, down to the emerging state of the technology. Universal DRM systems require technology to reach a level (cost and capability) where they become commercially feasible. In the interim (as with all new technologies) a lot of proprietary intermediate solutions get implemented.
The example of 'licensed' DVD players is laughable and humiliating. There is no such thing as an 'unlicensed' DVD player in the sense the idiot Hickson means. Unlicensed in this case means companies that illegally refuse to pay to use the patents of Sony and Phillips- patents that have nothing to do with DRM, but patents that describe the fundamental workings of DVD players. Refuse to pay for the patents, and you can make a cheaper DVD player. None of these so-called unlicensed players (stand-alones) allow for illegal copying of protected Disks. Idiot Hickson is obviously confusing the idea of 'region free' players- a feature found in the majority of LICENSED players via a service menu function.
Of course, in the short term, many companies will attempt to illegally exploit their DRM system in order to restrict the rights of their customers. But let me ask you a question. Did Apple do this? Cheap crooked behaviour is for small fry criminal companies. You want to be the biggest player? You are going to have to respect consumer rights.
A neat example of this is with Sky TV in the UK, the world's most advanced broadcast service. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Sky (and Fox in the USA) may be rotten to the core, but he is no fool. He has hardware built to spec for home reception, but has embraced the Internet and all mobile devices. He intends that all of his televisual content can be received on ANY mobile device owned by his customers, including offline storage of shows with DRM. Hardware issues play a part here, but not in any way Hickson describes. Media companies require 'protected video playback paths' in the video hardware subsystems so that the decoded video stream may not be intercepted and copied. You may imagine this as the concept of 'write-only' memory for the video-buffers.
DRM has NOTHING to do with seeking control of those that build the playback hardware. PS now I know why HTML 5 is proving to be such a bad joke. Isn't it time open-source grew up, and started to worry about the intellectual abilities of those that control key projects.
In addition to unauthorized distribution of copyright works, I assume that DRM is also intended to prevent "unauthorized producers" of content from being able to distribute their works. Now that distribution no longer absolutely requires going through "official" channels, some means of preventing "pirate," that is to say, non-major-studio-authorized, content is needed.
I am not a crackpot.
... one industry wants to create a distribution monopoly by controlling everything, and eliminating competition.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Re:Cheap hardware mitigates... if you can get your hands on it... My parents have an iLo dvd player that does not lock itself to a region and plays all kinds of media. Unfortunaltey, the company that made it got sued out of existence. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILo_Technologies for how Cyberhome owns their intellectual property after their warehouse was raided for creating "unlicensed" DVD players.
DRM = "You don't own your own cruft. You are just renting it!"
No, DRM hasn't "worked" for video and books. Its been made less annoying, but it still hasn't "worked" and it won't "work" in the future. Two reasons why this has happened:
1) eBooks have apps for just about anything. You can read your Kindle on your Kindle, on your iPhone, on your Android, on your PC, on your Mac, etc. And there is a bonus to using these services because theoretically it should keep track of where you are in your book. But when Amazon eventually stops supporting X, customers are screwed.
2) Video is limited by sheer size, downloading a library of 100 songs takes up, what, less than half a gigabyte? Downloading a library of 100 movies in full HD can easily take up several hundred gigabytes. Video is also limited by what devices really "work" for it, you're unlikely to want to watch Netflix on your new iWatch on its 3 inch display. They've also done streaming which makes the DRM more bearable.
But the problems that are inherent in DRM is that it punishes people who want to buy things legitimately, but can't. Just look at region-locking which is often paired with DRM, you're essentially telling someone that if you want what we're selling, you need to acquire it through illegitimate means. I'm sure there's lots of non-Americans who'd pay for Hulu, I'd easily pay the BBC to have access to iPlayer, but instead I pay for VPN/Proxy to access it illegitimately.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
All about control, the more they control the more secure they feel.
They think that if they control every aspect from control to consumption in as much detail as possible, they can maximize profits.
However, given they just had to give out millions of free games, they can no longer claim that it offsets piracy, by their own counts they just gave away $50 million+ in games at EA as a drm apology. If it was piracy they would be calling 1 million stolen units $50 million in lost profit, so how is it any different then when they give away a million games.
$50 million is a lot, it's obviously not cost effective. It hurts public opinion and costs the company money anyways. If that's the price of business then it makes more financial sense to allow people to pirate.
I know EA is not out $50 million, and that their piracy estimates are bullshit. The free game offer I'm sure comes with some lost-sales and other costs, but no where near $50/million. The comparison was meant to contrast how they talk about piracy losses.
...and Hickson nailed it in one. The motion picture industry and the recording industry learned the hard way what happens when you lose control of the distribution channel. The RIAA and the MPAA are just ways of doing damage control until the those industries can get back into control of the distribution channel. As Hickson noted, the publishing industry learned from the recording and entertainment industry's mistakes -- it is embracing digital delivery via the net without surrendering control of the distribution channel by insisting on DRM in their content and requiring only DRM'd devices at the consumer end of the channel. The publishing industry is well on the way to making dead-tree fiction and non-fiction -- well, fictional, if you'll forgive the word play. That's what DRM is all about -- helping content providers maintain control of the distribution channel from end to end.
...consumers refuse to buy.
But you (consumer you) have bought Blue Ray devices, you've consumed from the Apple walled garden, you've bought into Microsoft, you've spent money on Sony Products, you gave EA a couple of bucks... you suck.
You have supported the DRM pushers - and no - you didn't have to. You could have gone without. But instead you consumers choose to bend over backwards.
So stop your f'in Bellyaching and own up to the fact that DRM is your own fault.
God damn you.
-CF
You misunderstand who it's intended to "work" for.
ADA isses with locking down books and other media so that screen reader can't read them.
"Licensed DVD players still enforce the restrictions. Mass market providers can't create unlicensed DVD players, so they remain a black or gray market curiosity."
In Australia virtually every licensed DVD player (including all the major manufacturers: Sony, Pioneer, Panasonic, etc) arrives region-free - you can play DVDs from anywhere in the world. The player might be marked Region 4, but it will play Region 1, 2, 3, 4 discs - I have discs from all of these regions.
Bluray players are more likely to respect Bluray region codes, still, but most will ignore DVD region codes (there are a few more exceptions).
Maybe things are different in the US.
No, DRM hasn't "worked" for video and books. Its been made less annoying, but it still hasn't "worked" and it won't "work" in the future.
Your "problem" is that you're evaluating whether DRM works or not from the perspective of a content viewer. This is a mistake.
DRM is working just fine from the point of view of content owners.
Calibre is my favorite. Convert anything to anything. You can load up one reader with anything and everything from any source, then load up your friend's competing reader with any or all of the same content. And, you don't even need the reader, of course - your laptop or desktop works perfectly well for all of it. I haven't done it, but I suppose you can send any of your content to your phone as well.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Oh c'mon man! Write some journals about your uh... "celebrations"
Essentially the article says the restriction is placed there for legal and not for technical reasons. It walks around that, and doesn't say it in straight language, but that's what it's saying: users will bypass restrictions, companies won't because of fear of legal retaliations. Well, you don't need DRM for that. Sure, you do need DRM to be able to abuse the DMCA, but you can still license your service under certain rules, and sue companies that distribute non-compliant players. You don't need DRM to enforce copyright laws.
This is high grade bullshit. The reason they don't care (much) if DRM is broken is that 99% of users are technically incompetent, and won't use the available tech to circumvent DRM. It is there to restrict the users.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
He's missing the subtle point that this is only true due to the DMCA. There was DRM before the DMCA, and device manufacturers were free to make devices that ignored, worked around, or reverse engineered DRM to play that DRM'ed media/data. Now that reverse engineering is illegal. The DMCA is what gives modern DRM its teeth. Making a Blu-Ray player that ignores DRM is not copyright infringement; it's a violation of the DMCA.
I would argue, at least in the world of books (and eBooks), that DRM has been more useful economically to owners of the content readers (e.g. Amazon) than to the content publishers. The fact that Kindle has DRM on its eBooks means that the average end user is unable to easily transfer their eBook purchases from a Kindle to another eBook ecosystem (e.g. Kobo, Nook, Android, or Apple). DRM on eBooks effectively allows an eBook device vendor to lock consumers into their eco-system and provides about as much protection as a paper-mache helmet. Publishers know this, and in my experience are not the ones insisting on DRM for their eBooks these days...
Back in the world of analog media, the process of copying content involved cost. Be it paper and toner from photocopying a book, or cassettes to make mix tapes, physical media had to be purchased for each copy. The copying process was time consuming, and limited to a few generations before the end product was completely unusable. These limitations imbued bootlegs with a "scarcity", economically speaking, that allowed commercial sle to successfully continue in the face of bootleg copies. This "scarcity" is the underpinning of the entire capitalist system. Goods and services require a non-zero amount of finite (scarce) resources to create, imbuing them with value that people pay in order to obtain them. Crucially, in an environment of scarcity, there is some non-zerovincremental cost to creating additional "copies" of an item. The capitalist scheme falls apart with digital data. All the cost is tied to the very first copy, because it can be reproduced infinitely for virtually zero incremental cost, with no loss of quality. DRM is a crude attempt to artificially create scarcity akin to what existed in the analog world...
Then you haven't heard of JManga's closing announcement this week, and that's just for starters. All of their costumers will be losing the books they bought.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
DRM has not affected me in any way.
My Pioneer Blu-Ray player was shipped pre-cracked by the retail store I bought it from so I can skip the nauseating ads.
My Windows 7 install is running cracked codec's that I downloaded for free and runs a movie player that doesn't care about DRM.
My entire Blu-Ray and DVD library has been ripped in lossless format to my streaming server so I can watch movies in high definition via my custom built HTPC that's hooked up to my TV in the living room just by browsing my film library, all 5 terabytes of it.
I guess all of that makes me a criminal but I bought every single film I have, I don't have any pirated stuff at all, all the originals are in storage, I'm not interested in the pirate downloads, the quality sucks compared to the originals.
And you try and tell the young people of today that... They won't believe you.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Many PC games, such as Crysis, had a high rate of piracy. Consoles have strong copy protection measures. PC game sales are lower than those on consoles.
That's why you should support companies like TOR books that are releasing all of their books DRM free.
http://torbooks.co.uk/2012/04/25/tor-uk-ebook-titles-to-go-drm-free/
This is sad.
From the article.
Arguing that DRM doesn't work is, it turns out, missing the point. DRM is working really well in the video and book space.
I refuse to buy an ebook with DRM. I don't even take the time to figure out how to get the free ones from the library. It would probably not work very well with my Android phone or, who knows what. In the end it doesn't even matter if it works great. I haven't tried it because of the DRM. It is much easier to download thousands of ebooks from bit torrent than it is to deal with the DRM. I don't know what reader I might have in 10 years, so purchase is right out.
Movies are a little better because there is a single standard, well two actually, DVD and Blueray. But they both play on a Blueray player, so it is pretty easy to use them. I still prefer the copied disks though as you can remove the annoying forced to watch ads at the beginning. At this point I don't buy or download movies, I just watch Netflix. No commercials and no DRM that gets in the way. Plus, its just rental rather than owning, so worrying about a player for 10 years later is not an issue either.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
In fact, the hardware that doesn't have the so-called "security" is usually cheaper.
Add region-logging, no-skip, and other crap simply adds to the cost of the device.
Know any good blu-ray players that are similarly unlockable? I've found that Blu-ray is usually easier to deal with in that Region-1 includes most places I'd watch from anyways, but the DVD region-lock and no-skip is still a huge PITA.
I have the SanDisk e260 (You can pick them up on E-bay for cheap). The battery lasts forever, it takes abuse, has a memory card expansion and it just works.
I also have a sansa clip MP3 player, but I don't like that one as much because it's hard to navigate if I haven't build a playlist.
The important thing for me is the expansion slot.
I have a 32 GB memory card stuck in there. Has my whole MP3 library available. Including all my OTR shows (Escape, The Great Gildersleave, X-1, Dimension X, Fibber McGee and Molly, Johnny Dollar, Have Gun will travel).
Look at the price difference between a 32 GB MP3 player and a 4GB MP3 player with Expansion card slot and a 32GB expansion card.
The Fatal Conceit, by F. A. Hayek, is IMO the definitive work on answering that question.
... the "if you are a paying customer" vs. "If you are a pirate" graphic:
http://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg
Another *not* surprise.
At least for those who know the difference between the Mobipocket and #Kindle DRM.
What to know: Just one byte the type flag is different. That is all. And now consider that Amazon owns Mobipocket.
And last Previewnot least: Mobipocket DRM was already cracked when Amazon bought Mobipocket.
If you didn't already know about it, Requiem 4.1 removes iTunes DRM. I set up a dedicated VM with Windows Vista (might as well use the license I bought for something worth while) and iTunes 7 along with Requiem 4.1 and the latest version of Java. I ran it on my movie collection (several hundred movies all bought legally through iTunes) and TV collection (nearly a thousand episodes, all bought legally) and it successfully removed DRM from all the TV shows and all but 12 movies. The only movies it had problems with were very large 1080P versions (over 4GB file sizes). It's nice being able to play any movie or TV show with VLC over the network without zero stutter or dropped frames.
Arguing that DRM doesn't work is, it turns out, missing the point. DRM is working really well in the video and book space. Sure, the DRM systems have all been broken, but that doesn't matter to the DRM proponents. Licensed DVD players still enforce the restrictions. Mass market providers can't create unlicensed DVD players, so they remain a black or gray market curiosity.
And this will continue to work in the content providers' favour until we see custom firmware released for mass market players, much like CyanogenMod has allowed many Android devices to unlock restrictions and be kept up-to-date despite their manufacturers REFUSING to release Android updates.
My reaction to this article is... "no kidding". DRM is about limiting channels of distribution. For the majority of media produced today no distribution company is required. DRM is a mechanism which limits distribution of media to approved channels. This funnels media consumption through major distributors who consistently take a larger chunk of profit from a business that is approaching zero cost. They will complain and complain about recouping costs, but in reality their own costs are vanishing as we are the ones who actually pay for the bandwidth to deliver the content to ourselves. Devices with hard coded DRM restricts alternate channels of receiving media content and these are the channels that usually respect the true price of production and distribution. And these alternate channels are the ones that actually provide the most profit return directly to the people involved in the labor of production. The current system benefits a few people very well and makes lots of money for them. Alternate channels spread the profit over a much larger set of workers and artists and make it difficult for a few people to collect the majority of the money.
In the future when major distributors finally die, we will see many more people making an actual living from their artistic efforts and far fewer superstars and mega corporations rolling in all the dough.