Slashdot Mirror
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!
DRM manages you rights in the same way jail 'manages' your freedom.
This. The Pirate Bay (and Usenet, and private Torrent trackers) offer something that media companies don't... If they had been paying any attention, they'd have taken a clue from AllOfMP3: content for a decent price, in the format I want, at a compression rate of my choice. And mine to play and replay when I want, on a device of my choice, with no ads.
I don't pirate movies because I can do so free of charge. I got to a point in life where my time is actually rather valuable, so I am willing to pay for convenience. And I am certainly willing and able to pay for content because it's the right thing to do. Yet I pirate movies because the pirates offer a vastly better product and movie distributors stubbornly refuse to follow suit. Well, fuck 'em.
And fuck the book publishers too. I still get told all too often that I am not allowed to buy certain ebooks because I don't live in the USA... even though the same companies are happy to ship me a paper copy. Guess what, the customer you refused to do business with found what he wants on the Pirate Bay
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Right of first sale bitch.
Region locking flat out puts nails in it, and tries everything possible to kill it with fire.
Without region locking, the right of first sale would permit entreprenurial individuals to buy up cheap(er) product in one target market, then resell the units at a higher (to them, but lower for the downstream customer) price elsewhere, and undercut the phyrric bloodletting bullshit of the publishers and distributors.
That is completely legal. See the supreme court ruling concerning foriegn textbooks.
Modern playback equipment boasts scaler chips in their design already to support the many different HD television formats, so claiming "regional formatting" is bullshit. Doubly so considering that the data is digital, and the medium itself is a universal standard.
I agree that people should pay for their candy. I disagree that they should be barred from buying candy in one place, and selling it in another, taking advantage of price differences. The supreme court recently ruled in my favor on this.
Region locking exists exclusively to compartmentalize the world economy, and relies on de-facto collusion for price fixing. Laws to enforce the region locking restrictions directly add legitimacy to that collusion. It only works when everyone plays the collusion game, which is why they are lobbying so very fucking hard to kill first sale. First sale lets the cat out of the bag, and deflates the collusion enforced price by opening up alternative markets and pricing.
Basically, I should be allowed to pay some guy in botswana to buy a dvd for 5$ for me, and ship it overnight air for 15$, for a net of 20$, if I want to. The fact that this would undercut the "handed down from god" price of 50$ in my region for the same product simply doesn't mean dick, other than that the big distributor has a control fettish, and is being abusive. There should be no technological obstrctions to my doing this. The disc is a legitimately printed and authorized copy. The guy in botswana is permitted under the first sale doctrine to transfer his user licesence to me. No illegal copis are made, and no illegal activity is being performed. Especially if free trade agreements remove all import duties and tarrifs as considerations.
That it makes you feel "oh so bad" as a rights holder that I don't share your estimation of what constitutes a fair market price for your product does not factor into the equasion, and you do NOT have a legitimate basis to enforce your price by locking out foriegn markets from domestic purchasers.
Competition. Deal with it.