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Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Good Reasons For DRM?
centre21 writes "Having been on Slashdot for several years, I've seen a lot of articles concerning DRM. What's most interesting to me are the number of comments condemning DRM outright and calling for the abolishing DRM with all due prejudice. The question I have for the community: is there ever a time when DRM is justified? My focus here is the aspect of how DRM protects the rights of content creators (aka, artists) and helps to prevent people freely distributing their works and with no compensation. How would those who are opposed to DRM ensure that artists will get just compensation for their works if there are no mechanisms to prevent someone from simply digitally copying a work (be it music, movie or book) and giving it away to anyone who wants it? Because, in my eyes, when people stop getting paid for what they do, they'll stop doing it. Many of my friends and family are in the arts, and let me assure you, one of the things they fear most isn't censorship, it's (in their words), 'Some kid freely distributing my stuff and eliminating my source of income.' And I can see their point. So I reiterate, to those who vehemently oppose DRM, is there ever a time where DRM can be a force for good, or can they offer an alternative that would prevent the above from happening?"
You can obliterate the used market. You can force obsolescence. You can force time limits. You can force re-purchases for multiple devices.
Oh, you mean good reasons for the customer?
Um. No. The "rights management" is about the "owner" of the content; not the customer.
"Because, in my eyes, when people stop getting paid for what they do, they'll stop doing it."
The creation of art is not, nor ever has been, dependent on remuneration. People don't exclusively create to be compensated. People have always created things. It's what we do.
It may be valid to worry that unrestricted copying of things—be those things paintings, songs, sculptures, stories, programs, or whatever—could potentially lead to a reduction in people who earn a living exclusively from creating those things, but it takes a powerfully broken worldview to even begin to think that people only do create stuff so that they'll get paid.
Many of my friends and family are in the arts, and let me assure you, one of the things they fear most isn't censorship, it's (in their words), 'Some kid freely distributing my stuff and eliminating my source of income.'
Incorrect. Their greatest fear is not piracy, but obscurity.
DRM is really bad at foiling pirates. It only takes one to break the DRM and share the content around the world to render the DRM ineffective.
However it is really good at inconveniencing legitimate consumers. Some DRM schemes have been so annoying to customers that getting a pirated version makes for a better user experience.
The months are just too short. I can count the number of days on one hand.
The key to "creators" getting over this mentality is to forget it exists, and to stop focusing on those that might be illegally sharing your work and instead focus on the ones that are actually buying it.
And here's why: people who choose to illegally copy something won't be deterred by DRM. They will nearly always find a way around it, one way or another. So it very rarely succeeds in what it proposes to do.
On the other hand, DRM treats your paying customers like would-be criminals. It often causes installation or playback problems, denies them their right of fair use in making backup copies or transcoding for different platforms; basically, to freely and fully use the content they paid for. In this way you're doing nothing but alienating your paying customers and pushing them towards finding DRM-free illegal copies in order to avoid all the pitfalls that ultimately accompany DRM.
If you create a good product and offer it at a good price people will buy it and you will make money. If you're shoveling out crapware at an outrageous price then no one is going to buy it. It's been shown time and time again that piracy has very little impact on actual sales. A good product/value will sell, a bad one won't, regardless of how much or little its being pirated.
You say "My focus here is the aspect of how DRM protects the rights of content creators (aka, artists) and helps to prevent people freely distributing their works and with no compensation.", which is an understandable point of view. However, DRM does not actually address this concern - at most they introduce a short delay. At the cost of inconvenience for everyone who actually care and try to use the DRM damaged versions, which raises the question: Why pay for inferior goods?
That is why we don't like DRM, we pay for the goods but get the worst version - or actually scratch that, we get nothing but a non-renewable, non-transferable, rights-removing licensed version.
You have to understand that DRM only makes this more difficult, not impossible, and once the DRM has been broken it no longer limits anyone but the legitimate users.
It's not black and white. There aren't two distinct camps: those that always legitimately purchase, and those that always pirate. There is a significant band in the middle of people who will pirate if it's easy and buy if it's not. Non-perfect DRM still performs it's function of increasing the number of people who pay for the product.
Before we can even talk about DRM, copyright needs to be reverted to its original 14 year term with 14 year extension.
Once I buy something, it is mine. You have no natural right to control it afterwards. It removes rights that the OWNER of the media has to use his media as he sees fit, to make copies for personal use, to timeshift, to device shift, and to resell or give away.
DRM is an infringement of digital rights of the owner of the media, not a protection.
And not everyone is a soulless sycophant worshiping the almighty dollar. Artists produce art for the sake of art, to express themselves because of how it makes them feel, and to enrich society as a whole and more often than not to get laid. Slightly reducing the financial incentive will not end art, it will merely remove the posers who are producing garbage for a paycheck from the equation.
You want people to be ok with DRM?
1: make DRM that allows every act that falls under fair use.
2: make the duration of copyright much shorter, 7 years, 14 at the most.
3: make DRM that releases its media after that duration.
Good luck getting a positive comment about DRM or a negative comment about piracy on Slashdot.
Most everyone here is quick to point out the problems of DRM. Honest users don't like DRM because it's going to affect their ability to use the stuff they bought. Pirates don't like DRM, either. (Oftentimes the DRM gets broke which doesn't bother the pirates, but sometimes it slows them down to blocks them entirely.)
Based on this, there's a tendency for people to be dishonest about DRM - the same way you'd be dishonestly harsh about some kid who stole your girlfriend.
I'm generally accepting about DRMs existence - in part because it seems like the younger generation thinks they should have a right to pirate everything. The worse piracy gets, the more I support the creation and use of DRM - both to support the creators and to support the continued survival of the industry that creates our entertainment and our software.
I generally favor the removal of DRM after a set period of time. This gives creators access to the initial sales spike. After a year or so, removing the DRM can be done for the benefit of the customer.
Some of the myths promoted by the anti-DRM, pro-piracy crowd (which overlap but aren't necessarily synonymous):
- DRM always gets broken. Not true. It's true that the more popular a piece of software is, the more likely it is to get cracked. The PS3 DRM system held up quite well for years (and GeoHot's crack only worked for previous versions of the OS; he now says the PS3 is too hard to crack). Microsoft's DRM allowed them to ban a million XBox users - they can still use their XBoxes, but have to buy a new one if they want to play online. Both of those count as positive (and different strategies) for combating piracy through DRM. I also had some software I wrote under DRM. It was eventually cracked (after 10 months) and showed up on pirate sites. Still, that gave me 10 months of pirate-free sales, which is where most of the sales were anyway.
- Piracy increases sales. In case you're wondering: no, I didn't see any increase in sales after 10 months due to "pirates paying for the software they pirated". I actually saw a slight drop in sales, though I'm doubtful about blaming that on piracy. My experience makes me doubt that pirates pay for media after they've pirated it.
- DRM is only about control. The subtext of this is "if it was about getting consumers to buy their stuff instead of pirate it, it might be legitimate, but it's all about control and they have no right to control me. Therefore, by pirating I'm subverting their vile attempts to control me!" What nonsense. I will admit that this kind of thinking fulfills a psychological need among pirates to legitimize their piracy. I've worked with publishers and game developers and I know they hate seeing their products pirated, and the kind of fear that creates when you've invested tons of time and money and you need to get paid or else you'll go bankrupt. (I've heard even some of the smallest game-developer companies ask the question, "How do you prevent piracy?" Do you really believe some small-time company is out to control people?) Creating stuff is a gamble - a big gamble. All business ventures are gambles. It's like walking into a casino and dropping a big part of your life savings. It sucks when you think that pirates are (effectively) putting their hand on the roulette wheel and making it difficult for you to win on the gamble you're taking.
- People should create stuff because that's what they love to do, not worry about piracy. What nonsense. Creators invest tons of time and money into their product. We're not going to live under a bridge just so you can have free stuff. I'd recommend you try that argument with doctors, teachers, and everyone else in the modern economy. We've got bills to pay, and I'm not going to make myself into a sacrificial lamb so you can have great stuff. Maybe if you'd come over to my house and mow my lawn for
> There are numerous business models involving temporary or restricted access that are in the interests of both creator and customer.
No. There are just TEMPORARY access methods that are in the interests of consumers.
The problem with DRM is that it turns everything into a rental. It doesn't matter if you've paid for a cheap subcription, a low unit cost, or a high unit cost. All of it is a glorified rental and most people don't realize this.
This especially true for any content that is tied to a particular service. The service goes away and so do your purchases.
DRM strips away your personal property rights. It prevents you from using that which you paid for. It prevents you from safeguarding your own personal property.
Corporate shills are so busy screaming about "artists" rights that they have forgotten that the rest of us have rights too.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The problem with DRM is that it turns everything into a rental.
I'm not sure that is necessarily true, but even if we accept the premise, I don't see a problem with rental as long as everyone knows up-front what the deal is.
It doesn't matter if you've paid for a cheap subcription, a low unit cost, or a high unit cost. All of it is a glorified rental and most people don't realize this.
You think someone signing up for a Netflix account with a low monthly fee doesn't realise that they're paying for a limited-time subscription and instead thinks they're buying a copy of everything they can watch on Netflix?
Or that someone who pays a one-off charge to watch a major sporting event on pay-per-view thinks they're buying a permanent copy they can share with friends?
This especially true for any content that is tied to a particular service. The service goes away and so do your purchases.
Part of the problem every time this debate comes up is that too many people assume purchasing is the only sensible way to consume content. It never has been and probably never will be, and my major point is that alternative arrangements aren't necessarily a bad thing for either consumers or producers.
I'm not arguing that if you're making a purchase, on the understanding that you're buying full, permanent access to a work, and someone's DRM scheme then screws up and stops you getting what you paid for, that's somehow acceptable or desirable. I'm just saying you're only looking at a small part of a big picture, and in some of the other parts, there's a case for some sort of DRM.
Corporate shills are so busy screaming about "artists" rights that they have forgotten that the rest of us have rights too.
You do, and one of the most powerful is the right not to pay someone for access to their content on terms you don't like. If everyone stopped buying DRM'd works tomorrow, DRM would be gone on Monday. If customers made it clear that they were willing to pay more for a work as long as they could have a permanent copy, chances are the market would figure out how to price full sales vs. other access models or someone else would come along to fill in the gap.
What you don't have is a right to enjoy someone else's content on whatever terms you feel like or to enjoy it without compensating them at all for their work to create it. That's illegal whether DRM is used or not.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
fads and fashion are not culture. they're consumerism. culture is people DOING stuff, not BUYING stuff.
and people have been listening to the same music since the 1950s since the music industry industrialised the production process for crappy rock ballads.
(there's always been more interesting music out there too, but most people just buy rock music in all it's tediously repetitive minor variations)
mainstream movies are the same bland, repetitive crap too. granted, they often have good explosions and special effects, but how many fucking re-makes of the same movies does the world need?
Someone else said it first, but it bears repeating:
The flaw with voting with your wallet is this: it isn't obvious. The company doesn't know why you stopped buying their products; from their perspective, you just disappeared. Was it piracy? Was it a competing product? There's no way to know unless you explictly tell them. This is why voting with your wallet sends an ambiguous message, if any at all.
This argument is absolutely stupid. It sounds interesting for about 5 seconds, until you realize it's absolutely wrong.
Everyone has this common generic culture now.
You haven't been ever outside the USA, have you?
This kind of culture didn't exist before the internet. Before the internet, you actually had societies develop and advance the arts. But, if you didn't notice already, culture has pretty much frozen since around 1995.
People wear the same clothes as they do in 1995. Style hasn't advanced like it did from the 50's to the 70's. Or from the 70's to the 90's.
People listen to the same kinds of music.
They use the same grammar and language from 20 years ago.
And so on.
So, not everyone needs to see the same movies, listen to the same music, and so on
You apparently haven't been noticing what's going on in the world around you for the last 20 years. Back in the 50s-90s, in the USA at least, people (of the same age group) generally DID listen to the same music. With the internet, that's all changed. Now the Top 40 doesn't rule things the way it used to, and there's all kinds of indie music available on the internet. If anything, the internet has fractured "common culture", so that people don't listen to the same stuff like they used to back in the days of Top 40 radio. Things are actually totally backwards from what you say: pre-internet, people (in the USA) were much more homogenous, and listened to the same music, watched the same movies, etc. Now, they've spun off in all directions. I can watch movies from France and Finland on Netflix now with a few button presses. Before the internet, I had no access to such things. Maybe you don't remember the days before 1995, but I do, and we all watched whatever crap Hollywood decided to shovel us. It didn't matter if you were in California or Maine; the movies and music were all the same, from sea to shining sea. That's different now. Now everyone has a different subculture.
The whole idea of information being free and shared by everyone is actually destructive to society, since that means information becomes devalued when culture becomes democratic. It devalues professional tastemakers, causing populist sensibilities to take hold, which is the exact cause of cultural stagnation. Democratic sensibilities are always obvious, and can never advance the state-of-the-art that professional tastemakers can.
What a pile of elitist drivel. "Professional tastemakers" gave us all kinds of bullshit like tailfins on cars, beehive hairdos, Backstreet Boys, the butt-ugly cars of the 70s, Britney Spears, and many more abominations of good taste than I can possibly count. They deserve to be devalued, and they should be doing other jobs, such as cleaning port-a-potties. If you really think the internet has made things more homogeneous, then you're totally blind. If anything, it's allowed people to ignore the more stupid trends, and adopt better ones no matter where they came from.
I didn't mod it down, but it's at least partially nonsense, and obvious nonsense at that. Ask any linguist why English stopped changing 20 years ago and they'll laugh you out of the room.