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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.
DRM is some suits in the corporate world trying to make ordinary people submit to their every demand: We control what you consume, when, how, and for how much. And we use DRM to ensure that you stick to the rules. ------ Anything positive about DRM? Sadly, no.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
"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.
If copyright did not exist, people would STILL pay for art. It just wouldn't be the guaranteed monopoly protection. If you art is truly worthwhile, people will buy it because only you can produce it. If your art is easily reproducible, then it wasnt all that unique to begin with. If you are afraid of your art being re-transmitted across the world, DONT SHARE IT WITH ANYONE. That is the modern reality we live in. Producing art shouldnt be license to seek rent from every human alive.
Good-bye
This was posted a while ago as "real reason for drm".
https://plus.google.com/107429617152575897589/posts/iPmatxBYuj2
TL;DR: control hardware manufacturers, not consumers.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
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.
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?
That's the whole reason why copyright exists. 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.
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.
Maybe you could defend DRM if it actually worked. But it doesn't. Anyone who really wants to can circumvent it, so the residual effect is that DRM merely reduces the value of the product to legitimate purchasers because the utility of the product is needlessly reduced.
DRM hurts honest people and does nothing to restrain the dishonest.
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.
The problem is it is impossible create a DRM system that both protects the artist's right and respects the consumer's rights.
In any case it looks like the OP is drinking the big media kool-aid. DRM isn't about protecting the artists; in fact they mostly hate it. DMR is about increasing corporate profits buy taking away consumer rights like format shifting, backing up, resale and so forth.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If money is your driving force, then DRM is your answer. If love of your art is your driving force, then DRM is irrelevant.
Morally DRM is a like murder, even if it helps you earn a buck it is still wrong.
What value does the actual data contain? None really. The IDEA that the data represents? That is the value. You can't stop ideas from spreading, thats the reason they are so crucial.
So... what does DRM do? Nothing. Whats the answer? Services. Goods. The exact same things that people have been selling since day 1.
Sorry "artists" but you don't deserve 10 million for your "creation". You deserve, at BEST, 200k a year for your work. Go put on shows and concerts, sell t shirts, sell vinyl, sell physical objects people want to own. Don't expect to get money for something that is free to replicate.
Yes thats right people. I believe people should get paid *ONCE* for there work. Not a billion times over.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
And what about ALL the people who go to work every day? Are they being creative for a paycheck? Or is this argument the exclusive domain of artists?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
There are arguably use cases where DRM would be convenient(eg. media rentals, which are a relatively uncontroversial and popular service in physical media, pretty much need to time-out to work, 'snapchat' and its ilk are designed explicitly, if not effectively, to enforce transience, again only doable with DRM).
The problem is architectural, though. In order for DRM to work, the root of control for a device cannot be its user/owner. It has to be the DRM-enforcing entity, or else the 'DRM' is simply some obfuscation. There just isn't a way around that. Further, to deal with analog hole/leaks from compromised devices or the production chain/etc. there is a strong incentive to make devices 'default-deny' rather than 'default-allow'(compare a PC, which will execute more or less any program that isn't explicitly self-destructive, with an iDevice or console, that will reject otherwise well-formed applications that aren't signed correctly).
And the trouble continues: in order to prevent 'leaky-by-design' hardware from being produced(eg. cheapy DVD players that are... lax about region coding and macrovision), the DRM mechanism essentially has to be legally encumbered in some way('hook IP', DMCA-style laws, etc.) to prevent the easy manufacture of HDCP strippers, region-free DVD players, and other 'claims to be DRM-compliant; but with a backdoor by design' circumvention tools.
This places extraordinary power in the hands of whatever licensing entity controls the DRM scheme: at a bare minimum, it's a steady stream of licensing revenue(even for hilariously broken systems like CSS, they still get their cut per DVD player). It may also include power over who is and isn't allowed to enter a market or exist on a given platform, and substantial control over the activities of everything going on within systems that include a given DRM scheme.
That's the real problem, ultimately. It isn't that there are zero uses for DRM, it's that (by necessity) you have to make some pretty radical changes to get DRM working at all, and once you make them, the uses that you don't want are every bit as available as the uses that you do want, and there is no way of allowing only the former and preventing the latter.
It also doesn't help, of course, that a system sufficiently-robust to be a DRM system is almost certainly sufficiently capable to be extremely useful for fun censorship and surveillance purposes.
That's about the only place where DRM not only doesn't bother me, but I never notice it either.
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There are no good reasons for DRM. Such schemes only harm legitimate customers, they are inherently flawed and can therefore always be cracked so those who want to copy the content will always be able to do so. DRM only seeks to extort additional money from those who would buy media, but would then want to do such things as lend their legitimately purchased media to friends or format shift it.
As for protection, there are already protections in place against copying... They are known as "laws", and they already go much further than they should. As technology has become available to distribute media faster and more widespread than ever before, copyright terms have only increased when exactly the opposite should have happened.
Those who want to obtain copies of media for free will always do so...
On the other hand, there are many far more moderate people who would quite happily purchase media if it was available under better conditions, but who feel offended by the ever extending copyright terms, draconian drm schemes and arbitrarily restricted availability imposed by big content.
DRM actively encourages people to obtain their media from an alternative source like thepiratebay... They don't hold you in contempt, they don't try to restrict when, where and on what you can play the media, they don't discriminate against you based on your current location.
Most people won't pirate if the legitimate options are just as, or more convenient. If this were the case, you would have a small core of hardcore pirates, and various people who simply cannot afford to buy media - people who will never pay whatever you do.
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Make a better product then the pirates are providing. The problem with DRM is it takes a product and make it worse. So then when a user goes to pirate it not only do they get it for free, but it is also often a superior product that works more consistantly.
So yeah DRM is always bad because it gives your paying consumer a worse product.
It should be possible to have drm that satisfies the needs of both the customer and the vendor. But since the vendor is responsible for the implementation, they think they're done working on it when their needs are satisfied.
Perhaps we as a technological group should create a list to help them. Maybe its hard do see it from the customer's point of view. We should create a list of what would make acceptable drm product and company behavior.
Like ice sculptures, live performances, draft deals, verbal negotiations - there are things that need to be done that lead to better things, but in themselves have no value if kept and (sometimes) can only do harm.
These things would benefit from DRM that render them useless at the will & command of the creator.
I'm in my right mind and I have the answer to everything!
Before we can even talk about DRM, copyright needs to be reverted to its original 14 year term with 14 year extension.
What is necessary for this to happen is that the wide distribution of recorded works of art will not create money for the distributors. Only then will the main source of income be live performances again, and one artist can only entertain so many people at one time. The consequence will be that many more artist will be able to live from their art again, only that any of them won't become a billionaire before turning thirty. A big loss for a lucky few, and an immense win for humanity.
You see, DRM will be one major roadblock on this future of bigger variety and quality in the arts, and therefore is bad. The posts before were all right, and now you know why.
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
Yes. Companies won't publish their products without DRM. you want to consume the products. So there is a good reason.
From the point of a view of a musician here...
I'm in the camp that says that there is no good reason for DRM, ever, no matter what situation the artist is in.
For a new musician who is trying to break into the business, DRM tends to be counterproductive b/c what I'm looking for is exposure. I want as many people as possible to listen to my music. At this point, I don't care how they obtain it; as long as they're listening and telling other people about my music, that's fine. In fact, I'd consider it an honor if people put my music up for download via Pirate Bay or whatnot b/c it means that there are people out there who like my music enough that they're willing to go out of their way to distribute it to others. Why in the world would I want to obstruct that process by including DRM in my music?
For an established musician, I believe that DRM still serves no purpose. I believe in the integrity of the fans and that one's art should speak for itself. If my music is good, then people will buy. Period. The artists who support DRM are probably those whose music isn't up to par, whose entire reputation was built on a fluke hit single that they've been trying to reproduce ever since. In that case, of course they'd like to attempt to lock up access to their music - they don't want people trying before they buy b/c what they have to offer isn't worth a nickel.
Basically, those who put forth quality products really have nothing to fear; attempting to restrict access only pisses people off and severely limits the number of new fans that one can obtain.
"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."
This is an assumption that is not borne out by the actual data.
Study after study of various aspects of DRM, in regard to software and published works anyway, belie this assumption.
People who "illegally" download movies and music also happen to be the people who spend the most on music and movies (both in-theater and DVDs).
The fact is that products that are solidly locked up under DRM tend not to sell very well. Look at the latest rebellion against Electronic Arts and Ubisoft over DRM. EA has been laying off employees.
This is not to say it might not be useful under some circumstances. But by and large, it has tended to make products less attractive to consumers.
If DRM will ban this ass clown, I'm all for it.
No, there are no valid uses for DRM. If your audience isn't willing to step up and fund your work because they love it and want it to continue, then whatever is lost couldn't have been of much value anyway. Much of our greatest cultural heritage was created in a time before DRM, and before copyright. We have more ways than ever to patronize the arts. We don't need artificial scarcity.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
the bottom line is, LEGALLY speaking, you can implement all the DRM you like on whatever digital content you wish to put out there. All the community (such as the Slashdot crowd here) can do is give you opinions on how ethical or smart such a thing is.
IMO, you're rarely going to find someone trying to make a living doing "creative" things who doesn't like the idea of "locking them down" in some fashion. Sometimes, it's not even the creator, but the purchaser who enforces it! For example, I work for a firm that puts together marketing and creative ad campaigns, plans shows and expos, etc. Even though everything we produce is original material our team came up with and saw through to completion, we're not even allowed to display any of our work on our corporate web site! Our clients practically always demand we sign a contract with them preventing us from sharing what was done.
But as someone who has dabbled on both sides of the fence (as a musician trying to produce material, and currently as a typical content consumer), I'm convinced DRM is a universally bad idea.
The original article's statement that, "In my eyes, when people stop getting paid for what they do, they'll stop doing it." is a big part of the problem. A true artist creates because he or she feels a basic need to do so. Most of the time, whether one is a musician, a sculptor, a painter or an author -- profit is FAR from a sure thing in the beginning. These people produce a lot of material at what's usually a net LOSS for them. (Why do you think you almost always hear musicians tell stories of the crappy jobs they had to work to pay the bills while they performed their music at night, for years?) A good friend of mine is an aspiring author, but he works both a day job for the government and teaches kids Karate on the side for income. His books are his passion, not his income source.
Now, I fully understand and agree that these people are all essentially gambling / hoping that all their time spent on their art will pay off in the long haul .... that it's all part of how the system works that you'll produce and produce without much or any pay, until you get noticed. But my question then is why does that whole mentality sudden;y change when profits eventually come? Why is the same artist suddenly "entitled" to getting paid for every single copy of his/her work that gets passed around?
The truth is, I think we have too many people in the arts who are doing it for the wrong reasons! That's why so much modern music is mediocre, and why so many video games are just rehashes of the same formula. If you're motivated by "getting paid", you need to go work in a job where you earn a guaranteed paycheck for every hour of time you spend working, or an annual salary paid out in bi-weekly installments.
It's just opinion, but I truly believe that the only "right" way to pursue an art (such as music) is to do it out of the pure need to create the best work you can possibly create, and share it with others who get enjoyment from it. If you're good enough at that, people start taking an interest in compensating you financially for it. Great... but don't let that change anything for you. Don't stop to "count your money" or you'll become a lesser quality artist for it.
One legitimate use would be for secret military or corporate secret/confidential information dissemination. Maybe to some extent other private entities (terrorists?, paranoid individuals?)... but the existing solutions are far from meeting any such criteria. This message will self destruct in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... j/k
What prevents people from copying books, or CDs, or magazines, or newspapers, and giving them away willy-nilly? Yet writers and artists and photographers have managed to make a living despite that.
The problem is that DRM only addresses half the issue. It ignores any rights the owner of a copy might have, and declines to enforce those rights against the copyright holder's infringement on them. As long as it does that, it serves no useful purpose from my standpoint. To be useful to me, a DRM system would have to manage and enforce all rights, not just one party's.
No matter how creative a person is, they are simply building upon the work of others either by influence, tools, inspiration, cooperation or downright theft. There is no such thing as a truly original work and if any artist would stop 'creating' because they were no longer remunerated for it, they DO NOT have their heart or mind in the right place. Like a lot of jobs these days, artists do not produce anything that is absolutely necessary to life, and while I most certainly believe that very talented artists should gain recognition, I do not think that money is the only/best form of recognition. I am an artist and I create because I love, not because I want money. I find it extremely self-centered of people to claim "this is mine, you have to PAY to experience it", when the cost of sharing the material is insignificant. Any real artist would simply love to have their work appreciated.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
DRM everyone likes:
- Netflix streaming
- Amazon streaming
- Steam
DRM everyone except pirates like:
- DRM on PS3 Blu-ray games
- DRM on Playstation Vita games
- DRM on XBox games
Don't expect much from this thread. It's more important to whine about DRM than think about it.
Note : DRM is targeted against the physical possessor of materials, and is thus quite different from encryption, although they are commonly confused, and of course there are technological similarities.
As the laws are currently set up, and as structures have grown up around those laws (and influencing those laws), no.
Change the ground rules (for example, abolish all copyright), and the answer becomes a solid maybe, depending on the details of what has replaced what we currently have.
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
Yes, people want Game of Thrones.
That also tells you exactly what the providers need to do.
The "rights management" is about the "owner" of the content; not the customer.
That simply isn't true.
There are numerous business models involving temporary or restricted access that are in the interests of both creator and customer. Usually this is because the customer gets more flexibility and/or pays a lower price for something, while the creator generates some income from people who wouldn't get enough value to justify a full purchase. Some of the most successful (in both financial and good will) distribution schemes around lately are based on subscription/library models. Pay-per-view models have been very successful for some kinds of content. Good old-fashioned rental still has its place.
Many of these models are impractical without some mechanism for restricting access to content outside of the agreed terms. It often doesn't have to be much, just enough that it's not completely trivial to keep the content from the service permanently to help people stay honest. A lightweight copy protection scheme fits the bill there just fine. Sure, maybe you can break it if you're willing to try hard enough and have no problem with ripping off the creator's work, but then you could probably have just downloaded an illegal copy on BitTorrent anyway if you're willing to do that.
However, even in a perfect world where DRM was unbreakable but it also never stopped a customer from doing anything legitimate, it would still be in everyone's interest to allow a variety of agreements to suit different needs. The alternative is a market where the only legal option is a full purchase and the only other option is black market pirate copies. That is always going to put at least one party in a worse position, even if everyone is acting in good faith.
In short, the rights management aspect is of no benefit to the customer only in the sense that copyright is also of no benefit to consumers. We could eliminate it tomorrow and everyone in society other than content creators would be better off... for a little while. But in the long run, without either these kinds of measures or some other viable incentive, the quantity and quality of works available would drop, which hurts the consumer too.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
My credentials:
- I've been on slashdot since almost the beginning
- I'm a recreational musician who fantasizes about recording and distributing music
- I'm a web developer who has implemented DRM to protect the intellectual property of my employer
I decided to post here, so that I could say that I don't think there is any good use of DRM. I have heard lots of stories of people who distributed their own non-DRM'd music online and who do very well, for example. I think the good stuff will always pay off. People will recognize the value and the artist will be compensated.
I also hate the properties of DRM that inconvenience the consumer. Having to repurchase your content, for example But before I started typing this comment, I thought of one use of DRM that could be considered legitimate. A streaming subscription such as Netflix, or computer training videos and stuff like that, is something that works very well, is transparent to the user, and does not need to stand the test of time. As long as your subscription is active, you can access your content. You have no need to access the content after the subscription is over.
I've also taken advantage of software subscriptions lately. For example, I need Photoshop sometimes, but not all the time. Instead of paying a ridiculous amount of money to buy Photoshop, I can may for a month of Photoshop, which gets me through whatever project I'm working on. This is a form of DRM, and without it, Adobe would not offer the product the way I want to consume it. The same with Netflix. I love it, and without that protection, they could not offer it.
Yes. Gimp. I know. Sorry, I like Photoshop.
There are no good reasons for DRM. It exists solley to enforce artificial scarcity. It's not hard to eliminate all piracy. I've done it. It's simple. It doesn't take DRM, it takes common sense: You say, "Hey, I need $X to do this work." Then you get $X. Then you do the work. If you got funded by society to do the work via crowd funding or a grant, etc. then you upload the digital token of your efforts to everyone for "free" (you've already been paid to do the work) -- use a .torrent if you need free bandwidth. It's how I make money working on FLOSS. Company needs some bugfix or a new feature, or something customized to meet their need, or even just installed / maintained: I do the work to configure the 1s and 0s just so, get paid for it. Move on to the next job. I don't have to seek rent by selling copies, that's boring and economically corrupt. Doing work for money is a time tested business model. "Intellectual Property" is a newfangled scam -- It's a personal futures market for yourself that guarantees society (and thus yourself) will benefit less overall.
Doing the work first then Selling the copies to make up the cost of production [+profit] is gambling. What if you don't make those sales? Instead: Get free market research and avoid making things no one wants to buy -- Ask the public directly for the money you need to proceed. After they pay you for your work, you can simply do more work to make more money. This is how all other labor markets work.
Strict copyright laws were meant to restrict greedy publishers and prevent them from ripping off artists. In a time when copies were expensive and copy machines were rare, 14 years was thought to be the high end of rights durations. Now everyone has a copy machine (computer) -- They're everywhere in almost every device, copies are so cheap they're in near infinite supply, and now the greedy publishers have subverted the system making the strict laws apply to all people instead of themselves. Meanwhile the artists can get buy by the way they've always been able to: By withholding their work until payment is assured. Hint: That's why bands have to go on tour to make any real money -- They have to work to get paid
The public benefits by having a public domain full of rich and relevant works. Publishers have destroyed the public domain by making copyrights last over 3 generations of humans: Artist + 70 = you have kids @ 30, they die 40 years after you, your grandkids die 70 years after you do... After your grandkids are dead the copies enter the public domain? That's gross. DRM aims to ensure that not only will everyone be dead by the time digital goods enter the public domain, but that it will be impossible to copy them even when it becomes legal to do so. For this reason alone you should never even consider DRM. Copyright laws already exist, if that's not enough for you then you're a greedy ignorant ingrate and you deserve to starve or do physical labor for a living -- Such minds aren't worth extracting information from, IMO.
Your works only have merit because of the culture you've borrowed from to make them relevant. Try to create something 100% of your own creation -- It is impossible to do so and for it to have any worth. I know, I've tried it. I've invented my own languages and wrote my own stories and jokes and poems in them. They are worthless to the world because only I can read these works. Even though I tried not to I found myself borrowing some literary concepts from culture at large in the writing of these works -- It was impossible not to borrow from the collective culture that we're all a part of. To put your tiny comparative amount of effort into a work then monopolize on the amalgamation for generations is disgusting -- We raised your brain, and that's the thanks we get?! Adding DRM to completely rob the culture that you benefit by is abhorrent.
Don't operate by way of artificial scarcity. Attempting to do so is counter to nature. Humans are data duplicating mac
The artists are seldom the content creators. The content creators are seldom the copyright owners.
And if people stop doing it for the money, then those who do it out of passion will take over. That is not a bad thing. That is a good thing, Then you get people who are interested in the the thing they produce and not in their bank account.
Oh and then you have the "standing on the shoulders of giants" thing going on. When somebody uses something you created it feels great. Most of the time this is knowledge. However it can be software code or music or things you know how to do. Sharing that is a great thing.
Apparently you are all about the money. Do not forget to charge your kids when they want to learn to ride a bike. That way they pay you for your knowledge and you can even charge them when they ride their bike as THAT is what DRM is all about.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Yes, people don't only create stuff to get paid. But if you're a filmmaker, the bills rack up pretty quickly - and without money, they scope of what you can do is limited in some ways. For example: Inception would probably not have looked as good as it did if Chris Nolan and Warner Bros just planned to give it away DRM-free and ask for donations. Some things cost a lot of money to make! Personally, I like ambitious movies being around in the world. I want them to be profitable. If the studios feel they need DRM in order to get the money to do those films, it's their choice.
If the consumers hate DRM so much, they should vote with their wallets, not pay for any content with DRM, and start funding ambitious independent projects. They haven't done that so far in the scale necessary. Hopefully it will change - we are getting closer to this goal. Kickstarter etc is very promising but the money people are putting in needs to grow by 10. Fingers crossed.
As for the idea of giving a movie away and selling toys or product placement... that kinda limits the art, doesn't it? There are a lot of good art films whose primary value is just the 2 hours you're watching them. You're not going to buy an action figure of the main character of your art-house drama. If DRM was banned worldwide tomorrow, there would likely be less of those films around because if art houses had to switch to donation only, the money would decrease.
Also: when I do film post-production, I pay for the software I use. I don't get all indignant that Autodesk, Adobe, Avid, etc charged me money and put DRM in their software. It's their right. If I don't like it, I can protest by using Blender. If I used an illegal copy of Maya and framed it as a righteous anti-DRM protest, that'd be really shady. I've probably put $40,000 into software over the years. I'm happy to have contributed to some coders' paychecks. But if they watch my film, why can't they contribute back to mine?
So, yeah: People who don't like DRM can similarly protest by watching only content that's DRM free and giving money to those artists who make DRM-free content. If more people did that, there would be more creatives making good DRM-free stuff. That's the only moral way to do it. The rest is just a slippery slope. End rant! Yay! What do folks think?
Say goodbye to feature films and big FPS games for example.
And most textbooks with good editorial values and carefully checked exercises.
And most studio-quality music recordings with professional production values.
And most of the software that does incredibly boring things to help run businesses all over the world more efficiently.
Creating new works is easy and often fun. Creating good new works usually requires a lot of effort and/or specialist skills, which in turn are usually provided by people who aren't the creator/copyright holder but get paid for their contribution like any other job. Take away the financial incentive and most of those laborious supporting jobs disappear, along with all the benefits they bring.
You're absolutely right that the blockbusters with astronomical budgets like Hollywood's latest movie or EA's latest sports game would be impossible without serious financial support, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
About the only system I've seen where I would Say DRM works would be in a corporate environment to track and protect documents.
Both Adobe and Microsoft have a Good DRM system that uses Active Directories to control who can open, edit, copy and print documents from Acrobat and Office files. I've seen it in action and it's pretty secure as an added protection on top of an encrypted file system.
The biggest problem was that employees couldn't work on a document from home on their personal machines, but then again that was the point, and there was other options in place to allow work from home (they were using Citrix for virtual remote desktops that worked well for their needs).
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
I would suggest reading this and this. Preventing piracy generally doesn't do much to increase sales.
DRM may help reduce piracy in some circumstances, but the vast majority of pirates aren't going to buy the artist's content regardless of whether they can or cannot pirate it.
DRM doesn't protect the artist's profits. It just limits the potential audience that the artist could be reaching.
I will never buy any product including DRM, for all the good reasons mentioned in other posts. The stuff is mine, I want to make sure that I will be able to read/see/listen to it forever.
Renting is however different : if I want to see a movie just once, I only care about the price of the provided; if using DRM reduces piracy and hence lowers the price for me, I am all for it.
Hating DRM is trendy here on Slashdot, and I'm usually the first to decry it. The problem is not with DRM but with shoddy and opaque implementation of DRM -- i.e. when its implementation hurts honest consumers.
There are a couple good reasons for DRM. One -- and please bear with me here, I promise I can justify it -- is to stop piracy. Okay, yes, DRM as it has been implemented by the vast majority of businesses has been nothing short of abysmal. It punishes the honest consumer without presenting so much as a stumbling block for hardened pirates. There's actually a lot of argumentative parallels here. Why have gun control when criminals will break the law while honest people won't? Why outlaw drugs when people who want to do drugs will do them anyway? These are actually really important arguments. However, while the contrast is stark, it's not a black-and-white scenario. Simply because we have the Second Amendment here in the states doesn't necessarily mean we should be giving everyone a rocket launcher. Marijuana might not be harmful, but should we really let people make meth in motels and poison all of the other guests?
In these scenarios, the key question is what is "reasonable" regulation. In other words, the question is what is economically efficient -- what methods and standards will save us more money in the long run than we will spend? Do we need to install backscatter machines in the airports to protect against terrorists? Probably not -- we'll never see that money back. Should we deregulate and let on someone carrying an RPG? Also, no. The cost of preventing people carrying RPGs on airplanes is minimal compared to the savings. Even assuming I were lawfully carrying my RPG for non terrorist-y activities, what if it accidentally detonated? The savings are greater than the cost.
The same is true with DRM. The problem that consumers have with DRM is that it robs them of the cost of their experience. I paid full price to get some gimped, server-dependent version of the game that was not what was advertised to me. DRM right now is like backscatter machines in airports; it assumes everyone is a criminal, attempts to push the limits of personal freedoms and privacy, and ultimately is probably motivated by greed more than user experience. But that doesn't mean that DRM itself has to be evil or bad. While there are plenty of textbook cases out there of people who download to try-before-buying, or who live in a country where the software/game is unavailable via legitimate retail, there are also a plethora of people who simply want to download a product without paying for it. They'll justify it with the same reasons -- "I'm punishing the developers for X" or "I can't afford it right now." This assumes that the user has some inherent right in the product that gives them the ability to use that product without paying for it. To be honest -- and I know this is going to be an unpopular view -- but the same can be said of regional restrictions. Nothing gives me the personal right to download and play a Japanese game in the U.S. I might justify it by saying that I'm not hurting the copyright holder if he couldn't have sold it to me in the first place. I might think that I have an inherent right in the public domain, that copyright is (as it is) artificial and should only be presumed where the rightsholder is enforcing his rights (i.e. not in the U.S.). But legally that's not how it works. Nothing specifically grants me the right to use something that I have not paid for. Part of the difference is due to internet culture buying into the notion that information is free and should be shared amongst everyone. We recoil when the capitalist world starts to encroach on our free internet with their advertising and paywalls and out-to-make-a-buck mentality, so we flee the corporatized services like Facebook in search of something more open. I digress, though, and that's a different issue.
DRM's problem is in how it's implemented. Inevitably the cost of implementation is great
So you can tell a judge you "locked the door" when businesses that can damn well afford it decide to steal your $10,000 business application that you've decided needs to be that expensive due to a very small market.
Whether there's actually a good reason to charge that price is arguable, but if you do, you'd better "secure" it.
"Because, in my eyes, when people stop getting paid for what they do, they'll stop doing it. " Your assumptions: 1) Without DRM artists will not get paid. (Demonstrably false) 2) Artists create only because they get paid. (Demonstrably false) Here's my observation: 1) DRM makes the experience worse for paying customers. (Demonstrably true) I WANT to pay the artists that I enjoy. I buy books. I go to movies. I buy DVDs. I buy games. But you know what? DVDs and games are a lot less enjoyable. It's a pain in the neck to watch the unskippable ads on DVDs. It's a pain in the neck to have to have the game in the drive to play. Result? I buy more of the stuff that doesn't annoy me, and less of the crap with DRM.
German authors, publishers, and readers were all far better off than English ones. The article explains the reason for this seemingly-paradoxical result.
And the reasons hold, I'm sure, for current DRM. FWIW.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
I waited years for DRM free digital music to come along. When it did, I threw money at it.
Maybe I am an anomaly, but after years of bitching about how bullshit it was that the record companies wouldn't let me download music legally without crap attached, once they did (Amazon, etc.), I felt the need to respond in kind. Now I routinely check there first and buy the entire album if it's offered. The price of a digital album is extremely fair now IMHO.
Anyone still bitching about how "music should be free" is a dick. If you were the guy making that music not having enough money to feed your kids you'd reconsider.
The original post begs the question of "DOES DRM actually deliver revenue to the content owners." It assumes that it does and that therefore there needs to be some mechanism to enable DRM to do so.
As has been pointed out numerous times here on /. as well as techdirt and popehat and reddit and other places, that is NOT the case. The revenue that is gained goes to ENFORCEMENT, goes to HARASSMENT of "illegal downloaders"[sic - downloading is not illegal], but NEVER to the artists who created the content.
A better refinement of the question should read:
"What mechanisms could be used to ensure that the creators of content are compensated and their rights are not taken nor abused?" There are quite a few examples (in the sources previously cited) where artists put their content for downloads, and VOLUNTARY DONATIONS bypass the hoarde of middlemen thieves to make the artist wealthy. There are no "technical" mechanisms that can let someone read a book, listen to a song, or view a video that they cannot then make a copy. If you don't allow them to backup that copy, watch/listen/view it on multiple devices including car-audio or smartphone, they will make their own copy and no revenue will be afforded the creator.
A second mechanism is one where the content is EASILY made available for these uses, but incrementally the value-add is to the buyer who chooses to buy that other copy. For example: if I buy a Blu-Ray of BestMovieEver and for another $2 I can download it to my smartphone with chapters, subtitles, and all the features I'd want to see in an original creation (but won't get in a BR-rip) that's worth it.
If I buy a book from AMZ and for another $0 I can get it for my Kindle [reader on my smartphone] for ALL titles and it will NOT be pulled away later [like 1984] then that's a great value. Maybe for another $5 I can get a second copy stamped "Office Library" in big red letters on the softbound cover, so I can keep that in the office to read.
If I get an MP3 or two or three or an album, and for $5 I get a jewel box with a CD for the car, or a poster of the band... those are also value adds.
Key 1: technology will not prevent copying
Key 2: giving the content creator the revenue means removing all the thieves from the middle of the process
Key 3: getting "revenue" to exist means giving the buyer a "value-add" to purchase more, and thereby an incentive to purchase, rather than today's attempts to dis-incent the copying.
Good luck.
E
I do not CARE if artists are starving.
NOTHING justifies blatant disrespect for the property rights of the end user who the MAFIAA would have paid fair and square for his content.
DRM is *nothing* but a cash grab, and is abused to enforce concessions against end users above and beyond those required by copyright law.
Honest answer = we all hate DRM cause we just wanna pirate shit.
I mean its nice to be able to transfer it to different devices and such, but come on, who doesn't want shit for free.
Because, sometimes they just have to touch the stove.
-YY1
DRM protects the rights of content creators (aka, artists) and helps to prevent people freely distributing their works and with no compensation.
Wrong. The artist's agency and lawyer(s) protect the rights of the content creator, which are worth very little without access to a mass market, which is guarded by DRM structures. What DRM does is protect the exclusivity rights of a mass media publisher, who defines the mass market to their advantage only. You said it yourself, "freely distributing." If you're trying to stop the distribution of a work, it's because you're protecting the distributor's rights through artificial scarcity in a world where it no longer requires massive publications facilities and real capital investment to mass produce media. The publications industry is in dire need of justifying itself, and does so as a only as a rights manager and promotional mechanism, and forces the rest by using cartel agreements to corner, and limit, the mass market potentials that exist. The physical publishing and distribution itself has long since lapsed into obsolescence. Let alone encumbering cheap reproductions with digital locks to approximate the scarcity that used to exist in the days of yore, to justify their continued business practices.
In short: Artists have been getting screwed for decades, and are probably, in the long run, screwed out of their fair share by DRM. DRM's purpose is to enforce who gets to do the screwing. That is all.
> No they won't. Certain segments of the population are technically astute to find cracks to bypass DRM, like sophisticated PC gamers,
Handbrake is one of the top Mac downloads. If those people are finding this stuff then it is hardly rocket science.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The movie industry keeps parading highest grossing films ever.
The music labels get more and more profit.
Declining sales? Well, we've also seen over the 30 years increasing DRM and reduction in consumer rights.
Ever think of looking there?
As for something better, software developers found it in the late 1990's. It is called Software As A Service (SaaS). It doesn't work for other forms of art, like movies and music, but it is extremely effective for software.
Consumers don't own a copy of the software behind Facebook or Twitter or Steam or Origin or Instagram or Google Docs or Office 365. Even though they don't own a copy, the masses are more than willing to invest fortunes on the platforms. Using them requires an Internet connection, and it requires that their servers are running.
When you start editing your documents on Google Docs or Office 365 you do not own a copy of the editor. You are relying entirely on software outside your control.
My company is just one of countless others that have made a hard choice; the choice to get Office 365 where they do not have a copy of the software. On the one hand this greatly simplifies our IT department's job, it is one less piece of software to install on thousands of computers, and it is far cheaper to license.
But the down side is we don't have our own copy of the software. If our Internet access goes down, Office is down. If Office365 servers have maintenance we are dead in the water. And most relevant: we are entirely at the mercy of the company for access to the software.
Services come and go over time. Usually they die when their customer base shrinks low enough. It is unlikely that Google Docs and Office 365 will suddenly stop services today, but we can be sure they will turn off the servers at the end of the product's life. That will be either when a new product is available or when most users have moved on. Anyone relying on their services at that time will simply be out of luck; whatever they had on the services will be lost.
This protects the interest of the creator --- they will get paid. And they can get paid on an annual or per-use basis.
It impacts the customer in that the consumer because, in order to keep their business competitive the vendor must continuously add features and functionality. But it also has the fatal flaw: the moment the creator stops supporting the product, they are left with a useless smart-client with no server.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
No author I know of uses DRM; distributors use DRM. It's all about protecting the distributor's right to enrichment, not about the content creator.
I might have some sympathy for content distributors if they didn't simultaneously screw over their customers and the authors. One by DRM, the other by Hollywood Accounting. You know, that scheme where they pay out nothing in royalties because nothing ever makes the studio any money?
No. It's defective by design. It cannot co-exist with general-purpose computers, and so the content cartel seeks to eliminate general-purpose computers and put them under some form of centralized control. That is, in a word, evil.
There is no "right" to prevent others from reading or copying a work. I'm all for authors and musicians getting paid, but I've been arguing for over a decade now that the way to do that is to eliminate copyright and establish a royalty-right, modeled after songwriter royalties. I can sing "Tangled Up In Blue" for free at a party; if I play it at the bar, using it to make money, Dylan gets his nickel. I'm happy if people share my book or my album for free; if they make money off of it (putting it on an ad-supported site, for example), I want a cut. (The book is not CC licensed but will be DRM free; I intend to CC license a later edition after my publishing contact expires.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
It's cheaper to buy the series at the end of the season than buy the channel packages forced upon us by monopolies called cable companies.
http://jamendo.org/ is loaded with high quality music. It might not be the the latest FM crap that big media has trained you to want, but it surely is high quality works of art for people that actually listens to music.
New signature coming soon.
Steam shows what a good implementation of DRM can do. I can install steam and download and play my computers games anywhere I want to. Offline mode is available as well, although then the game is locked to that computer. Unlimited free copies don't work in games where there are hackers anyway. People actually complain about games being too cheap on steam because then a hacker will buy a couple copies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JK_Wedding_Entrance_Dance
Wedding dance made famous. Really innovative and interesting. Drove sales of the song, which was a year old, right back up the charts on both Amazon and iTunes. I couldn't help but chuckle. If that were done today ala Dancing Baby http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/after-five-years-dancing-baby-youtube-takedown-lawsuit-nears-a-climax/ then would sales have been driven? How about the charity donations the couple setup? If that were posted today would YouTube immediately yank it? I'm betting yes. DRM could have even prevented them from using the song since it's been proposed that watermarks prevent re-recording. Would DRM have prevented it's use? If the RIAA had their way it would have!
Artists sweat and worry about loss of sales but examples like the above prove that being able to freely use a song don't mean it will lead to poor sales. I understand the concern. Frankly if I were a writer going through a big publishing house being forced to sell my e-copies at higher than bound copy price I'd be VERY worried. what I don't understand is the shortsightedness. Look at the latest SimCity for kripes sakes - I was going to buy that until I heard about the B.S. The new XBOX? always on for DRM purposes? FAIL! I will not be buying one.
So no, I cannot think of a single instance where DRM in any way enhances a product such that it's a good thing for the consumer aka the customer. Want to pin the customer down, tie his hands, force feed him? Better hope no one comes along with an even slightly decent alternative because unless I'm forced I will not subscribe to DRM laden crap and I will break it any chance I get when I'm forced into it ala books and movies. Hell since DRM was lifted from music I've been BUYING bunches of it off of Amazon!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Rather than focusing on DRM itself, let's turn things back around and focus on why we have DRM in the first place.
There is a demand for rented content. A movie that I want to watch once, but have no desire to keep. A book I want to read once, but don't plan to read again. I song I want to hear when I'm in the mood to listen to music, but don't want to own. Not everyone wants these things - you might not want these things - but a lot of people do, including me. I also want to own things, but for now let's focus on the things I don't. I might be willing to pay $15 to buy my own copy of a movie, but I only want to pay a tenth of that to rent it.
It used to be that you could go to a video rental place and rent a movie on VHS. It was possible to copy them, but most people didn't own the necessary equipment (a second VCR), there was a loss of quality in the copying process, and the blank media cost about as much as the rental. Similar issues with copying a show of the TV or a song off the radio (minus the part about the second VCR).
In the digital era, data can be copied perfectly with no loss of quality and the media to store it on is cheap.
As a consumer, I want the option to rent a movie for $1.50 or buy it for $15. Content providers want to offer me this choice. How would you suggest that this should work?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Software isn't physical. If I walk into your store and steal a soda YOU the owner of the store have nothing to sell. If instead I walk into a store, duplicate the soda on the shelf, and walk out - what exactly has the store owner lost? Which of these most closely resembles copying a digital file? Which of these is actual theft? You know that copying a file isn't theft right? It's not prosecuted as such and yet you call it that.
I'm not saying it's okay to copy everything and anything but your analogy isn't right. Given the option to buy something at a reasonable price, with low friction, more people than not will pay. Speaking for myself - my purchases of music have gone WAY up since Amazon started selling 99cent DRM free MP3. Likewise my e-book purchasing PLUMMETED when collusion among the publishers occurred. Likewise with movies which for some odd reason seem to be getting more and more expensive now after a period of time where they were more reasonable - I now purchase mostly box sets and used. DRM might even prevent that someday and then what do you think I will do?
BTW why is it that if I do a job, say build a house, I get paid just once? How come those people get to live in it and I get no rent for my single event of hard work after the sale? How come an artist is entitled to being paid over and over for their single act of work? Why is their work somehow more important than a tradesman's? What did artists do before recording and duplication? Perhaps a poor analogy but think about it. Why are entire systems of hardware and ecosystems of OS being warped to support one group's "rights" exactly?
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Don't ask how to reduce free copying, ask how to increase sales. If you can increase sales while also increasing free copying, you get more money. If you are in it to be heard, or to make money, that's a win. The only way it's not a win is if your primary goal is control rather than either money or being heard.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Is that it limits information sharing.
The biggest problem that the internet caused is that it destroyed culture. Worldwide.
Everyone has this common generic culture now.
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.
It's a pretty well documented phenomenon, and a great Vanity Fair article from a couple years ago describes this perfectly: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/01/prisoners-of-style-201201
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.
So, not everyone needs to see the same movies, listen to the same music, and so on. It is perfectly fine to limit these items, to make sure there ARE "have-nots". People don't HAVE to have every single goddam song in their library.
We really do need to limit the spread of information, through costs, DRM, or other means, to cause society to advance. Right now the world is frozen in 1995, because information is too open.
Seriously, it is perfectly fine to not know things or to have things. Your life is going to be just fine. But the democratic population wants everything.
Limit them.
The only people who see ads claiming piracy is bad are the people who paid for the content.
I think you spelled the word corporations wrong. It is not spelled a-r-t-i-s-t-s.
Look at how artists get paid today. The baseline assumption in your statement is that DRM prevents piracy, for which there is exactly zero evidence. So any way that an artist gets paid today is a way they get paid in a world without DRM.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
This is just consequence of the society we live in. We are measured for what we own, so if we can`t pay for something we take it anyway. I think that if the author wants to DRM his/her stuff out it`s a right they have. But usually who goes for DRM is not the creator of the content, but the business that wants to capitalize on the work as much as they think possible.
As the battle for more draconian DRM is fought to harden DRM, consumers will accept it less and less. This will eventually make profits drop because of DRM, we just have to hold the ground. Maybe that`s a naive point of view but I rather believe that can happen than not. I`m sure I`ll make my part.
There`s so much content available nowadays that people can always get DRM free options. For instance: I can hear to heavy metal only available in DRM free services or play games sold without DRM.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
Software isn't physical.
Relavance? Services aren't physical. Should your next massage be free? How about your next doctor visit?
If I walk into your store and steal a soda YOU the owner of the store have nothing to sell.
If you make copies for free, I have nothing to sell.
If instead I walk into a store, duplicate the soda on the shelf, and walk out - what exactly has the store owner lost?
Any chance of making a profit.
Which of these most closely resembles copying a digital file? Which of these is actual theft?
Would it make you feel better if I called it "profit nullification?" Since someone put time, materials, money and effort into getting the soda on the shelf, or software on the server, any hope of personally benefiting from this is gone.
You know that copying a file isn't theft right? It's not prosecuted as such and yet you call it that.
I call it what it is, not the ephemeral legal definition of the moment.
I'm not saying it's okay to copy everything and anything but your analogy isn't right. Given the option to buy something at a reasonable price, with low friction, more people than not will pay.
Bittorrent still exists, and there's a lot on there. I guess that must be because everyone is so anxious to pay for inexpensive music and that expensive 20-50 dollar shareware that lives on the Crack sites.
Speaking for myself - my purchases of music have gone WAY up since Amazon started selling 99cent DRM free MP3. Likewise my e-book purchasing PLUMMETED when collusion among the publishers occurred. Likewise with movies which for some odd reason seem to be getting more and more expensive now after a period of time where they were more reasonable - I now purchase mostly box sets and used. DRM might even prevent that someday and then what do you think I will do?
You'll steal. You've made it pretty clear.
BTW why is it that if I do a job, say build a house, I get paid just once?
You're being paid for labor, not the house.
How come those people get to live in it and I get no rent for my single event of hard work after the sale?
If you built the whole house yourself, you get a *lot* for it. If you didn't, you were paid for services.
How come an artist is entitled to being paid over and over for their single act of work?
There's no other way to make it economically viable. Artificial restrictions are the only thing that keep artists in business, and minimally at that.
Why is their work somehow more important than a tradesman's?
A tradesman does something that requires less originality and is repeatable. The market bears a lower price for it for this reason. Creative work, by definition, is unique, and may sometimes have greater value. This is not a certainty, however, and I would agree that sometimes, often in fact, that a tradesman is more valuable.
What did artists do before recording and duplication?
They sang for their supper or had wealthy patrons. The restrictions were inherent in the instruments of production (single instruments played in one place, or paintings on a single wall) needed no artificial help.
Perhaps a poor analogy but think about it. Why are entire systems of hardware and ecosystems of OS being warped to support one group's "rights" exactly?
Because OSs are this generation's television, a medium which had inherent restrictions, like being tied to a time slot, with profitable commercials. This is no longer the case.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Sure, I'd be happy to help them but first they need to help themselves. Ask themselves where the MAJORITY of their money goes, take some action like SOME of the book authors have been doing. http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ Instead of insisting on more and more and more they should perhaps look for where their inefficiencies are and fix those?
Maybe when they have done something to clean up their own damned mess they can stop calling their CUSTOMERS thieves I'll have some sympathy? I'm all for spending reasonable amounts of money for things I want. But $25++ for a movie? $20 for a CD? 99cents for a song I like is fine - without DRM - and I buy these fairly often (sorry not when they cost more). More money for an e-copy of a book than a paperback? F-that!
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
DRM will stop the casual sharing of music. For example, high school kids...back when I was in high school and MP3s were just coming out, we would regularly trade music with our friends because we couldn't afford to buy all the music we wanted and it was easy to do so. Kids nowadays are probably either using something like BitTorrent or iTunes to acquire their music. If they're using iTunes, it's not so easy for them to share that music because iTunes somewhat locks it to their account. So, it may generate some additional revenue for the artist by way of additional sales because DRM prevents the music from being shares by the casual listener.
OTOH, it probably does more harm to the artist by preventing all those other people that would have heard their music for free illegaly, become =fans, paid for concert tickets, etc. Artists really need to get rid of their hard on for DRM and realize that it's doing them more harm than good. They should focus on making money off the scarce goods like concert tickets, merchandise, fan exclusive deals, etc. Use music or art to get people to like you, then you can sell them other things.
DRM is trying to artificially create scarcity and it works to an extent, but see above, it's doing more harm than good.
I can only think of one: Digital lending libraries.
N/T
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The "studies" you refer to found that teenagers are into music. Nothing more, nothing less. They then claim "the same 'people' (age group) that steals music also buys it. Some teenagers steal, others buy. It's not the same people. It's just that teenagers are the largest market for new music. Teenagers steal the most music, listen to the most music, and talk about music the most. That doesn't mean thieves are purchasers.
My employer as well as our direct competitors are looking to use what might be considered DRM to protect servers that run hypervisors for untrusted VMs.
We use SecureBoot to make protect against attacks against our unattended installation / provisioning layer. We use it to make sure binaries aren't seeded into our environment. I.E. we're using trusted computing.
DRM doesn't do anything but hurt sales and company reputation. People that want to pirate will break the DRM and pirate regardless. Trashing your DRM means nothing to them except for being a brief challenge. But if you prevent a paying customer from using their CD/DVD/game console as they wish, THOSE are the people that will quit giving you cash! They won't buy your next CD. They won't buy your next DVD. They won't buy your next game console or game.
But, like all attempts at legislating morality, it's doomed. Just doomed.
I get at the point of DRM when I say, "Check out this Joe Satriani!"
The kid says, "Hey, that's cool, let me rip that."
"Dude. We've got to keep Joe Satriani in guitar strings. Let me give you this. I'll buy another copy."
This is an example of busting somebody's chops in a positive way. The focus is on the artist, not the fact that the kid's nascent grasp of economics is both immoral and a threat to the market. Better still, there isn't a godforsaken politician or lawyer in sight.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If I walk into your store and steal a soda YOU the owner of the store have nothing to sell.
If you make copies for free, I have nothing to sell.
If soda becomes copyable, then it becomes worthless. Same thing happens when a store buys two sets of Super Bowl hats and shirts printed with each team as the winner. Once one of the teams loses, half are junk. All in all, the world would be a better place if food became free (maybe not soda, but still), regardless of the fact that an entire industry would be out of business. Do you really want me to pull out the buggy whip argument?
What you are arguing against is mass distribution and centralized control over culture. Sure, the free flow of information causes trends to spread quickly to the furthest reaches of the world, but that does not mean there is little variation. Remember when Beverly HIlls 90210 made it popular to have a fucking bowl-cut? Some called it a mushroom. I think someone in Hollywood made a bet that they could popularize something stupid and won. DRM does nothing to create "haves and have nots" it just makes people pay more - everyone still sees everything, they just may wait for it to be iin the $5 bin at Wallmart if they can't pick it up used sooner than that (DRM tries to disallow resale).
If you actually want diversity then you should want the free flow of "stuff" to destroy Hollywood and the record companies. That is the only way to bring about local or regional (non-centralized) creation of cultural stuff (fassion, music, movies). I'm not advocating this BTW because while individuals and smaller groups will create better diversity, it sometimes takes a big budget to make great quality. I'm just saying that DRM does nothing to relieve the stagnation you're concerned about. It only serves to concentrate wealth, and if you think that will lead to diversity then you should revisit your contrast of decades past to the present.
the problem that you've got is the resentment of several years - decades - of abusively-high pricing. people feel that they've been ripped off, so they have no qualms about copying. *UNFORTUNATELY* that mind-set is now entrenched, and an independent artist selling their own creative material is, sadly, going to get hit by that.
whom can the finger be "pointed at" for this situation? well, some would say the record labels for being greedy. but there's a counter-example which illustrates that that's not *entirely* the case. in japan, they love anime. so much so that the fans actually support the directors in every way possible. when a film comes out, the director distributes it first on bittorrent. the fans copy it, enjoy it, buy the t-shirts, buy the merchandise. they distribute it, they translate it, they produce their own dubbed soundtracks, and redistribute them freely.
but here's the kicker: when the official DVDs come out, they PULL THE BITTORRENTs AND GO OUT AND BUY THE DVD.
bear in mind that this is japan, but that's still absolutely stunning. and it puts us westerners lamenting a situation where our poor artists cannot make a living in this day and age to absolute shame. food for thought.
Ideologues don't allow the possibility that there are ever valid exceptions to their dogma.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
DRM (in particular always-online DRM) is absolutely essential in combating hackers/exploiters/cheaters/griefers.
Cheaters will always find new cheats. But if you paid $70 for a game and know you'll basically throw that money away (and/or get your entire Steam or whatever account banned from a lot of other games as well), you'll be far less likely to cheat given that each time you're banned you'll have to shell out another $70 to cheat again.
My
So, you're saying that art, music and software have no value, because they can be copied. You therefore, believe that nobody deserves to make money on any copyable item, and that therefore, these industries do not deserve to exist. So, programmers, artists and musicians are mere leeches while folks who manufacture say, Uzis are good and deserving folks because their product can't be digitally copied. They should make money.
Interesting moral argument.
And food should be free. Tell you what, go start a botfly collection and give them unlimited meat to eat and breed in. Let me know how that works out for you.
By the way, buggy whips became obsolete because of a major technological shift in transportation methods. Instead of limited buggy whips, there are limited expensive cars and accessories. The economic structure of providing transportation accessories didn't change, just the type of accessory. Money was still paid. Argument is null.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I don't like DRM in the consumer world, DRM'd media files, games, etc. I agree with all the arguments against using DRM there. Criminalizing decryption is a travesty of justice.
However, there are entirely different contexts where DRM can be a useful tool. For example, in a past job, my company was receiving a sensitive data feed from another company where we had to promise to revoke our internal access to certain parts of the data feed upon demand. We were not worried about internal hackery, but we were worried about inadvertent copies being made within our enterprise for reasonable reasons. (Backups, caches for speed, etc.) We self-imposed DRM, and it was a great solution.
Is that it limits information sharing.
The biggest problem that the internet caused is that it destroyed culture. Worldwide.
Everyone has this common generic culture now.
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.
I dunno where you're from, and I also dunno when you first started using the Net
I can point to you a lot of counter examples to what you have claimed, but to make this comment short, I'll list only one example --- the Fractal Arts
Before the Internet, people hardly know what the hell "Fractal" was
They might have seen some pictures on some magazine covers
They might have been told by their friends about amazing fractals
They might have seen a documentary or two (mostly from the PBS stations, something like Nova) that illustrate what "Fractal" is
That's all the exposure of Fractal to the human kind .... until the Net
With the Net, people get to visit sites with tons and tons of fractal pictures, they get to download the software and play with them, they get to share the formulaes, they get to discuss how to do what on online forums, and so on ...
To many --- including yours truly --- I've benefited a lot from the Net
I've learned a lot of things I never knew existed --- even from a site like Slashdot
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Ask anyone of us who used Music Match that was bought out by Yahoo Music that was shortly there after dumped. I lost all of my legal content to bit rot as the writable disk I stored my keys on were unreadable when I needed them.
"Because, in my eyes, when people stop getting paid for what they do, they'll stop doing it."
So, I take it you've never gone to Burning Man? Strange as it may seem to you, some of us actually do stuff without being bribed.
Everyone here is talking about DRM in the context of a product, or some form of art that is meant to be distributed. Yes, I mean things like music, games, movies and books. And I agree with the majority view here, that for things like that DRM is harmful because of how it distorts the market. DRM is futile, because if one person out there can break it (out of the millions or more who get access to the protected file) then it's out in the open and spreads as fast and as far as anyone's interest in it.
But there is a valid use for DRM, and one where it can actually work fairly well. It's in corporations and other organizations that need to control documents and their distribution. In this kind of environment, a small audience has any access to the DRM-protected materials at all, This is the realm of companies where their IP is really their own, and corporate espionage is a major factor...pharmaceutical companies are a good example of this. At the NIST Cybersecurity Framework workshop earlier this month, a senior executive from Merck described how DRM in conjunction with identity management has been very helpful in protecting data in this way. DRM used this way has several differences from DRM used to protect, say, a motion picture being shared via Netflix. One, it's about attribution of ownership as much as about restriction of unauthorized use; if a file from a Kindle gets into the wild, that doesn't really get Amazon to pay attention to anything. But if a file from X person from a company shows up where it should not be, then that raises alarms. Two, it's not exposed to the same form of threat; even if a document leaks, the effort to decode it does not become a free-for-all. And yes, the threat may be fairly sophisticated, but detection doesn't have to be perfect. If you're facing a determined attacker and they pull 100 documents, even a 1% detection rate is enough to catch that something is wrong. That, in turn, provides an enormous deterrent to employees who may be considering doing something on the side for a payout or revenge because they are disgruntled. In this world, DRM doesn't need to be perfect and doesn't incur the same distorting effects as it does when applied to creative media. It's not a use that is broadcast nearly as widely to the world, for a few obvious reasons, but it's a fairly large one all the same. Oh, and the specific nature (as far as how it works) of the DRM solutions tend to differ as well, given the different aims in this context.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Christianity has no bans on Bible copying. Try actually READING a Bible; you will find no such ban.
Then take it as "at least one Christian Church placed such a ban." When you read everything as obtusely as possible and invoke "no true Scotsman" for anything you don't like, you'll never get far.
that was only the Catholics (not all of Christianity)
Before Martin Luther, how many recognized branches of Christianity *weren't* under the purview of the Catholic Church?
Learn to love Alaska
You're never, never, ever going to stop piracy. I'd go so far as to say that I believe it's part of human nature. Trying to stamp it out completely is not only futile, it's counterproductive; the more restrictive you make things, the greater hassle it is for paying customers, and the more annoyed they get, and the less positive sentiment towards that content provider. Content providers need to accept that this is the way things are and just let it be. They're still working under an obsolete business model, and until they wake up and accept reality, they're going to keep banging our heads against the wall trying to stamp out something that can't be stamped out.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
That whole withhold an easily digitizable good from people while providing a DRM free analogue copy thing was tried in the mid to late 90s. It was really hard to get digital stuff online even though you could buy it and rip it trivially. You may remember how well that worked.
I recently acquired a lithography of M.C. Escher that has that same white wall - with stones taken out and "funny figure" in front.
Much to the dismay of Escher, he was very popular in the "psychedelic" hippie community in the mid sixties up until his death 1972.
Gerald Scarfe added the "asshole" judge to "the wall" cover art - not very surprising if you have noted the obsession of Anglosaxons with buggery.
I make the case that you can not take "artistic occurrences" out of a bigger context.
The masters from impressionism, expressionism, futurism, suprematism, abstract, cubism... were subscribing to making art just for the heck of making art, not longer making art for a superpower-that-be.
This is also true for the music composers at that time and the Linux project now.
Yes, engineers are the truest artists in my viewpoint, trying to give plastic and functional shape to (irrational) aspirations of a society - the essence of art.
The essence of the artist is to communicate - like holding a mirror to his community on their and his aspirations.
Nowadays artists want to make a living...okay, but don't be surprised as an arty farty snobbistic collectioneur you will not find me sympathetic to DRM and your copyright lifetime ad absurdum.
In fact, don't be surprised that I don' t care about your "art" in the first place.
John_Chalisque
If it were me, I would:
For example, in a container format that supports separate streams and meta-data, store an x.509 certificate or PGP signature by a licensing representative of the artist of the content's digest/hash and the customer's details (e.g. name).
Have playback/display software show the content that has such a signature differently, e.g. a badge with the customer's details from the signature.
Allow a user who has copied the content from someone else to buy just a license for the content, and all you need to do is:
Of course, some changes to media consumption software would be required to support this model.
I would definitely be motivated to license more of the works I have copied if it was easy, didn't require downloading new versions, and had something more attractive to me. There is currently almost nothing to distinguish works I have paid for from ones I haven't (except that I store them separately). For most users, the only distinguishing factor is that the one they haven't paid for is easier to use.
DRM was NEVER about "for the customers", nor was it EVER about "for the producers" , it's about how the content DISTRIBUTORS screw the paying public.
Unfortunately the reality of the situation is "won't somebody think of THE CHILDREN" (er,I mean The Starving Artists) arguments are all BALONEY.
DRM doesn't help starving anybodies, because it only takes ONE Copyright Violation and The Cat (er I mean The Content) Is Out Of The Bag and it's a free-for all.
The End Result is that DRM is NOTHING more than a major inconvenience to legitimate users.
DRM as a concept is EVIL, just like CENSORSHIP as a concept is EVIL.
Sure you can always think of some argument based on "in a pure and perfect world, this makes good sense", but IN PRACTICE all that happens is that perfectly good and upright citizens GET ROYALLY FUCKED OVER.
EVERY SINGLE TIME, LEGITIMATE USERS GET ROYALLY FUCKED OVER.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Try to find a pirated version of SimCity. A simple search shows that at least the torrent sites still don't have one.
It means that everyone who is playing the game, has payed for it.
But it also means that everyone who PAYED for it, knows that everyone else who is playing it ALSO payed for it.
People don't like to feel like suckers. If one person crosses a red light, others will follow because you feel like a fool being the only person standing still. If everyone is seen by you to evade their taxes, you feel silly paying your taxes in full. If your in a traffic jam and one person uses the emergency lane, others follow.
BUT if you see the person using the emergency getting a fine by the police, you feel better about staying inline. Even in the criminal legal system, punishing offenders is partly to keep non-offenders non-offending NOT by creating fear but by creating the sense that justice will be done in the end and people are not simply suckers for following the law.
A LOT of libertarian types, especially the type who call the cops if their neighbor dares to slam the car door after nine o'clock, don't like this. There is an idea that people can either police themselves (once I earn enough I will start buying the games but now that I am poor I deserve the choice to pirate them) or that everyone else should work for free (check MMORPG sites for people demanding games are 100% free, business models be damned).
For game companies this goes further then DRM however, if one person cheats in a game, others will follow. If you see that cheaters are banned, normal players won't resort to cheating to "keep up".
Want MORE proof? Fine, from a different field, the Groupon (or outrageous deal) effect: If you go to your favorite muffin store to buy your 2.50 muffin of the day and you suddenly see an immense line and everyone in front of you is getting the same muffin for 1.25, how do you feel?
If on Steam you buy a game for full price and next day it is half price, how do you feel? It is not that you objected to the original price OR that you mind to much if one day there is a muffin special and some people get 25 cents off. But everyone paying half and you the only sap they managed to sucker to pay full price?
It is the reason a LOT of supermarkets, especially those who know they are dealing with an impulse buyermarket, don't bother with coupon discounts. Because if there is a discount in front of you that you can't take advantage of, you feel cheated and the discount deal which is supposed to create a positive feeling will instead cause a negative association. Try it yourself, if there is 3 for 2 deal and you only can buy 1, do you buy it? For an item you don't really need? The better the deal, the more likely you are not to, because you don't want to be a sucker.
There are other examples. Companies that give incredible deals to new customers while overcharging renewing customers will soon loose any brand loyalty. See the effect that everyone advises you to demand a new top of the line phone when your mobile contract runs out. You can get it, so if you don't, you are a sucker.
A lot of pro-piracy people claim that a pirated copy does not mean a lost sale. They are right, in the instance of the individual copy, sometimes. But would you feel good having payed full price for a game, knowing that everyone around you hasn't? If you do... well... good for you, you are a saint.
DRM is not just about getting people to pay for their products but KEEPING the notion that it is NORMAL to pay.
The content industry has failed MISERABLY at this:
is recordings of it. as an international artist myself, and one who does not rely on any sort of mechanical reproduction, i say fine... art is a thing of the moment. all the people clamoring for their digital rights is silly in my eyes: because by the time people look at my art in a recording, it is only a memory... im an opera singer, and while THIS VOICE can shake the air and make athiests believe in god, RECORDINGS cant.... but recordings and pictures are art now....at times... that they are supplanting and pushing out older, more human body based forms of communication shows their power and also insignificance (part of our decay right now is cause of the dearth of artists helping society evolve)
Living for just the art? Please!
I'm not sure what medications some of the above posters are on, or perhaps their glasses are a tad too rose-colored to understand reality, but I've got some news for those people: I'm an author and I make a living selling the stories I write. I love telling stories. I love writing. But if I wasn't making an income selling books to people who enjoy reading, I would not be able to afford to write. The only way I was able to truly get a start in writing is in thanks to my very understanding and supporting family when I decided to go all in, stop working regular employment, and start devoting myself 100% to writing. It took over three years with no income to write that first book. Do you think I could continue writing the books that many of you have read if I wasn't earning income from the sales of those books? My colleagues and friends, John Scalzi, Spider Robinson, David Brin, Walter Hunt, and Kristine Rusch--do you think any of them magically get their income from somewhere else?
If you showed up at work one day and your boss announced that they were no longer going to pay you for working at the company, that you would be doing your job for the love of doing your job, would you stay with that company? No, you'd go right to your desk, clear out your personal items and walk right out the door! Otherwise, how would you pay your rent and buy food, software, clothing, transportation, etc.? You can only leach off friends and family for so long before they are going to throw you out and tell you to get a job.
Get a benefactor such as Count von Moneybags to support you for life as an artist? That practice disappeared sometime back in the 18th century. You'd better go relearn your damn history. Back in the 1600's an artist had to produce for their benefactor or they would get cut. Even Leonardo Da Vinci, one of the greatest geniuses in history, was dropped by his benefactors at one point or another. Mozart had to beg for commissions. By the 18th century, benefactors had pretty much disappeared. We live in the 21st century. People with enough wealth today to be a potential benefactor are more interested in increasing their wealth than they are in supporting the arts. A writer, on average, produces one book every two years. Do you really know anyone who is willing to sign over a $50,000 check each year to support someone who walks around, relaxes and daydreams all day? I'd get fired from any job doing that.
Anyone can be an artist, as a hobby. But if you want to devote yourself to that art as a living, how are you going to put food on the table? Paint a picture of food and it magically appears. No. You have to create something that is good enough that people are willing to exchange money in exchange to own a copy of that work for their own enjoyment. I like to write programs, some of which I have shared with others for use or education. But does that make me a professional programmer? No, I'm just a hobbyist. I make my income by writing entertaining stories that people want to buy because they enjoy reading them. When you hear someone say "they live only for their art," behind that person is either a very hard working spouse or partner or they've somehow managed to land a sizable grant that supplies them with enough money to pay for housing, food, art supplies, electricity, heat, water, and other necessary things.
Those people I've known over the years who said they lived for their art, not money, are no longer artists. None of them made it much farther than their late 20's before they gave up on their art and became professional laborers. As a professional artist who makes his living selling his art, I am not foolish enough to forget that there is a very serious business side to what I do. And if I do not manage that properly, I can really screw myself over.
Back on the main topic: DRM? I hate it! It has nothing to do with protecting my copyrighted material. I have never seen DRM to anything to save me from having a copy of my work stolen from me
Whew! This water sure is cold!
> Because, in my eyes, when people stop getting paid for what they do, they'll stop doing it.
Bzzt. Wrong.
Wash your eyes with industrial cleaner.
The quality of given endeavour DROPS when money is involved; and yes, plenty of people produce, I would argue, the best, content for no money.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
I'm an author of technical books, and many people have asked me to distribute my books in an unprotected PDF format. If I do this then I will nolonger get paid for the copy. Which means there's less incentive to write more. As people will want the next book given away for free.
Sure I can make money from speaking or consulting engagements, but the point is to get paid for all my efforts. Surely you get paid for yours at your job, or does your mgmt as you to wor for a few unpaid weeks or months a year? As a content creator why shouldn't I?
So, you're saying that art, music and software have no value, because they can be copied
I never said that. I was only pointing out that your analogy was flawed because it was a buggy whip argument. If there were a major technological shift that made soda free, then stores would not sell it, and all of the stock on the shelves would be given away. What do you think happened to all of the buggy whips on store shelves after the transition to automobiles?
You're entire attack on my nullification of your argument was to assume I meant the most ridiculous thing possible and then attack that.
If you want me to make a more concrete argument, then here it is: the people who are pushing DRM today are in the distribution business. They used be a valuable and necessary part of getting music into the hands of consumers. Their services will be no longer needed soon, so they should find something else to do for a living before the well dries up.
Do you really want me to pull out the buggy whip argument?
Yes. Here, I'll do it for you. DRM is today's buggy whip manufacturers' mechanism for forcing the buggy whip to stay in use.
Watch this TED video for some hints about what's going on beyond the desperate measures of the Content Industrial Machine.
I have some first-hand evidence tha music has always been a performance art, and so has a lot less value as a recording. The intrinsic value of a recording is also MUCH lower than the record companies are tying to sell it for. In any economy with such a difference between selling price and actual value, the bubble eventually always bursts, however the record comapnies are living in denial. They are fighting to keep an already broken economic bubble alive by duct-taping up the cracks with DRM. The ultimate end is still inevitable, and unavoidable, that the music will find its own value, hence the current existence of "piracy".
My dad is a professional musician (drummer). He doesn't care about people recording/copying his music, in fact he welcomes it. Why? Because he is an incredible drummer that has taken multiple decades to develop his playing skills and he focusses on doing live events because that is where he shines and can blow people minds. Not via some MP3 file. He considers people copying hs music good for him as he sees it as spreading his name and good advertising for his live gigs.
Perhaps if musicians focussed more on being able to play their instruments well in a live setting where you can charge ticket money, instead of trying to make large amounts of money for the rest of their lives off of artificially monopolizing maybe a few hours work it takes a good musician to write and record a track, they might come to a better undersanding about where their own value as a creative/productive musician and that of their recorded music really lies in society.
DRM useful ? Only as long as the provider of the DRM management stays alive. I and a few thousand other users of the Sony HDD 250 DVR were just given doorstops this last two months when Sony and Rovi stopped supporting the proprietary feed of data needed for TV program listings, and clock. They refuse to provide a clock set screen or software patch. The DVR is now almost useless. You can approximate a time set per a few methods on the web, but without the feed from Rovi, the device is a lot less useful. Any fulltime DRM is at the mercy of the provider. I'll never buy Sony again...and no, they never rootkitted me.
The worst effect of DRM is it's insistance that EVERYONE is a Pirate, thief, dishonerable... however you put it, the COMPANY that adds DRM just doesn't trust it's customers
Sites like Baen Books have successfully released non-DRM books for years without piracy significantly affecting their, or the author's income... INCLUDING E-Book copies of an author's full collection bound into first run hardbound copies.
People who actually understand the implications of DRM are justifiably outgraged by being considered a thief simply because they want to BUY an artist/writer/film maker's work
Unfortunately some of them react in the most predicatble way... in addition to "voting with their wallet" they obtain non-DRM files for works they choose to enjoy.
The typical person, and despite all indications to the contrary I feel that includes me... tends to have an original book/CD/DVD as well as archival copies or use copies to enjoy while leaving the original safely stored...
Some of my favorite writers I enjoy so much that the signed hardbound book is on the shelf, a paperback copy loaned out to a friend, a digital copy on one of my tablets, and the audiobook on my phone so I can enjoy it while working/driving/relaxing...
I've heard this argument ("Locks keep honest people honest") so many times, and I'd like to relay a little story from a couple days ago.
I do firmware development for deeply embedded systems. Typically each platform has a selection of cross-development toolsets. For example, for ARM Cortex M3, you can use a GCC variant (Code Red, RIDE, etc.), IAR, Keil, or a few others. These are niche markets, relatively speaking. Instead of buying a $199 Visual Studio license, we're talking $5K-$10K per development seat, unless you go the whole open-source route (right now, let's just duck that issue).
I recently bought a license for one of the commercial/proprietary offerings, it works very well and more importantly it's mandated by the customer. Fine.
Here's where it gets tricky. The USB security dongle, and the associated PC software, was such a pain in the balls, I spent almost 3 hours messing with the thing, re-installing, calling tech support (who was helpful and sympathetic, FWIW). I finally got everything working, just moments before I started crushing granite in my bare hands.
At the end of my last phone call with tech support I remarked, jokingly but seriously, "You know, it's stuff like this that makes me want to just pirate the software." Tech support laughed, apologized, and all was good.
This experience and this concept wasn't new to me, but please let me re-iterate: (1) Good, honest people will pay a fair price for things that warrant it; (2) Pirates/criminals never will pay, almost regardless of price; (3) DRM and anti-piracy measures that frustrate, insult and infuriate your paying customers really do backfire.
The problem with this mozumder idiot is that he doesn't even make any logical sense: he's simultaneously arguing for and against the same thing. He argues against mass distribution and centralized control of culture, and then turns around and argues for it by pushing his elitist "professional tastemakers" and arguing how everything was better back in the days of mass distribution and centralized control of culture. It's not like Hollywood made different movies for different regions back before the internet.
One thing I DON'T STAND is when you buy a DVD and you're forced to watch a 3 minutes video stating that piracy is illegal. Come on! I just bought the fu***** thing and am still bothered with a warning I CAN'T SKIP?
Look at iTunes. $.99 per song, which many people can afford. No silly DRM on the MP3s (at least the later ones).
It's *easy*, convenient, and cheap to get a new song.
It's easy, convenient, and...well...affordable to get a new album there.
I don't buy much music, but when I do generally I start looking on iTunes.
When I want to buy a video game? Steam. Fast, easy, convenient, and because I refuse to spend more than $10 except for /very/ exceptional games, cheap.
Make movies that easy/cheap, and I'll buy them too.
Make ebooks that easy/cheap, and I'll buy them. (I've bought from fictionwise, Kindle, Baen books, and a few other online books stores (at least those that don't try to charge more for an ebook than they do a paper book.))
DRM is never good for the consumer. It never makes things easier, cheaper, faster. I never gives me more choice. It's created by the old-school 'forced scarcity' model that simply doesn't apply on the internet.
In that situation, your art-producing friends have lost out on my money, because my choice is to keep my choice, and not buy DRMed crap.
And because it's only 99c, for anyone that's not impoverished, there's little incentive for pirating it.
I thought record labels were still selling their music through iTunes only in specific countries. Is one necessarily "impoverished" if he doesn't have a shell account in the correct country and a credit card with a billing address in the correct country?
Casual mobile games of the type once done with flash are much quicker to produce, so they can be sold for 99c.
PC games made with Flash or with one of the third-party environments that can compile to SWF can use a keyboard. Games for iPhone and iPad can't because developers can't assume that everybody is willing to buy a $40 Bluetooth keyboard to play a 99 cent game. Say I were to spend $1,200 to buy a Mac, an iPad mini, and a developer license. What's the best way for an iOS game that isn't in a point-and-click genre to work around the lack of a keyboard?
if anyone could read the word of God, why would they come to (and tithe) their church?
The Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses has produced modern-language translations of the Bible in dozens of languages, funded by voluntary donations. But even with an understandable Bible, it's still a good idea for a congregation to meet regularly.--Hebrews 10:24-25.
The problem is not about preventing people from copying works. The problem is that the current system of monetizing creative works is based on a scarcity model of physical media that doesn't function any more. Instead of putting a lot of effort into trying to fix a broken system, we need to be looking at ways that society as a whole can reward creators that doesn't depend on them "selling" certain numbers of itemizable media, like books or downloads.
It wasn't always the case that artists' revenue depended on sales. In Roman civilisation and even in medieval courts, artists were retained by wealthy individuals simply for the kudos of it. There's nothing to stop that situation or a similar system happening again. Of course, there's no room in that picture for the entrepreneurs that are fighting for the current system, but that strikes me as not a bad thing at all. Everyone else benefits.
The issue isn't DRM, the issue is *invasive* DRM. "Look something up in the manual" is DRM. "Type this key I sent you into the installer" is DRM. The purpose of DRM should be to encourage people who haven't decided yet whether they're going to buy your stuff or pirate it, to do the former, because it would be easier. People who have already decided to pirate your stuff, are going to pirate it *anyway*, and if you make your DRM suck balls, people who haven't decided yet will decide to pirate it. But there is a legitimate reason to have *some* kind of DRM, because otherwise, people who haven't decided might decide to just grab a copy from their friend, cause hey, free!
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I've counted a dozen redirections before I got a chance to play my movie. Imagine the hill you have to overcome to want to go through that *again* to watch it a second time.
But wait, maybe that is the point of it -- to depreciate the value of a movie so that you will want to move on and consume the next one. This would certainly explain the prevalence of spoilers...err, sorry, "trailers".
It would also explain why good movies get low ratings/promotion -- otherwise we would only watch good movies. So we get the inverted pyramid of ratings that we have today. Check it out for yourself. If you have cable, hit your guide button and scan through the ratings they have assigned to movies. Unbelievably horrid POS will have ratings of 2 and 3 stars, routinely. Classics that are played weekly and sometimes all day will be lucky to have a 3 star rating. Inverting the ratings would be an improvement in accuracy.
The only nice thing I have to say about DVDs is that sometimes a "Special Edition" DVD will have something truly special -- it will go directly to the menu so that you can actually play what you bought without having to use a vomit bag or aim your shotgun at your television.
I come here for the love
For streaming, it's fine. I don't care that Pandora and Netflix have DRM on their product. I know that streaming a Netflix movie is a rental, and there's no legitimate reason to make a copy of it. However, I don't have Linux on my media computer, so I have no idea if the big streaming services work with it. That's the only reason I can think of to not use DRM on streaming media.
DRM on things I own is unacceptable. I just don't buy thing with DRM.