Slashdot Mirror
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.
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."
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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
I go to work every day. I make programs for my employer. I get paid for that by the people who have commissioned me for the work. I go home and I also make programs there, on my own time, for my own entertainment of creation, that my employer does not have any rights to (this is outlined in my contract with said employer). These are programs that follow my vision of what I want to do. My vision of worlds that I want to create. My own personal "Mona Lisa" or "Last Supper."
I do not expect to ever be paid for these programs, but I do this anyway, because they are practice for my skills, my labor of love. When I release one of these programs, they will have my signature in the code... they will be mine... they will be my vision of elegance that I share with the world. These programs will be my legacy, and I expect not one red cent. There will be few who appreciate the programs for the pieces of art I envision them to be, but there may be many will per-use them, and some may even derive from them and put their own signature into the ever growing piece of coded art.
This is the way Artists have worked in the past, and the way they need to work now. To feed themselves, they offer artwork on commission. To instill their own personal love and vision into their creation, they do it on their own time and pour their hearts into it, without regard to "how much money will this grab me?"
In my eyes, the industry of art has perverted the very meaning of what art is. Art is not what we get paid for. We should never be looking to art as a paycheck. We should only look at it as a tool of expression. Expression of our dreams, our nightmares, the human condition. IMO, our ideas are not really worth much as a service, but as a method to break humanity further from the borders we currently face as a species, they are the greatest asset we 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.
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
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.
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
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!"
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
> There are numerous business models involving temporary or restricted access that are in the interests of both creator and customer.
No. There are just TEMPORARY access methods that are in the interests of consumers.
The problem with DRM is that it turns everything into a rental. It doesn't matter if you've paid for a cheap subcription, a low unit cost, or a high unit cost. All of it is a glorified rental and most people don't realize this.
This especially true for any content that is tied to a particular service. The service goes away and so do your purchases.
DRM strips away your personal property rights. It prevents you from using that which you paid for. It prevents you from safeguarding your own personal property.
Corporate shills are so busy screaming about "artists" rights that they have forgotten that the rest of us have rights too.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The problem with DRM is that it turns everything into a rental.
I'm not sure that is necessarily true, but even if we accept the premise, I don't see a problem with rental as long as everyone knows up-front what the deal is.
It doesn't matter if you've paid for a cheap subcription, a low unit cost, or a high unit cost. All of it is a glorified rental and most people don't realize this.
You think someone signing up for a Netflix account with a low monthly fee doesn't realise that they're paying for a limited-time subscription and instead thinks they're buying a copy of everything they can watch on Netflix?
Or that someone who pays a one-off charge to watch a major sporting event on pay-per-view thinks they're buying a permanent copy they can share with friends?
This especially true for any content that is tied to a particular service. The service goes away and so do your purchases.
Part of the problem every time this debate comes up is that too many people assume purchasing is the only sensible way to consume content. It never has been and probably never will be, and my major point is that alternative arrangements aren't necessarily a bad thing for either consumers or producers.
I'm not arguing that if you're making a purchase, on the understanding that you're buying full, permanent access to a work, and someone's DRM scheme then screws up and stops you getting what you paid for, that's somehow acceptable or desirable. I'm just saying you're only looking at a small part of a big picture, and in some of the other parts, there's a case for some sort of DRM.
Corporate shills are so busy screaming about "artists" rights that they have forgotten that the rest of us have rights too.
You do, and one of the most powerful is the right not to pay someone for access to their content on terms you don't like. If everyone stopped buying DRM'd works tomorrow, DRM would be gone on Monday. If customers made it clear that they were willing to pay more for a work as long as they could have a permanent copy, chances are the market would figure out how to price full sales vs. other access models or someone else would come along to fill in the gap.
What you don't have is a right to enjoy someone else's content on whatever terms you feel like or to enjoy it without compensating them at all for their work to create it. That's illegal whether DRM is used or not.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
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?
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
> I'm just saying you're only looking at a small part of a big picture,
Nonsense. I am looking at far more of the big picture than you are. Part of that big picture includes my rights as a free citizen. Also, there is more to this than just the production of some very dispoable pop culture. That's true even of just the copyright aspect.
There is far more at stake here and the wannabe media moguls seem intent on hijacking the discussion to only consdier there very narrow needs.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Sorry, that's another reference that probably makes sense to you but not to someone from the UK.
In any case, voting with your wallet is just about the most powerful tool any customer has. No-one is going to be in business for long, DRM or not, if they don't offer products the market wants at prices it is willing to pay. And no business is going to be as successful as it could be if it keeps alienating its customer base by imposing unreasonable terms or screwing up a DRM implementation in a way that stops people enjoying their purchases.
There are very, very few creative works that are actually necessities today. Almost all creative works are luxuries, and it won't kill you not to have one if you don't like the terms it's offered on. The idea that no-one will offer creative works on favourable terms if DRM is allowed is about as plausible as the idea that no-one would create any new works at all without copyright. As evidence of this, I would like to cite exhibit A, the iTunes Music Store and its DRM-free music files.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
What you don't have is a right to enjoy someone else's content on whatever terms you feel like or to enjoy it without compensating them at all for their work to create it. That's illegal whether DRM is used or not.
Setting aside the errors in what you've just said (e.g. If I didn't "have a right ... to enjoy someone else's work without compensating them at all for their work to create if" I could not enjoy works that the author willingly gave away free copies of), you seem to be forgetting or ignorant of two important things:
1) Even today, the raison d'Ãtre of copyright is the promotion of progress of science, not compensating authors. The idea that authors have a right to compensation for their creative labor is known as 'the sweat of the brow doctrine' and it is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court overturned courts that had mistakenly applied it, in a case called Feist v. Rural, in which they said that it was not copyright infringement for one company to copy a phone book that was compiled by a different company, without permission or payment.
2) In countries where there is a legitimate government, i.e. one that governs with the consent of the governed, copyright not only need not exist, according to the whim of the people as carried out by the government that serves them, but can be more or less arbitrarily written and rewritten as they see fit, whether authors like it or not. If we collectively choose to copy works without the permission of the author and without the permission of the author, it takes just a simple stroke of the pen to make this totally legal. We've done it before on various scales (e.g. non-American authors were not given US copyrights until the late 19th century, architects were not given copyrights on architectural works until 1990).
Indeed, I wholeheartedly support the idea of not granting copyrights to authors for works where the author or a person acting under the author's authority, has encumbered those works with DRM. And further, since those works would be in the public domain, the government ought to encourage and support efforts to crack the DRM systems, and distribute the works to anyone in our jurisdiction who wants them, all in the name of promoting the progress of science. By all means, let authors use DRM -- but don't expect anyone else to help or to respect their choices.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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
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.
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.
Someone else said it first, but it bears repeating:
The flaw with voting with your wallet is this: it isn't obvious. The company doesn't know why you stopped buying their products; from their perspective, you just disappeared. Was it piracy? Was it a competing product? There's no way to know unless you explictly tell them. This is why voting with your wallet sends an ambiguous message, if any at all.