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How DRM Won
Nerval's Lobster writes "In 2009, when Apple dropped the Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions from songs sold through the iTunes Store, it seemed like a huge victory for consumers, one that would usher in a more customer-friendly economy for digital media. But four years later, DRM is still alive and well — it just lives in the cloud now. Streaming media services are the ultimate form of copy protection — you never actually control the media files, which are encrypted before delivery, and your ability to access the content can be revoked if you disagree with updated terms of service; you're also subject to arbitrary changes in subscription prices. This should be a nightmare scenario to lovers of music, film, and television, but it's somehow being hailed by many as a technical revolution. Unfortunately, what's often being lost in the hype over the admittedly remarkable convenience of streaming media services is the simple fact that meaningfully relating to the creative arts as a fan or consumer depends on being able to access the material in the first place. In other words, where your media collection is stored (and can be remotely disabled at a whim) is not something to be taken lightly. In this essay, developer Vijith Assar talks about how the popularity of streaming content could result in a future that isn't all that great. 'Ultimately, regardless of the delivery mechanism, the question is not one of streaming versus downloads,' he writes. 'It's about whether you want to have your own media library or request access to somebody else's. Be careful.'"
XBMC takes care of alot of that. it is a grey area of course but for the time being legal.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Its not that bad if you think of the cloud streaming more as a service, like XM or your cable service you pay to have access to be entertained by there content for the duration of your subscription
There's hundreds of plug-ins, extensions, and rip programs to grab the content. It has to be de-coded to be played, moving to streams only turns the tide slightly.
It seems we're coming to a middle ground though, as most streaming DRM does not significantly get in the way of most (read:Windows) users.
Forget TV shows, it is incredibly hard to find a downloadable high-def movie trailer, all websites seem to insist on streaming even that.
subject says it all start building you OWN media collection and store it in the TOR cloud :)
ac
Every note of music and frame of video ever created in the history of the world is available virtually on demand. What is this media collection you speak of? A playlist of favorites stored on a server somewhere. Please, peddle your FUD elsewhere.
MP3's being compressed, are pretty vulnerable to bitrot. You can buy DRM free music from EMusic, but they no longer offer the 4 redownloads per song. You better hope it transfers perfectly first time and never corrupts. Backups usually don't help here unless you are keeping alot of backups, which most house holds have at most one or two backups at a time. It is unlikely that one would notice bitrot before the backup is overwritten with the corrupted file.
This is why I've been working on getting FreeNAS+ZFS working so I have some bitrot protection on my mp3's.
Since they've removed the redownload option, I've stopped buying from emusic. Their prices have gone up much faster than inflation, and the value and features of their offering have decreased.
we buy what we want to watch.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I use iTunes Match which means all my files are stored in the cloud. But, before the cries of "evil lock in!", iTunes lets me download all my cloud files at any time DRM free, so I can listen to them offline or even archive them.
Am I upset I can't download rented media DRM free? No. Why would I be upset about that? It's the same deal I had with movie rental stores. If I buy it to own, I definitely want a download. But I haven't run into many services at all where I purchase something and I can't download it.
Streaming services such as Spotify let you make local copies of the files if you want. There's no real downside.
DRM is only an issue if it gets in the way of letting the user do what they want. Make a service that is convenient and easy to use, that works the way the user wants it to work and they won't care about DRM. e.g. Steam, Netflix, Hulu etc.
Music streaming services have the nice feature of me not needing to worry about storing, tagging, organizing my music collection. If the service is good and people are willing to pay for it that's all that matters.
Before responding about how much you personally care about and dislike DRM please note that you are not a part of the "they" I was talking about.
Now music, on the other hand, is completely different. If there's music that I like, I go out and actually by the CD's and rip the music myself. Music IS something I consume repeatedly and it is very worth the money for me to have a big library of my own music. Pandora has its uses, I've found several artists I like through it!
Streaming isn't destroying anything and as long as there are people somewhere who are willing to pay to watch or listen to something as many times as they want, other people will sell it that way. If there is a demand, there will be a supply. And demand is generated by your tastes. It's kind of silly to think of a future where EVERYTHING is ONLY streaming ALL THE TIME because that won't happen as long as there is money to be made!
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Plug your line out into a line in somewhere else and record it. So fucking hard, I know...
> It's about whether you want to have your own media library or request access to somebody else's
I'm as much in favour of digital rights as the next /.er, but I was so happy to drop my music collection for a streaming service. No more backups, not more stress recovering the collection from an old hard drive when my main computer dies, no more "oh I don't have that song copied to this device yet". Oh, and it's cheaper too! I spend about 50% as much each year on music and listen to a much wider variety.
DRM won the day Steam started selling games that you can't install without connecting to a server that you do not control, and people didn't descend upon Valve with torches and pitchforks. They proved that if you make it convenient enough, people will put up with unreasonable restrictions.
If I buy something, I expect to receive in exchange for my money everything I need to make use of it in perpetuity. If I still have to rely upon their servers, I have not received what I paid for.
For the same reason the NSA has a mic and camera up everyones bunghole. We are a nation of apathetic, vapid, content consumers whose primary concerns are trivial and shallow.
Silence is a state of mime.
The first DRM I saw was funny formats on Apple ][ floppies, followed by DOS format misfeatures, followed by dongles, followed by own-code in apps, followed by ... ite ad infinitum.
Note that you don't see these forms of DRM any more. What you do see is that, each time a new format of anything comes out, some DRM vendor talks the publishers into "protecting" their work[1].
As long as new publishers are suckers, the DRM vendors will suck them in, and make lots of money off a technology that motivates people to not buy the publications.
The publishers lose two ways!
--dave
[1. One of my former employers almost got taken in by this scam, but the techies caught it. ]
davecb@spamcop.net
Streaming content is much akin to having satellite or cable. You don't own or control the content. You pay for access to content. Sometimes you can access content on-demand, sometimes you have to catch it when it streams. In current models you are paying for access to an ever changing catalog of entertainment. Streaming Netflix is great. I don't have to buy or rent a movie to check it out. If I want physical media I can go to the store or online and buy it. I know that with a streaming service, like any online service, that there is a chance that one day the content will not be there. I do not foolishly assume I'm buying the media, only that I am buying access to a library of content that can change or go away.
If you don't like streaming, go buy the physical media, or simply don't support the service.
With CDs and DVDs / blu-ray discs I can rip my own formats, I get to keep it and between UV and amazon I can get "free" streaming versions of most of my films and music anyway.
It shouldn't be a case that the new way is worse than the old way of doing things but that's the case, imo.
The idea of DRM winning or losing is a bit too black and white here. I'm not against DRM; I'm against *bad* DRM. You've probably seen one of the images showing the difference between watching a pirated movie and watching a paid DVD/blu-ray, showing that the pirated viewing experience is far better. Similarly, most early attempts at DRM resulted in a far worse media/game consumption experience for paying customers. That's what I'm against, and when that proliferates with complete acceptance I will consider the war lost. Services like Spotify, Steam and Netflix get it right, though. Yes, they use DRM, but they found a balance where the paid, rights-restricted solution is actually more convenient than the pirated solution. Most common use cases are easy, and I'm happy to pay. In my opinion, when the legal option becomes nice enough to use it doesn't matter if it includes DRM, and I don't blame content distributors for doing so. The issue of DRM is really pretty different from the issue of rent versus own, though. If you rent a digital item it necessarily has DRM, but DRM isn't the issue there.
.. you know the rest.
Future historians may call this period the "dark ages', because the cloud is ephemeral, and will fade and be forgetten. The fact that only 10 percent of silent film still exists is a good example from the recent past. And when the digital copies are gone . . . what then.
Where's the "DRM" in streaming music? All the formats I play outside of my CD's and records (namely digital) are streams. They may be local but that's just a formality - they're still streamed. What's the point here?
Disagree. Most of entertainment is rarely reused and ultimately disposable.
Do I want to replay a game I already played through? Usually no. So I would rather rent it for a few hours (until I win or get bored).
Do I want to watch a movie again after I saw it once? Usually no. So rent makes sense.
Do I want to play a piece of music again? Usually yes, but if it is not available I will shrug and move on. So rent makes sense but it gets borderline. Some people are attached to their music.
Do I want to use a piece of mission-critical software repeatedly? Usually yes, and in many cases if it is not available then productive life is basically over. So DRM-free ownership makes sense.
The old system: I pay 10 dollars for an album (lets call it $1 per song, to make the math easier), and if I ever lose the album, I lose it forever. I can make a copy of it to back it up, but if I lose all copies, it's gone forever.
The first DRM system: I pay $1 for a song, I can only play it on one (or 5) devices, and if I ever accidentally delete it, it's gone forever and I never get it back. This is the DRM system that sucked, and everybody hated.
The "new" DRM system: I pay $1 for a song, and I can play it on anything that supports the DRM mode (not everything, granted, but all of my devices, so it's cool with me). If I lose the file, I just download it again. If I want to listen to it on my second device, I just download it again. When I'm connected to the internet (most of the time for me) I can access and download every song I've ever bought in seconds. This is a good deal. I am willing to pay the same amount I used to pay for a song and accept the risk that apple might someday disappear in exchange for this convenience.
It all comes down to a trade off, but this "new" deal seems fair enough for me. It is more convenient than either of the old systems, and this way I don't have to carry around a 50GB external hard drive to have access to all of my songs on my 8GB iPhone. It costs more long term, but it is a better system.
I'm not looking to get the same functionality/features from a streaming service than I am from purchasing digital copies of media. I go in knowing that terms/prices can change at will, but I accept that for an "all I can eat" service.
while this is an issue, I don't see it as a serious one. Who do you know that actually pays for online content? Sure, some of my friends use Netflix but they routinely complain that their selection sucks. Whenever this happens, we log onto my computer, watch a movie [TOTALLY legally] and if I liked it, I download it when we're done. Sure the law sucks, but if it's that easy to [OBEY], why do you care? A common comeback to this argument is "well, what about the non-tech-saavy people?" to which a PhD friend of mine has replied "I don't see why those who can't use the Internet should have access to it." It sounds mean, but it's akin to letting people who can't pass the citizenship test vote. If you're so dumb that the only way you can get media is by paying money to hollywood to rent it, that's your problem.
I think the average person is starting to realize what it really means to have extremely restrictive caveats on their media or even question the basics of media "ownership".
People who can't understand why they can't transfer things between iTunes and other systems or just get any content they want on Netflix. These are the people that have started to care if their game console is profiling them or if the remote hosted software they use every day is building a complex profile around them without their knowledge.
When DRM gets in the way of the average consumer they will choose rightly and harshly. When privacy is very obviously violated, people will fight.
The subtle growth of all this mess has now gotten so ubiquitous there is no hiding it, and so people have finally taken notice.
I subscribe to Spotify and I'm well aware of the consequences of its DRM; if I stop paying the monthly fee, I don't get access to any music I may have listened to during my time as a customer.
My question is - what is the alternative to DRM for services like Spotify? It seems to me that for such a service to exist, DRM must exist unless you choose to rely on an honour system.
As long as I pay them £10 per month, I get unlimited access to a massive library of tunes on my PC, as well as my phone. I can be on the train home and decide I want to listen to song x by artist y, and within seconds it is streaming to me. Best of all, it doesn't cost me whatever the going rate for an MP3 is these days.
If we lose the DRM, the proposition changes quite significantly. It becomes £10 for unlimited music with no DRM - why would I do anything other than subscribe for one month and download their entire library onto a massive hard drive, for later playback at my leisure?
For me, it's a trade off between cost and no DRM. Let's say I listen to 50 new tracks each month using Spotify Radio. At the iTunes price of 99p per track, this will cost me just short of £50. It's great that these tracks come without DRM, but for that same £50, I can get a return flight to Europe with a low cost airline. Or feed myself for a week.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
I legally purchase music, movies and TV shows when I want them. The OWNERS of that content. The people who PAID MONEY to develop the content are then fairly compensated. After I pay a trivially small $3-$4 I am then able to watch a $200 million dollar movie on my Apple TV.
Where exactly did I go wrong? How is it a nightmare for me? Just STFU and watch the movie and stop being cheap assholes who annoy the rest of us.
...because the large library of available content, whether that's legacy items like 80's TV on Hulu, or user-generated stuff from YouTube. Newer content competes with a vast amount of less expensive older content, which diminishes its value. Once "newness" becomes a content's major selling point, dramatic savings can be realized: I've finally managed to monetize obstinacy and apathy. A move ticket rivals the monthly cost of Netflix, where I can watch many movies a month, so all I have to do is wait long enough or not care and watch something else. Some of those "Classic" films are pretty good. Video games are fun too. When file sharing began, content lost value due to its availability from free sources. Then everything was put into digital, and now it has lost value due to the availability of other content. In this manner, media approaches its actual value: I'd really have to love something to want to own a hard copy, when realistically I'm only going to watch something once. So I think we really pay content hubs for breadth of selection rather than delivery. As long as the fees remain affordable and the advertising doesn't get too aggressive, it's an epic win for consumers. On top of all that, I still view entertainment as a luxury. I could get a hobby. Or read a book. Or go outside. Boredom may be unpleasant but it's not fatal, so all this stuff is only as valuable as I allow it to be. I can always just turn it off and walk away.
Streaming doesn't replace ownership. Streaming replaces radio.
From the submission: "meaningfully relating to the creative arts as a fan or consumer depends on being able to access the material in the first place. "
But you can.
This was the Giant Fucking Issue that the RIAA/MPAA have still only dimly figured out. People were perfectly willing to pay for convenience. "How do you compete with free?" You make paying more convenient than not-paying. So in 2000, could you listen to music digitally? Not legally -- not easily -- so people pirated. Then iTunes came along, and buying got easier -- so people bought.
Now, you can listen to that Rihanna track or NiN, or Justin Bieber any time you want. If you want to grab a version to mash into something else, that's easy. The services that are winning are winning because it's become easier to pay a pittance and grab a song from "the cloud" than to carry a digital file around with you or buy a CD. All three may well be preferable to pirating a copy when you don't know what you'll get or if a threatening letter will arrive six weeks later.
Streaming can be genuinely convenient, but it doesn't mean it is married to DRM. I would very much like the option of being able to stream and download content that I paid for in a non DRMed version for when I want to have the content now and save it for later. Just because current streaming services popularly use DRM does not mean it has "won".
You're basically calling streaming services a replacement for owning a digital copy, but they're not the same thing. As everything, distribution of content especially has move online, streaming services are replacing Blockbuster and other video rental services. For the amount of content you can consume they are considerably cheaper than buying the content.
There are plenty of services, iTunes and Amazon particularly, that sell you digital media and can't revoke your access one you've purchased it. You can download it and burn a physical copy. There are various ways of removing the DRM (ignoring the legalities of whatever country you happen to be in). Netflix hasn't killed iTunes and isn't likely to, neither has Spotify.
I don't see DRM as the issue here. If you purchase something and the terms of the purchase are that you can access it "as long as the company allows you to access it", this is different from a legal agreement that requires the company to provide access to it indefinitely. Something like Netflix has nothing to do with DRM because you are not purchasing content, you are buying access to it. The idea that companies can just on a whim take content away that you purchased, no they can't, unless you agreed to this when you purchased it, or if you never actually purchased it in the first place. And why would companies go away from "selling" content and move completely to a subscription model. Last time I checked, they make a lot of money off sales. Why would they want to stop doing it? A lot of people claim they want to own physical or digital copies of everything locally. That's fine. But I think more and more people are moving towards just wanting "access" to things, and not having to worry about managing files and discs themselves. And if a digital purchase is guaranteed to be permanent, it may be even more valuable to some than a local copy (which can be broken or lost).
Frankly, I don't even care anymore. I don't pay for anything that's DRM encumbered unless I don't care about it. That is to say, I just opt to not fall in love with anything that supports DRM, because it doesn't want my love, just my money. It's easier than I expected.
There's plenty of free stuff out there, and if you're going to pretend that all this DRM-encumbered stuff is the highest quality stuff out there then you have bigger problems than DRM.. you're delusional! I don't even mind if we lose the bulk of this garbage forever.
It can by definition never "win". We're only a planet of complete morons who believe every bullshit.
How does "Neval's Lobster" even think we can actually *hear* the music, if it's just "encrypted before download"? The recipient MUST have the key and MUST decrypt it before playback, and before decompression for it to be processable as music by the human brain again. Fuckin' COMMON SENSE!
And the recipient is a machine under physical control of the owner, with a CPU that gets this list of decryption commands and this key, and gets instructed BY THE USER to follow it exactly.
NONE of this can be enforced by the server or organized crime (Content Mafia). The user is completely free to handle the key and decrypted data in whatever form pleases the machine owner. Including not following the Content Mafia code at all, and just decrypting it and putting it into a Gnutella share, like it ought to be.
End of story.
Why the hell is everyone so stupid nowadays, even here on Slashdot (!!), and just blindly falls for this DRM bullshit? HOW? How can a human being be that stupid?? This is Darwin Award territory!
And why does every duck down and accept the bullying by the Content Mafia? They are STEALING YOUR MONEY! And hand you purely IMAGINARY "goods". Don't you even realize that?
I, for one, say: If they only give us a mere worthless *copy* of the result (e.g. music) of the *service* of somebody else (the actual and ripped-off artist), then they will only get a mere worthless *copy* of the result (money) of the work of somebody else in return.
Let's see them buy something with this (note the "SPECIMEN").
The basic objection to DRM is that when you buy something and it's DRMed, you don't really own it. If the DRM servers shut down, you can't move your purchased product to another device. (And this isn't just tinfoil-hat fantasy, it has happened more than once.)
A streaming media service is more like renting the content. I don't really care about the DRM because I don't own the content.
I buy music as CDs and I rip them. It's sort of silly that I take possession of a physical CD since I want a set of FLAC-encoded files, but that's how I guarantee I get lossless quality and don't have to deal with DRM.
As long as I can still buy the content I want without DRM, I have no objection to streaming services using DRM.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I'm currently subscribed to (big name streaming service) and going through all the albums that have placed on the yearly Pazz and Jop album poll. (I'm up to the 1980's now.) That's about 2 - 3 albums every day I'm at my desk, listening to each album twice. For ten dollars a month, that ain't exactly tragic.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Also need to keep in mind that streaming music/video/etc. on cellphones uses more power than downloading the file at full speed. Granted it seems like a small difference but it's just like the CPU power utilization case - fast as possible to idle or slow and steady - except the idle state is a lot better for power for cell radios.
And I don't understand how people can think streaming has nothing to do with DRM. All the content provider has to do is delete their link or change permissions to download the link, and the consumer is in the cold if they couldn't download it in advance - and streaming streams tend to be difficult to save to disk. While agreeably they do not imply each other, it's easier to DRM streaming than a completely downloaded file... and people tend to not know the difference "hey it works!"...
The only advantage for streaming is for content that the user only wants to view once - and never again. Then it saves space. If streaming becomes the only method of distribution, yes indeed DRM has won.
At least until someone figures out how to save the stream and make unauthorized copies... but this still means DRM won.
It's called bittorrent.
No terms, no conditions, irrevokable.
Convenience won.
Nonsense like this is just another reason not to trust The Cloud, aka, Some Other Guys Computer.
Data isn't really yours until you have it on hardware that YOU control. Until then you just have access to it at someone else's good grace.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
DRM is not inherently bad per se as much as the companies that opportunistically use it to turn media purchases into EaaS just because DRM allows them to get away with it.
DRM stops you from infringing copyright, and ostensibly that is all it is used for so the feds won't put a leash on it.
Since DRM is basically a control tool to rob you of power and put it in the hands of the vendor, and makes you subject to their whims, it also gives them power over the market.
DRM abuse should be attacked on a consumer protection front, as on a copyright protection front we have already lost.
It's going to be great when everyone gets on the cloud bandwagon. I just can't wait until we can identify loony lefty liberals and then take all of their mp3s, videos, software, hell even their personal documents away from them for disagreeing with me.
My eMule is alive and kickin'!
another tin-foil hat comment. Steam's DRM is an example of DRM done right. Deal with it. Even if it were unnecessary, the games cost $5. I'll be as sad if I get locked out of them as I will be if the milk in my fridge spoils. Pray tell, what platform do you use to play non-DRM games that also has a social network built into it, achievements, holds 75% sales, and is owned by a company that makes the best games of all time (half life, portal)? Didn't think so. Face it. There is no perfect platform. But Steam is so close, it's worth it.
I have no problem with the like of Netflix, where I do not pay to "own" a particular movie, but to have access to the collection during a time period. I pay for 1 month, I have access to the entire collection for 1 month. That's not buying the movie, but thas is not masquerading as such.
Now, if we were to talk about cloud "buys", that would be a different story. Think about Steam. You "buy" games, but Steam can (and has, in the past) take them back from you, and you are left with your eyes to cry. The EULA is clear, they can revoke the access to the material you paid at their discretion. That's not what I call buying. If Steam would offer subscription to play tiers of games during a month, I might use it. But as long as I get to pay the price to "buy" but I actually receive a poorly defined term rental, no thanks.
20 years ago we all watched TV, went to the movies, and had no problem not owning the content. Currently, I subscribe to Netflix and have Amazon Prime - just like TV, but on demand. I simply do not care about the DRM.I am renting content from them. It's easy, and it follows me wherever I go (TV at home, iPad when I travel). It's just like it has always been, but with added convenience. I also rent music from Pandora. I listen to music on BART, while driving, traveling. Again, no problem.
I generally don't buy video, but I do buy music. I buy used CDs or "new" MP3s from Amazon, Google or Apple - with no DRM. I own that music. If it's a physical disk when it arrives, I made a digital copy and put it on a hard drive, iPhone and/or USB stick in the car stereo. Then I make a backup. Some of it goes to the cloud, for playback while traveling. Even if Apple, Amazon and/or Google go out of business in my lifetime (not gonna happen) I still have my DRM free music.
I fail to see a problem here.
If you call that "winning".
Yeah, they really "won" when they made Pandora, or YouTube, or Spotify -- where I can listen to anything I want, whenever I want, for free. Ahahahaha... yeah, sure they "won".
One way to look at these issues might be to phrase the question in legalese, particularly DMCAese: Is the inability to interact with iTunes cloud storage, using software other than iTunes, due to a "technical measure which limits access?" If someone were to reverse-engineer the protocol that the iTunes application uses to communicate with the backend, so that you could use the service without Apple's shockingly crappy software, and then if Apple sued 'em under 1201, would a fair judge (please, bear with me and pretend) strictly ruling by the letter of the law, say Apple is right or wrong?
If so, then at least it's DRM according to many governments.
I think Apple would do that (i.e. they would say it's DRM) if someone wrote an iTunes cloud client. And I suspect Apple would win, but I guess that depends on the details of the protocol. But history shows that the fact that nothing works with iTunes is on purpose, part of Apple's wishes, not merely due to laziness, lack of market demand, etc.
I do think that the "DRM" label gets overused and applied to things where it should not (e.g. watermarking to detect who leaked something -- that is not DRM!). But trade secret proprietary protocols cut much closer to the line, and when we're talking about a megacorp's proprietary trade secret for transferring media files .. c'mon. Of course you're going to find a "technical measure which limits access" there. Don't you think?
As for your codec example, if the codec were a trade secret (and there have been a few), then yes, it would probably count as DRM. When you get to non-secret things like a supposedly "industry standard H.whatever" where it's documented, I think calling it DRM might be a stretch. We would at least have to depart from the legalese way of looking at it. If the lack of a h.266 decoder were due to patent holders' prohibition, then in DMCA-speak that'd be a "dishonorable-lawyer-trick measure to limit access" rather than a "technical measure to limit access." ;-) At that point, when people refuse to take your money, you don't need to split hairs and argue about whether or not its strictly DRM. They've already gone to a lot of trouble to refuse the revenue, so leave it at that, and just go download the pirate copy which is encoded with the codec that you're allowed to decode. Then everyone wins.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Theaters were suppose to be a release that even poor people could enjoy now they cant. Renting a movie only reinforces you are poor. And buying if I don't want to eat. I dont down load because that is free advertizing for them, I rather they park their egos and fold so some other form of theater entertainment can take over. Perhaps ones that show streaming media 24 7 cutting out the current movie studios but at a price you can afford even if your family is 20 k a year.
Music subscriptions are effectively a radio station that you can choose the music on. Nobody ever claimed that radio was a bad thing. Digital distribution of actual files will always be an option as well. The only way that subscriptions could become a problem is if one monolithic company gains control of it all and starts trying to force those who play ball on it to give up any other form of sale. But getting to that point would be next to impossible.
The fact is that for the most part, with fairly few exceptions, most people listen to music for a while and then move on to new music. This is why radio has done so well historically. It's also why subscription services are so fantastic. For less than the cost of a CD a month, I can get access to as many new albums as I want. This is a good deal for the consumer and a good deal for the content creators because it cuts out the need for the middle man that's traditionally made their money as a storefront. Competition will keep costs down as long as there is competition between content providers because they are going to want to have the best chance of getting money for their work and if one subscription service is more expensive, it will lose share so content providers need to make their content available on multiple platforms.
Could we end up in a dystopian future where media is controlled by one company that charges an arm and a leg for it? Sure, it might be possible, but it is going to take a whole lot more than subscription services to get it there and if we can't see the writing on the wall as it's happening, we will deserve what we get, because there isn't much of a way it couldn't be obvious that it is coming.
AJ Henderson
What's the problem with DRM? That's right. It's all about people copying music files they didn't pay for and now they're upset.
Why is it people seem to feel entitled to listen to music they didn't pay for? Making a living as a musician was always hard enough. But now that we have 400 years of music all on digital and people have terabytes of music files they've passed around for free, nobody needs real musicians anymore.
Pardon me while I don't worry about DRM.
Streaming media services are the ultimate form of copy protection — you never actually control the media files, which are encrypted before delivery, and your ability to access the content can be revoked if you disagree with updated terms of service;
It's a service. Does anyone actually have a reasonable expectation to be able to access/keep the original source files for the content they watch just because they subscribed for a service at one point in their life? How is this any different than not paying your cable bill and having your line turned off or basically any other service platform on the planet.
Is that I came from a time where this obsession with entertainment was beginning in earnest, the collection of entertainment media was taking off, my parents from a time when people made their own music when they wanted it.
The dramatic difference in today's vs yesteryear's "entertainment/media" consumption is mind boggling, and in some regards I wonder just how healthy it is.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I ripped all 300 or so of my CDs 13 years ago to high-bitrate MP3s.
I still have the original CDs in storage. This turned out to be wise. Although the RIAA gestapo never came calling, they did manage to harass many others. Other media orgs caught their disease.
Slashdotters will understand that the $$$ I might have spent on music in the intervening 13 years has instead been spent on hard drives to contain copies of items I have already paid a personal-use license for.
Why? In the cassette-to-CD transition, those RIAA jerks forced me to re-buy several of my favorite albums, since new cars use a different type of media container. Well, good riddance, and hello portable MP3!
Really what is the downside to losing access to all your media content (Disclaimer: I have a lot both DRMed and not)? Aside from the towering rage from feeling ripped off - it is just entertainment.
Another point to ponder: from the scratching of the first scroll to only a few years ago a house fire or robbery would have done in most people's media. Arguably the chance of losing your media is lower when managed in the cloud (DRM or no).
Can't count the number of times I heard someone say "Why buy anything anymore? Streaming is the future!"
Also can't count the number of times I've been sorely tempted to say "Because the first time the service is unavailable for 72 hours will be the last time you think streaming everything and storing nothing is a good idea."
Disagree. Most of entertainment is rarely reused and ultimately disposable.
What is true for you is not true for everyone... Hell, it's not even true for the majority.
Do I want to replay a game I already played through? Usually no. So I would rather rent it for a few hours (until I win or get bored).
Which is why "replayability" is never mentioned in reviews, people never talk about playing System Shock/Deus Ex/Civ (insert favourite version) or any other classic again.
Do I want to watch a movie again after I saw it once? Usually no. So rent makes sense.
"So I re-watched Snatch/Star Wars/LOTR" again the other day... Again something no-one would ever do. Same with music, software, DRM-free ownership is important. Unfortunately most people wont realise it until its too late.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I saw a guy on the train the other day with a dvd player thing.
He:
* popped it open
* got a dvd case out of his bag
* got the dvd out the case
* put it in the dvd player
* turned it on
* waited through unskippable anti piracy rubbish
* watched his movie.
The thing had a sd card reader on the side, all I could think of was "you idiot". A sd card could house many movies, which he could switch between easily, with nothing unskippable.
Pretty much any media consumer device you buy will play DRM-free content, because DRM lost.
20 years ago: Mr. DRM walks into your house, opens you VHS player, plugs in some diodes, coil and whatnot, then quietly sits down beside it and gives you a node: "you can start watching now, but please don't touch the VHS player". (*)
today: same, it just happens super fast on your ..errr ... his computer.
(*) if you're lucky Mr. DRM will ask you if you want him to remove the stuff he added before he leaves ...
come on people, more analogies so we can get to the core of this business model already!
Steam replaced the install media. If you want you can use the back-up function to create a physical disk to install from. But Steam won't be mailing you install disks anytime soon.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
I mean, I listen to streaming music stations, a lot. If I really wanted to, I could save it; certainly, if I use one of the flashplayers that come up in Linux for listening to sites with Winamp, I could save the flash with any number of plugins... and they *won't* have DRM.
iSomethingorothers, not so much.
mark
They proved that if you make it convenient enough, people will put up with unreasonable restrictions.
I'd say that Steam's success is de facto evidience that a large group of people find Steam's restrictions quite reasonable.
If I buy something, I expect to receive in exchange for my money everything I need to make use of it in perpetuity. If I still have to rely upon their servers, I have not received what I paid for.
So, you expect something that the seller is not offering? It sounds like services such as Steam are not for you.
Note further that you DID receive what you paid for, you just failed to pay for what you wanted.