Slashdot Mirror
'It's Always DRM's Fault' (publicknowledge.org)
A social media post from Anders G da Silva, who accused Apple of deleting movies he had purchased from iTunes, went viral earlier this month. There is more to that story, of course. In a statement to CNET, Apple explained that da Silva had purchased movies while living in Australia, with his iTunes region set to "Australia." Then he moved to Canada, and found that the movies were no longer available for download -- due, no doubt, to licensing restrictions, including restrictions on Apple itself. While his local copies of the movies were not deleted, they were deleted from his cloud library. Apple said the company had shared a workaround with da Silva to make it easier for him to download his movies again. Public Knowledge posted a story Tuesday to weigh in on the subject, especially since today is International Day Against DRM. From the post: To that rare breed of person who carefully reads terms of service and keeps multiple, meticulous backups of important files, da Silva should have expected that his ability to access movies he thought he'd purchased might be cut off because he'd moved from one Commonwealth country to another. Just keep playing your original file! But DRM makes this an unreasonable demand. First, files with DRM are subject to break at any time. DRM systems are frequently updated, and often rely on phoning home to some server to verify that they can still be played. Some technological or business change may have turned the most carefully backed-up and preserved digital file into just a blob of unreadable encrypted bits.
Second, even if they are still playable, files with DRM are not very portable, and they might not fit in with modern workflows. To stay with the Apple and iTunes example, the old-fashioned way to watch a movie purchased from the iTunes Store would be to download it in the iTunes desktop app, and then watch it there, sync it to a portable device, or keep iTunes running as a "server" in your home where it can be streamed to devices such as the Apple TV. But this is just not how things are done anymore. To watch an iTunes movie on an Apple TV, you stream or download it from Apple's servers. To watch an iTunes movie on an iPhone, same thing. (And because this is the closed-off ecosystem of DRM'd iTunes movies, if you want to watch your movie on a Roku or an Android phone, you're just out of luck.)
[...] My takeaway is that, if a seller of DRM'd digital media uses words like "purchase" and "buy," they have at a minimum an obligation to continue to provide additional downloads of that media, in perpetuity. Fine print aside, without that, people simply aren't getting what they think they're getting for their money, and words like "rent" and "borrow" are more appropriate. Of course, there is good reason to think that even then people are not likely to fully understand that "buying" something in the digital world is not the same as buying something in the physical world, and more ambitious measures may be required to ensure that people can still own personal property in the digital marketplace. See the excellent work of Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz on this point. But the bare minimum of "owning" a movie would seem to be the continued ability to actually watch it.
Second, even if they are still playable, files with DRM are not very portable, and they might not fit in with modern workflows. To stay with the Apple and iTunes example, the old-fashioned way to watch a movie purchased from the iTunes Store would be to download it in the iTunes desktop app, and then watch it there, sync it to a portable device, or keep iTunes running as a "server" in your home where it can be streamed to devices such as the Apple TV. But this is just not how things are done anymore. To watch an iTunes movie on an Apple TV, you stream or download it from Apple's servers. To watch an iTunes movie on an iPhone, same thing. (And because this is the closed-off ecosystem of DRM'd iTunes movies, if you want to watch your movie on a Roku or an Android phone, you're just out of luck.)
[...] My takeaway is that, if a seller of DRM'd digital media uses words like "purchase" and "buy," they have at a minimum an obligation to continue to provide additional downloads of that media, in perpetuity. Fine print aside, without that, people simply aren't getting what they think they're getting for their money, and words like "rent" and "borrow" are more appropriate. Of course, there is good reason to think that even then people are not likely to fully understand that "buying" something in the digital world is not the same as buying something in the physical world, and more ambitious measures may be required to ensure that people can still own personal property in the digital marketplace. See the excellent work of Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz on this point. But the bare minimum of "owning" a movie would seem to be the continued ability to actually watch it.
No it isn't. You repeating the Big Lie won't make it any more true.
Attempting to criminalize my use of what I've paid for it not something you can justify with any existing moral or ethical theory short of pure boot licking corporatism.
I'm a paying customer. You can just fuck off.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Making a backup for your own personal use is not piracy. DRM goes far beyond copyright law, since DRM is intended as a method to bypass the law and apply more restrictions on the customers than copyright law allows. The law has said that time shifting of content is legal, but DRM has the power to nullify that and forbid time shifting. All it takes to work are governments too lazy or incompetent to push back against these things.
Copyright law is very clear about some things. For example fair use allows you to make a private backup copy, and this is supported by law in many countries. If you buy a book, you are allowed to scribble in the margins of the pages, tear out pages, add new pages, make photocopies of the pages that you only keep for yourself, and so on. DRM bypasses that exceptions and attempts to prevent them. DRM wants to make it so that the book you bought can vanish at any time (oops, the bookstore wasn't supposed to sell you that book, so the goons will knock on your door and yank it back). DRM will prevent making private backups. DRM will prevent modifying your copy in any way, as well as make sure that your copy will change if the owner wants it to change.
Copyright laws actually place limits on the copyright holders!
So yes, DRM will make it so that your copy can vanish and you're forced to buy it a second time if you want to see the content again. Of course, smart people will refuse to buy it again but that's only a minority of customers.
One big thing that DRM often does is forbid reselling your copy to someone else. This is something protected by law in many countries. You buy a book and then after reading it you are allowed by law to give it to a friend, donate to a library, or sell to a used book store. DRM stops this cold. You can't give away the movie you bought, or the game, or the music. Copyright law has not caught up to this digital technology yet, so the law will allow options that DRM forbids.
To make this all worse, there have been laws passed to forbid figuring out how the DRM works in order to modify it and gain back your legal rights. This is like making it illegal to force a burglar out of your house.
Anyone who thinks that DRM is merely copy protection is naive.
Sure. But "Digital Rights Management" is just a euphemism as far as the end user is concerned. It is indeed about managing rights, but not the rights of the consumer. It's marketing doublespeak. No, this is entirely about the rights of the person "selling" (renting) the content, and a mechanism for doing an end-run around copyright terms and limitations. Thus the term is really dishonest, and deliberately misleading to end users. No, Digital Restrictions Management is actually far more accurate of a description of what DRM is and does. It's not an ignorant thing people say like those who use "M$." Rather it's an accurate depiction of what DRM is intended by vendors to do. I say "vendors," rather than content creators, because these days content creators get abused as much as consumers do.