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'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.
We all love to be outraged when some company or government does something that would piss us off.
However normally if you dig into the details it isn't someone just trying to mess with you but a complex set of requirements and actions that have happened to cause it.
You can disagree with it, but save your outrage until you get the full picture.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
DRM is still the absolute #1 reason why piracy is better than paying outright for a "product" (service?)
He already bought it, go to your favorite torrent site and re-download the video.
I see no moral quandry to doing this.
So sick of the Cloud marketing jargon nonsense... do we have to use it on a tech website, too?
The main thing is if the seller has provided you the ability to download and keep a perpetual copy, then they have definition provided you a copy. At that point any online redownload following a local deletion should be seen as a bonus.
If on the other hand your purchase is not downloadable, then you should be challenging the notion of buying.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I purchased Oregon Trail from iTunes and GameLoft took it out of the store. I'm super pissed because it should still work on my older iPad, but I'll never get to play it again. The icon is still on my iPhone as proof I bought it at one point.
Content owners just don't get it, either because they are too set in their ways, or else because they are too stupid. Piracy's motivation is not, for the most part, a desire to get people to save a few dollars. Its motivation is to empower people to access the material promptly, conveniently, at all times, everywhere. I am willing to venture that most people do not resort to the Pirate Bay and others because it is free. They do so because it is convenient. Official offerings seem to be keen on making it as difficult and inconvenient as possible to access the material, with constraints on where, when, and in what devices you are allowed to play the material. The Pirate Bay and others make it easy and convenient, while at the same time removing those artificial constraints. Also, nobody will sneakily remove any material that you have obtained from such sites.
Content owners can of course do whatever they want with the material that they own. But things won't change much in piracy front for as long as they remain stubbornly anchored in their obsolete business model. Unless, of course, they want to bring about police state-like controls, that is. The realistic choices for them are either to make less money out of their content than before, or to make no money at all.
And people wonder why (and sometimes snicker at the fact that) I still buy physical blurays and music CDs. I rip them (still legal here), put them on my NAS and store them away. I never have to worry about DRM crap.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
I don't have this problem playing my CDs. I put them in my player, any player, and they play.
No matter where I go, they work.
Must be this new fangled technology we hear is supposed to make our lives easier that is causing the issue.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower