Empathy, my post is about empathy. Even if I disagree with DRM, I can understand how these artists feel. I can understand why some artists think DRM is a good idea.
See, this is where we disagree. I don't understand how anyone in their right mind may think that DRM is a good idea for the simple reason that DRM doesn't accomplish anything useful. When you ask people why they use DRM, you often get the answer: I need to protect my work. Since DRM is incapable of doing that, why would that be a valid reason to use it?
Also: copyright infringers are not your customers, and thus not your concern. Yes, they are using your work without paying for it, but if you somehow manage to stop them from doing that, they're still not buying your products, so in the end getting rid of copyright infringement does not bring any extra money in your pocket. In the mean time, fighting against copyright infringement costs a lot of money, and many of your real customers are pissed off in the process of your futile attempts to stop it. This is not a sound business strategy, no matter how you look at it.
Actually, I think we're more in opposition than you think.:) I may be a musician and software programmer next to my work as a chip designer, but my views on copyright seem to differ quite a bit from yours.
For starters: I don't believe in the phrase "deserve to get paid". Nobody deserves to get paid just because they put a lot of work into something. They deserve a fair chance to make a product that people want to buy, but if they make something nobody's interested in they deserve nothing, no matter how much time they put into it.
I also despise DRM, and not just because there's no such thing as an Open Source DRM implementation. DRM serves no purpose whatsoever. It cannot protect content, it costs a fortune to develop, and the only thing it does is piss off your customers. Why anyone would be foolish enough to invest in that is beyond me.
I do believe in copyright however, but not the travesty that it has become in the last 5 decades. Copyright was meant as an incentive to create, not as a protection for a certain business model. Copyright protects my work from being used by greedy corporations without my permission, but if I go out to sue my fans I'll soon be left without any. Sure that means that some will listen to/use my work without my permission, but they would not have been customers anyway, so I have lost nothing. As an artist, you should focus on those people who WILL be customers.
In a digital age, certain products cease to be scarce. This means you should either go for volume sales and/or focus on those things that ARE scarce. Several artists have already been amazed at how much fans are willing to pay for something that's really rare, like signed copies, limited edition dvds, life performances, etc.
The worst thing for an artist however is to be unknown. Here you have a medium (internet) that will allow you to get your work seen/heared by everybody, practically distributing for free, and yet you're fighting it rather than embracing it. As an artist you don't need to be internet savvy; you just need to find someone who is to do it for you. Besides: setting up a YouTube and MySpace page really isn't that difficult. You just need to invest some time to really get in touch with your fans.
Your idea has a major flaw: DRM does not work. It does not protect your work, will cost a lot of money to develop, and piss off your customers. DRM's not only not the best business strategy, it's the worst! Why on Earth would you want to use it? You would put your faith in Microsoft, a company that can't even protect its own software from being copied, and yet you believe they can keep yours safe?
As for there being no reasonable business strategy for the artist: You're being proven wrong on a daily basis by artists who have managed to make the internet work for them. Learn to sell what's scarce by using that which is not, and you may yet be surprised by mankind.
In other words: you're going to spend a lot of time (and thus money) developing some protection scheme that will be cracked within a week by a college kid with too much time on his hands, which will do nothing to protect your game from being copied illegally, but will at the same time annoy the customers you might get? Sounds like a business strategy to me...
I agree with the above post, though I personally prefer VHDL. That might however have something to do with me having designed ASIC/FPGAs for about 11 years now using VHDL though.:) Both are very powerful languages these days, and I see no problem in teaching a course using both languages, showing how to create the same hardware using different language constructs.
Why would this be Google's problem? Considering the QQ I see from PRS over YouTube dropping their music, it appears that PRS needs YouTube a lot more than YouTube needs PRS' music. If there's no deal, and Google's dropping PRS' music, then what's the problem?
Why should the authors of songs be the ones who bail Google out of their bad decision to bay $1.65 billion for a loss-making idea?
I'm sorry, but that's not at issue here: Authors: pay us X or we won't allow you to play our music. Google: X is too much considering how much we're making from your music, but we'll be willing to pay you Y. Authors: Y is not enough, we don't have a deal. Google: Ok, then we'll just remove your music since we don't have permission to play your music. Authors: That's not fair! Why don't you just pay us X like we're asking? We deserve to be paid for our work, and you have enough money anyway.
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree here. I am not condoning copyright infringement, but this is a business deal between two parties. The songwriters wish to get paid for their work being up on YouTube, but don't like the amount Google is willing to pay. Without a deal, Google has to remove said music from YouTube upon request (conform European copyright law), but when they do so the songwriters protest even more. It is clear to me that they have a very different view of what their music is worth from what it is worth to Google, but they can either come to an agreement or have their music removed. They cannot force Google into an amount just because they think it is justified. Failure to understand this is what makes them clueless.
Question to poster: how does it follow from their statements that the music writers are clueless?
Very simple: they seem to focus on how much money Google is making, and how much money they think their music is worth. The question they SHOULD be asking is: how much money is my music WORTH to Google? How much revenue would Google lose if my music was pulled from YouTube tomorrow, and what % of that money might I fairly claim? They should also ask themselves the question: how much money will I lose/gain if my music was NOT on YouTube? If the payment is not enough for you, then don't complain when Google removes your music.
Please do not confuse DRM with standard encryption techniques. Normally, encryption is used between two or more parties to keep one or more other parties from reading the encrypted material. DRM, or TPM to be more precise, is used to keep the recipient of the material from copying it, while at the same time allow them to read it (otherwise they would never buy it). As such, any DRM that people want cracked will be cracked. I think your example says more about Sky TV than about their encryption technology.:)
DRM is a failure in that it provides the would be attacker with the message, the cypher, and the key. They just try to hide those last two, which is no true basis for protecting material.
... and the article also mentions that it will be a criminal offense for ISPs not to block P2P. Now tell me how you're going to P2P your authorized material? Sometimes I wish people would read the entire article in stead of just the first sentence...
I think you missed the part where ISP's are obligated to block P2P traffic. Since an ISP cannot differentiate between authorized and unauthorized P2P traffic, they have no choice but to block the entire technology (or make a best case effort at least).
I disagree. If you allow the use of such keyboards (and they do), then the amount of attention depends on how much attention the game needs. That means that when you fight a monster close to your own level it needs a lot of attention, and if you fight a monster much lower than yourself it requires little attention. I see few problems with what he did.
There's a difference IMHO between using automated triggerred macros based on game information and using manually triggered macros (which btw are allowed according to the forums) based on what you as a player see on your screen. It is not the player's fault that the game needs so little interaction when you're fighting a low level mob with a high level character.
Even then, the least they could have done was have a normal correspondence with this player, and possibly give him a temporary ban and/or a warning. A permanent ban for something like this for a player who's spent 3000+ hours on this game is way too harsh in my book.
If you RTFA you'll see that he was at his keyboard, but his eyes were more focused on the TV next to his monitor than on his monitor, since the chance of a level 60 priest dying against a level 20-30 mob are next to 0. Just not giving it 100% attention should not be a reason for an immediate and permanent ban.
The link you give seems to go to a thread about using the keyboard macros to display game information on an LCD. That is completely different from the article, where the macros are used to easily perform game related functions.
You forget that it has been explicitly stated in the forums that the use of such keyboard macros is allowed. Whether his eyes were focused more on the tv screen next to his monitor than on to his monitor should not matter in this case.
Your post baffles me, really. There are anti-trust laws in the EU that ever company has to abide by, including MS. If they don't wish to adhere to the law, then don't do business here! If you don't obey the law, the EC will try to assist you in complying, but if you're just draggins your feet to comply with EU law, then the EC will fine you, and severely too.
Now, MS holding a monopoly on the OS market for Intel/AMD based PCs means they have to fully open their APIs and communication protocols; it's as simple as that. What MS has so far produced has been looked at by experts, and been found inadequate. The same goes for some of the licensing terms MS has decided need to go along with their technology. As a monopoly, MS simply is not allowed to do this under EU law, and the sooner they figure that out, the better it is!
If it's DRM'ed I can be short: I will not buy it. It will not play on my Linux system anyway, and most likely not on any of my other video display devices either. What I'd be willing to pay for a non-DRM'ed movie would depend greatly on the download quality. If it's the same quality, then probably half of the DVD price, provided I get all the DVD content. I do think they should make the price depend on how much you upload; that way people are actually encouraged to upload more.
I think that if a customer wants to provide an application to sell, it is likely it wouldn't write it in such a way that it only works on one desktop anyway, so I think your point is moot. They will choose the library that fits them best, and write the application for that library, and it should work on both GNOME and KDE without any trouble.
No, they're complaining because they feel that you can't expect a child of that age to know what is and isn't illegal under copyright law. Heck, most of the time the lawyers don't even know if something is or isn't illegal. Copyright law wasn't written with the avarage citizen in mind; it was meant to act between two commercial parties.
Let me break this to the industry slowly: there is NO technological solution to this problem other than getting rid of the general purpose computer, and the content independent internet. Since DRM has NO influence on online copyright infringement whatsoever, why bother me as a customer with it? If it actually worked, I could understand them using it, but why spend the money and annoy your customers? Please, do us all a favor, and read Cory Doctorow's DRM talk at Microsoft.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/
That one you mean?
Empathy, my post is about empathy. Even if I disagree with DRM, I can understand how these artists feel. I can understand why some artists think DRM is a good idea.
See, this is where we disagree. I don't understand how anyone in their right mind may think that DRM is a good idea for the simple reason that DRM doesn't accomplish anything useful. When you ask people why they use DRM, you often get the answer: I need to protect my work. Since DRM is incapable of doing that, why would that be a valid reason to use it?
Also: copyright infringers are not your customers, and thus not your concern. Yes, they are using your work without paying for it, but if you somehow manage to stop them from doing that, they're still not buying your products, so in the end getting rid of copyright infringement does not bring any extra money in your pocket. In the mean time, fighting against copyright infringement costs a lot of money, and many of your real customers are pissed off in the process of your futile attempts to stop it. This is not a sound business strategy, no matter how you look at it.
Actually, I think we're more in opposition than you think. :) I may be a musician and software programmer next to my work as a chip designer, but my views on copyright seem to differ quite a bit from yours.
For starters: I don't believe in the phrase "deserve to get paid". Nobody deserves to get paid just because they put a lot of work into something. They deserve a fair chance to make a product that people want to buy, but if they make something nobody's interested in they deserve nothing, no matter how much time they put into it.
I also despise DRM, and not just because there's no such thing as an Open Source DRM implementation. DRM serves no purpose whatsoever. It cannot protect content, it costs a fortune to develop, and the only thing it does is piss off your customers. Why anyone would be foolish enough to invest in that is beyond me.
I do believe in copyright however, but not the travesty that it has become in the last 5 decades. Copyright was meant as an incentive to create, not as a protection for a certain business model. Copyright protects my work from being used by greedy corporations without my permission, but if I go out to sue my fans I'll soon be left without any. Sure that means that some will listen to/use my work without my permission, but they would not have been customers anyway, so I have lost nothing. As an artist, you should focus on those people who WILL be customers.
In a digital age, certain products cease to be scarce. This means you should either go for volume sales and/or focus on those things that ARE scarce. Several artists have already been amazed at how much fans are willing to pay for something that's really rare, like signed copies, limited edition dvds, life performances, etc.
The worst thing for an artist however is to be unknown. Here you have a medium (internet) that will allow you to get your work seen/heared by everybody, practically distributing for free, and yet you're fighting it rather than embracing it. As an artist you don't need to be internet savvy; you just need to find someone who is to do it for you. Besides: setting up a YouTube and MySpace page really isn't that difficult. You just need to invest some time to really get in touch with your fans.
Your idea has a major flaw: DRM does not work. It does not protect your work, will cost a lot of money to develop, and piss off your customers. DRM's not only not the best business strategy, it's the worst! Why on Earth would you want to use it? You would put your faith in Microsoft, a company that can't even protect its own software from being copied, and yet you believe they can keep yours safe?
As for there being no reasonable business strategy for the artist: You're being proven wrong on a daily basis by artists who have managed to make the internet work for them. Learn to sell what's scarce by using that which is not, and you may yet be surprised by mankind.
In other words: you're going to spend a lot of time (and thus money) developing some protection scheme that will be cracked within a week by a college kid with too much time on his hands, which will do nothing to protect your game from being copied illegally, but will at the same time annoy the customers you might get? Sounds like a business strategy to me...
I agree with the above post, though I personally prefer VHDL. That might however have something to do with me having designed ASIC/FPGAs for about 11 years now using VHDL though. :) Both are very powerful languages these days, and I see no problem in teaching a course using both languages, showing how to create the same hardware using different language constructs.
Why would this be Google's problem? Considering the QQ I see from PRS over YouTube dropping their music, it appears that PRS needs YouTube a lot more than YouTube needs PRS' music. If there's no deal, and Google's dropping PRS' music, then what's the problem?
Why should the authors of songs be the ones who bail Google out of their bad decision to bay $1.65 billion for a loss-making idea?
I'm sorry, but that's not at issue here:
Authors: pay us X or we won't allow you to play our music.
Google: X is too much considering how much we're making from your music, but we'll be willing to pay you Y.
Authors: Y is not enough, we don't have a deal.
Google: Ok, then we'll just remove your music since we don't have permission to play your music.
Authors: That's not fair! Why don't you just pay us X like we're asking? We deserve to be paid for our work, and you have enough money anyway.
.....
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree here. I am not condoning copyright infringement, but this is a business deal between two parties. The songwriters wish to get paid for their work being up on YouTube, but don't like the amount Google is willing to pay. Without a deal, Google has to remove said music from YouTube upon request (conform European copyright law), but when they do so the songwriters protest even more. It is clear to me that they have a very different view of what their music is worth from what it is worth to Google, but they can either come to an agreement or have their music removed. They cannot force Google into an amount just because they think it is justified. Failure to understand this is what makes them clueless.
Question to poster: how does it follow from their statements that the music writers are clueless?
Very simple: they seem to focus on how much money Google is making, and how much money they think their music is worth. The question they SHOULD be asking is: how much money is my music WORTH to Google? How much revenue would Google lose if my music was pulled from YouTube tomorrow, and what % of that money might I fairly claim? They should also ask themselves the question: how much money will I lose/gain if my music was NOT on YouTube? If the payment is not enough for you, then don't complain when Google removes your music.
Please do not confuse DRM with standard encryption techniques. Normally, encryption is used between two or more parties to keep one or more other parties from reading the encrypted material. DRM, or TPM to be more precise, is used to keep the recipient of the material from copying it, while at the same time allow them to read it (otherwise they would never buy it). As such, any DRM that people want cracked will be cracked. I think your example says more about Sky TV than about their encryption technology. :)
DRM is a failure in that it provides the would be attacker with the message, the cypher, and the key. They just try to hide those last two, which is no true basis for protecting material.
... and the article also mentions that it will be a criminal offense for ISPs not to block P2P. Now tell me how you're going to P2P your authorized material? Sometimes I wish people would read the entire article in stead of just the first sentence...
I think you missed the part where ISP's are obligated to block P2P traffic. Since an ISP cannot differentiate between authorized and unauthorized P2P traffic, they have no choice but to block the entire technology (or make a best case effort at least).
I disagree. If you allow the use of such keyboards (and they do), then the amount of attention depends on how much attention the game needs. That means that when you fight a monster close to your own level it needs a lot of attention, and if you fight a monster much lower than yourself it requires little attention. I see few problems with what he did.
There's a difference IMHO between using automated triggerred macros based on game information and using manually triggered macros (which btw are allowed according to the forums) based on what you as a player see on your screen. It is not the player's fault that the game needs so little interaction when you're fighting a low level mob with a high level character.
Even then, the least they could have done was have a normal correspondence with this player, and possibly give him a temporary ban and/or a warning. A permanent ban for something like this for a player who's spent 3000+ hours on this game is way too harsh in my book.
If you RTFA you'll see that he was at his keyboard, but his eyes were more focused on the TV next to his monitor than on his monitor, since the chance of a level 60 priest dying against a level 20-30 mob are next to 0. Just not giving it 100% attention should not be a reason for an immediate and permanent ban.
The link you give seems to go to a thread about using the keyboard macros to display game information on an LCD. That is completely different from the article, where the macros are used to easily perform game related functions.
You forget that it has been explicitly stated in the forums that the use of such keyboard macros is allowed. Whether his eyes were focused more on the tv screen next to his monitor than on to his monitor should not matter in this case.
Your post baffles me, really. There are anti-trust laws in the EU that ever company has to abide by, including MS. If they don't wish to adhere to the law, then don't do business here! If you don't obey the law, the EC will try to assist you in complying, but if you're just draggins your feet to comply with EU law, then the EC will fine you, and severely too.
Now, MS holding a monopoly on the OS market for Intel/AMD based PCs means they have to fully open their APIs and communication protocols; it's as simple as that. What MS has so far produced has been looked at by experts, and been found inadequate. The same goes for some of the licensing terms MS has decided need to go along with their technology. As a monopoly, MS simply is not allowed to do this under EU law, and the sooner they figure that out, the better it is!
If it's DRM'ed I can be short: I will not buy it. It will not play on my Linux system anyway, and most likely not on any of my other video display devices either. What I'd be willing to pay for a non-DRM'ed movie would depend greatly on the download quality. If it's the same quality, then probably half of the DVD price, provided I get all the DVD content. I do think they should make the price depend on how much you upload; that way people are actually encouraged to upload more.
Damn! We should copy this feature into Linux! oh, wait....
I think that if a customer wants to provide an application to sell, it is likely it wouldn't write it in such a way that it only works on one desktop anyway, so I think your point is moot. They will choose the library that fits them best, and write the application for that library, and it should work on both GNOME and KDE without any trouble.
No, they're complaining because they feel that you can't expect a child of that age to know what is and isn't illegal under copyright law. Heck, most of the time the lawyers don't even know if something is or isn't illegal. Copyright law wasn't written with the avarage citizen in mind; it was meant to act between two commercial parties.
Let me break this to the industry slowly: there is NO technological solution to this problem other than getting rid of the general purpose computer, and the content independent internet. Since DRM has NO influence on online copyright infringement whatsoever, why bother me as a customer with it? If it actually worked, I could understand them using it, but why spend the money and annoy your customers? Please, do us all a favor, and read Cory Doctorow's DRM talk at Microsoft.
"So, because you're incapable of creating anything yourself, you get to whine about others'?"
Perhaps not, but it can be a pretty good reason for him (and many others) _not_ to go to the theater to watch Rocky 88.