Your logic is also rather tenuous. In short, you assume that DRM prevents copying without any real evidence.
I'm not assuming anything -- the 1% was just for arguments sake to show how you would actually approach the "is it worth it" question. Parent had claimed the content owners look at 100% of pirated downloads and start salivating. I'm just pointing out that it's unreasonable to assume that they are that stupid.
Even with DRM, there's nearly 100% availability of infringing content
Just add it to the equation. Sure, DRM is circumventable. The content owner just needs to know if it's a sufficient deterrent so that if they have a compelling product, they make more money with it than without. If the math works out, it's worth it. If it doesn't, they might need a more compelling product, no DRM, better DRM (i.e. DRM that doesn't frustrate legit users), better business model, or some combination thereof.
what the above doesn't take into account is how many sales they will lose as a result of DRM rather than piracy
Quite correct -- so without making assumptions since I have no hard data to go on, you end up with the following equation:
(Lost sales recovered due to DRM - Sales lost due to people who abhor DRM) vs. (cost of DRM solution).
As long as the left hand side is greater, it's worth it for the content owners to resort to DRM. It's possible that the left-hand-side of that equation is actually negative, which means your product simply isn't that compelling, people aren't willing to pay for it, and no amount of DRM will help you -- that's when you need to reconsider your business model, and your product. Math aside, don't forget about the part where your paying customers become suckers if you don't go after the pirates. The 'suckers' will eventually become 'freeloaders' if you don't.
It is a delusion that is encouraged by another delusion in that pirated copies are seen as lost sales. Many companies really do believe this. They do because it is such an attractive idea. I mean if your game sold 5 million copies but was download 20 million times, think how much more money you could have made! Gets them all excited with the thought that by investing resources in DRM you could literally increase your profits a few hundred percent.
Very very tenuous logic. You don't need to assume that all the pirated copies = lost sales. You merely need to assume some kind of realistic percentage of the pirates would buy the game if pirating was not an option. Let's be ridiculously conservative, and assume that percentage is as low as 1%. Let's assume that this game costs $10. Going with your figure of 20 million downloads, at $10 per game, you're talking 200 million dollars. Now if you assume that only 1% of the pirates would actually buy, you're down to 2 million dollars in lost sales. So your DRM solution has to cost you less than 2 million dollars, for it to be worth it -- simple math
Now consider this -- nobody creates a DRM solution for a single piece of content -- they create it for a class of content (like say, all PS3 games use the same DRM solution, all iTunes songs use the same DRM solution, etc. etc.) -- so you're actually talking about multiple titles that would be pirated many million times -- and you're distributing the cost of your DRM solution across the "lost sales minimized" for all that content -- not just individual titles
The last piece of the puzzle you seem to be missing -- if you don't combat piracy, it's the same thing as endorsing it. If you never protect your content, and you never prosecute people that pirate your content, then the people who are paying for it start looking like suckers. Basically, when everyone around you is downloading music/movies/games for free, and you're the only one paying for it, and there's no penalty and no inconvenience for the freeloaders -- why would you pay for it? So it's not even just about the 20 million downloads -- the 5 million people who paid might also stop paying if you turn a blind eye to piracy.
Don't take this as an endorsement for DRM in general -- I hate FairPlay / PlaysForSure type DRM schemes as much as the next person. But any opposition to them has to make sense, for it to be taken seriously.
Thank Apple for what? They were probably the single largest distributor of DRMed content in the world. When they started selling non-DRMed content through iTunes, it was only because non-DRM alternatives were starting to become more compelling (like the Amazon music store), and they were coming under regulatory scrutiny, and they had sufficient lock-in already achieved that it didn't matter much.
A lot of people fought long and hard for vendors to start selling music without DRM, long before Steve Jobs opportunistically jumped on the bandwagon and appropriated the movement for his own needs.
It isn't a low-quality stream -- all wp7 / android / iphones are now 800x480 resolution or higher, i.e. they are 480p (dvd-quality) or higher. If the stream isn't 480p now, it will be soon enough. Besides, people will pirate lower resolutions streams often enough.. they're not that picky.
I also don't buy the logic that no-DRM gets more customers -- Netflix has never had a no-DRM streaming option but they keep setting all kinds of insane records with their streaming option, in terms of numbers of customers, titles streamed per unit time, percentage of US internet bandwidth (as high as 40%!), etc. etc. They are literally on fire. A huge reason for that is that their DRM Just Works (tm). i.e. you as a customer never have to worry about what devices you've enabled, where you've transferred your content to, how many times you've viewed it, if your download failed did you still get charged for it, etc -- none of that crap happens on Netflix, so people simply don't care. The other part is that they have a half-decent catalog available for streaming -- and that's because they use DRM. The studios are willing to let Netflix stream their titles because they know they'll get paid.
It's rare to see a business/pricing model as simple and fair as Netflix's, a delivery mechanism that's as easy/hassle-free, and for it to be combined with compelling content. DRM is one of the enablers in this case. The solution to the lack of a DRM option on Android is not to convince world+dog that their business model needs to change, and that their partners are living in the dark ages by insisting on DRM -- nope -- the solution, is quite simply to provide a DRM framework that can be used in creating a Netflix app on Android.
No idea why you got modded Troll. That was factually as accurate as it gets. It's revenue loss for MS (not just for the other AV vendors) for them to go that route.
I'm sure I'm missing something here -- what is it?
The flash example is a little silly -- if any public spec exists, in all grey areas it will simply reference the current implementation and say "must behave like that". Viola -- 100% compatible.
The FTP/IMAP/POP3 examples are a little silly as well. The HTML standard is orders of magnitude larger, more complex, still evolving, and even untested in some cases. A complete test suite for the standard doesn't exist. No browser has ever been able to claim 100% compatibility with the HTML spec in spite of years of frenzied competition.
True enough.. the question is -- will they buy that inferior solution again? I can see that happening in the case of something where the migration costs are prohibitive -- but that's not always the case.
if they are neck and neck, then FOSS will usually lose, in my experience, because of the FUD factor
Not so in my experience. The cost (upfront and ongoing support) does not make mention of the license model usually, and in a lot of instances can be very similar for FOSS and proprietary soltuons (like when you get RHEL for instance). The source licnesing model tends to not be a point of discussion at all -- most businesses simply do not care.
Our company is even worse than that - we have shown them the cost savings of switching from Microsoft Office (Standard) to Open Office, demo'd the interoperability and the ease of switching, but because it's not Microsoft they just can't consider it "reliable".
Or maybe they just didn't buy your logic or the numbers your presented. Open office is a passable MS office replacement in only the very most basic scenarios (not going into more detail to avoid a flameware)..
It's important when winning a contract / sale / deployment / whatever that you win it for the right reasons -- merely being open source is not something businesses typically care about. When you win a contract but are not actually the best solution, you end up with a disgruntled customer that might not give that product a second chance for a very long time.
I wish them success in their attempt to topple (or at least put a serious dent in) Microsoft based purely on technical merit. Unfortunately the landscape is littered with other companies who have tried to do so; it's an uphill battle which typically runs off a cliff at some point.
I merely wish them success, profitability and sustainability. Toppling Microsoft may happen but isn't a requirement or yardstick of their success.
The approach is worthy of applaud -- but it's easy to lose sight of the fact that that's how success is generally attained -- by being better. As someone earlier pointed out -- others have tried this approach with resounding success -- for example Google (search, Android, Gmail, other stuff), Facebook (so many social networks existed before them -- they just built a better site), Apple, etc.
Apple is a noteworthy mention here: Consider Apple at the time Jobs re-joined the ship. They had not one single compelling product at that time. From there, to where they are now -- they had to trash their old OS (very similar to the catharsis MS is going through right now with Windows Mobile / Windows Phone 7), they had to re-invent themselves as a consumer electronics company, they constantly kept improving their design chops, and they plugged away relentlessly at marketing themselves and crafting the image they wanted to market etc.
Opera's mistake (and the mistake of many companies resorting to antitrust complaints when they're at the bottom of a pile wondering what went wrong) is merely that they didn't work hard enough at some aspect of the game. Opera has always had a compelling product in some aspects. But they have always been deficient in several aspects. They have barely ever marketed their product. For the longest time, their browser worked sufficiently differently from other browsers that most people switching between IE/Mozilloids/Safari etc. were quite uncomfortable in Opera (i.e. they introduced a barrier to entry against themselves), they never approached OEMs for pre-installation contracts even after the US DOJ's consent decree prevented MS from thwarting such contracts. For a browser that prided itself in compliance to the HTML standard, they barely advertised the fact or crafted an image around it or anything like that (only geeks even know they exist!).
Even the OS/2 example illustrates this point -- IBM merely quit when the going got tough. OS/2 was a fundamentally sound product. The work that would have gone into making OS/2 viable is very significantly less than the overhaul Apple had to pull off in transitioning from Mac OS 9 to OS-X. Significantly less than even the effort Microsoft had to invest in the decade it took for them to painfully transition from DOS-based Windows to NT-based Windows. IBM effectively just quit -- they didn't want it badly enough -- that's all it boils down to.
And lastly -- Windows 7 works, it works well, and it takes minimal to zero effort to keep it working well. If Ubuntu works well for you, that's awesome -- and it certainly wouldn't surprise me -- I love it too. But you shouldn't need to put down other people's choices to feel good about yours.
Not just on the part of the EFF and Apache Foundation -- the same thing can be said for Microsoft as well. They must know that if their motion is successful, it helps their competitors just as much as it helps them -- but they have decided to proceed regardless.
It's not about submitting kernel patches. It's about seeing who's listening and being able to add security/anonymity/privacy features. Those thugs don't just arrive randomly.
So your point is that NGOs should use *secure* software? That goes for everyone. Beyond that, don't bring your free software/secure software dogma into this thread - it is not a fact that free software is secure (or insecure) or that closed-source software is insecure (or secure). That's simply another argument, and there's no need to rehash it here.
Jobs' has motive for saying the story is bullshit (especially considering there is a court case that has been granted class-action status). If he did not deny the story, it wil be used against Apple in the case. Moreover, he has a credibility issue right now.
Gizmodo is a third party, and they have been pretty consistent in reporting on both points of view on this issue.
I really don't understand the issue: If you willingly radiate an unsecured Wi-Fi signal (or any type of signal), how can you claim a breach of "privacy"? *NOTHING* was "private"!
I can't believe the number of times this inane justification is being used!
If you use your computer on a wired LAN, anyone in the same collision domain can intercept everything you're sending and use a packet analyzer to reconstruct your traffic. Is it a privacy violation for them to do so -- yes! They need your express approval to do so.
Even if you use your laptop on public encrypted WiFi, anyone connected to the same WiFi hotspot can intercept everything you're sending and use a packet analyzer to reconstruct your traffic. Is it a privacy violation for them to do so -- yes! They need your express approval to do so.
Both these cases, people are actually authorized to use the network you're on -- but they still are not allowed to snoop your data -- just because the protocol/technology makes it possbile does not mean that you intended to grant them that access, or did not have an expectation of privacy.
In the case being discussed, Google did not even have permission to access the network -- forget snooping packets, storing them, etc. You should be going "holy fuck dude!!!" instead of defending them!! Even if the StreetView car were to happen upon some unencrypted WiFi hotspot, and even if that hotspot was meant for public access, and even if they had some way of knowing that -- they can only connect to that hotspot and use it to send/receive their own data. Anything beyond that is a violation of privacy -- and a huge fucking violation of trust!
Supposedly, his proposed timeline was 60 days, which MS rejected out of hand (since they never agree to ANY timeline -- see above). When they refused, he published. Maybe he was a jerk, but MS was at least as much of one.
If he wants to take matters into his own hands and enforce a 60-day timeline, he can tell MS "I'm giving you 60 days" and disclose after 60 days. To go public after 5 days is a dick move.
So 5 days (starting saturday) is a reasonable timeline then? If Ormandy had used any kind of realistic timeline, this wouldn't even have been news. At 5 days, he was completely unreasonable/irresponsible/attention-whoring, bordering on malice.
Slashdot Mirror
Your logic is also rather tenuous. In short, you assume that DRM prevents copying without any real evidence.
I'm not assuming anything -- the 1% was just for arguments sake to show how you would actually approach the "is it worth it" question. Parent had claimed the content owners look at 100% of pirated downloads and start salivating. I'm just pointing out that it's unreasonable to assume that they are that stupid.
Even with DRM, there's nearly 100% availability of infringing content
Just add it to the equation. Sure, DRM is circumventable. The content owner just needs to know if it's a sufficient deterrent so that if they have a compelling product, they make more money with it than without. If the math works out, it's worth it. If it doesn't, they might need a more compelling product, no DRM, better DRM (i.e. DRM that doesn't frustrate legit users), better business model, or some combination thereof.
what the above doesn't take into account is how many sales they will lose as a result of DRM rather than piracy
Quite correct -- so without making assumptions since I have no hard data to go on, you end up with the following equation:
(Lost sales recovered due to DRM - Sales lost due to people who abhor DRM) vs. (cost of DRM solution).
As long as the left hand side is greater, it's worth it for the content owners to resort to DRM. It's possible that the left-hand-side of that equation is actually negative, which means your product simply isn't that compelling, people aren't willing to pay for it, and no amount of DRM will help you -- that's when you need to reconsider your business model, and your product. Math aside, don't forget about the part where your paying customers become suckers if you don't go after the pirates. The 'suckers' will eventually become 'freeloaders' if you don't.
It is a delusion that is encouraged by another delusion in that pirated copies are seen as lost sales. Many companies really do believe this. They do because it is such an attractive idea. I mean if your game sold 5 million copies but was download 20 million times, think how much more money you could have made! Gets them all excited with the thought that by investing resources in DRM you could literally increase your profits a few hundred percent.
Very very tenuous logic. You don't need to assume that all the pirated copies = lost sales. You merely need to assume some kind of realistic percentage of the pirates would buy the game if pirating was not an option. Let's be ridiculously conservative, and assume that percentage is as low as 1%. Let's assume that this game costs $10. Going with your figure of 20 million downloads, at $10 per game, you're talking 200 million dollars. Now if you assume that only 1% of the pirates would actually buy, you're down to 2 million dollars in lost sales. So your DRM solution has to cost you less than 2 million dollars, for it to be worth it -- simple math
Now consider this -- nobody creates a DRM solution for a single piece of content -- they create it for a class of content (like say, all PS3 games use the same DRM solution, all iTunes songs use the same DRM solution, etc. etc.) -- so you're actually talking about multiple titles that would be pirated many million times -- and you're distributing the cost of your DRM solution across the "lost sales minimized" for all that content -- not just individual titles
The last piece of the puzzle you seem to be missing -- if you don't combat piracy, it's the same thing as endorsing it. If you never protect your content, and you never prosecute people that pirate your content, then the people who are paying for it start looking like suckers. Basically, when everyone around you is downloading music/movies/games for free, and you're the only one paying for it, and there's no penalty and no inconvenience for the freeloaders -- why would you pay for it? So it's not even just about the 20 million downloads -- the 5 million people who paid might also stop paying if you turn a blind eye to piracy.
Don't take this as an endorsement for DRM in general -- I hate FairPlay / PlaysForSure type DRM schemes as much as the next person. But any opposition to them has to make sense, for it to be taken seriously.
Thank Apple for what? They were probably the single largest distributor of DRMed content in the world. When they started selling non-DRMed content through iTunes, it was only because non-DRM alternatives were starting to become more compelling (like the Amazon music store), and they were coming under regulatory scrutiny, and they had sufficient lock-in already achieved that it didn't matter much.
A lot of people fought long and hard for vendors to start selling music without DRM, long before Steve Jobs opportunistically jumped on the bandwagon and appropriated the movement for his own needs.
It isn't a low-quality stream -- all wp7 / android / iphones are now 800x480 resolution or higher, i.e. they are 480p (dvd-quality) or higher. If the stream isn't 480p now, it will be soon enough. Besides, people will pirate lower resolutions streams often enough.. they're not that picky.
I also don't buy the logic that no-DRM gets more customers -- Netflix has never had a no-DRM streaming option but they keep setting all kinds of insane records with their streaming option, in terms of numbers of customers, titles streamed per unit time, percentage of US internet bandwidth (as high as 40%!), etc. etc. They are literally on fire. A huge reason for that is that their DRM Just Works (tm). i.e. you as a customer never have to worry about what devices you've enabled, where you've transferred your content to, how many times you've viewed it, if your download failed did you still get charged for it, etc -- none of that crap happens on Netflix, so people simply don't care. The other part is that they have a half-decent catalog available for streaming -- and that's because they use DRM. The studios are willing to let Netflix stream their titles because they know they'll get paid.
It's rare to see a business/pricing model as simple and fair as Netflix's, a delivery mechanism that's as easy/hassle-free, and for it to be combined with compelling content. DRM is one of the enablers in this case. The solution to the lack of a DRM option on Android is not to convince world+dog that their business model needs to change, and that their partners are living in the dark ages by insisting on DRM -- nope -- the solution, is quite simply to provide a DRM framework that can be used in creating a Netflix app on Android.
No idea why you got modded Troll. That was factually as accurate as it gets. It's revenue loss for MS (not just for the other AV vendors) for them to go that route.
I'm sure I'm missing something here -- what is it?
The flash example is a little silly -- if any public spec exists, in all grey areas it will simply reference the current implementation and say "must behave like that". Viola -- 100% compatible.
The FTP/IMAP/POP3 examples are a little silly as well. The HTML standard is orders of magnitude larger, more complex, still evolving, and even untested in some cases. A complete test suite for the standard doesn't exist. No browser has ever been able to claim 100% compatibility with the HTML spec in spite of years of frenzied competition.
Wow.. I stayed on topicto avoid turning it into an MS Office vs. OOo flameware and I get modded flamebait? Fuck off you zealots.
True enough.. the question is -- will they buy that inferior solution again? I can see that happening in the case of something where the migration costs are prohibitive -- but that's not always the case.
In those instances where you thought FOSS was the best choice -- how did it happen that the source licensing model became a point of discussion?
None of this is relevant to the topic at hand.
A lot of people won't even concede that antitrust law makes sense. Why argue it here?
if they are neck and neck, then FOSS will usually lose, in my experience, because of the FUD factor
Not so in my experience. The cost (upfront and ongoing support) does not make mention of the license model usually, and in a lot of instances can be very similar for FOSS and proprietary soltuons (like when you get RHEL for instance). The source licnesing model tends to not be a point of discussion at all -- most businesses simply do not care.
Our company is even worse than that - we have shown them the cost savings of switching from Microsoft Office (Standard) to Open Office, demo'd the interoperability and the ease of switching, but because it's not Microsoft they just can't consider it "reliable".
Or maybe they just didn't buy your logic or the numbers your presented. Open office is a passable MS office replacement in only the very most basic scenarios (not going into more detail to avoid a flameware)..
It's important when winning a contract / sale / deployment / whatever that you win it for the right reasons -- merely being open source is not something businesses typically care about. When you win a contract but are not actually the best solution, you end up with a disgruntled customer that might not give that product a second chance for a very long time.
I wish them success in their attempt to topple (or at least put a serious dent in) Microsoft based purely on technical merit. Unfortunately the landscape is littered with other companies who have tried to do so; it's an uphill battle which typically runs off a cliff at some point.
I merely wish them success, profitability and sustainability. Toppling Microsoft may happen but isn't a requirement or yardstick of their success.
The approach is worthy of applaud -- but it's easy to lose sight of the fact that that's how success is generally attained -- by being better. As someone earlier pointed out -- others have tried this approach with resounding success -- for example Google (search, Android, Gmail, other stuff), Facebook (so many social networks existed before them -- they just built a better site), Apple, etc.
Apple is a noteworthy mention here: Consider Apple at the time Jobs re-joined the ship. They had not one single compelling product at that time. From there, to where they are now -- they had to trash their old OS (very similar to the catharsis MS is going through right now with Windows Mobile / Windows Phone 7), they had to re-invent themselves as a consumer electronics company, they constantly kept improving their design chops, and they plugged away relentlessly at marketing themselves and crafting the image they wanted to market etc.
Opera's mistake (and the mistake of many companies resorting to antitrust complaints when they're at the bottom of a pile wondering what went wrong) is merely that they didn't work hard enough at some aspect of the game. Opera has always had a compelling product in some aspects. But they have always been deficient in several aspects. They have barely ever marketed their product. For the longest time, their browser worked sufficiently differently from other browsers that most people switching between IE/Mozilloids/Safari etc. were quite uncomfortable in Opera (i.e. they introduced a barrier to entry against themselves), they never approached OEMs for pre-installation contracts even after the US DOJ's consent decree prevented MS from thwarting such contracts. For a browser that prided itself in compliance to the HTML standard, they barely advertised the fact or crafted an image around it or anything like that (only geeks even know they exist!).
Even the OS/2 example illustrates this point -- IBM merely quit when the going got tough. OS/2 was a fundamentally sound product. The work that would have gone into making OS/2 viable is very significantly less than the overhaul Apple had to pull off in transitioning from Mac OS 9 to OS-X. Significantly less than even the effort Microsoft had to invest in the decade it took for them to painfully transition from DOS-based Windows to NT-based Windows. IBM effectively just quit -- they didn't want it badly enough -- that's all it boils down to.
And lastly -- Windows 7 works, it works well, and it takes minimal to zero effort to keep it working well. If Ubuntu works well for you, that's awesome -- and it certainly wouldn't surprise me -- I love it too. But you shouldn't need to put down other people's choices to feel good about yours.
Not just on the part of the EFF and Apache Foundation -- the same thing can be said for Microsoft as well. They must know that if their motion is successful, it helps their competitors just as much as it helps them -- but they have decided to proceed regardless.
What was the purpose of hitting it from ie8?
NGO's should use free software
It's not about submitting kernel patches. It's about seeing who's listening and being able to add security/anonymity/privacy features. Those thugs don't just arrive randomly.
So your point is that NGOs should use *secure* software? That goes for everyone. Beyond that, don't bring your free software/secure software dogma into this thread - it is not a fact that free software is secure (or insecure) or that closed-source software is insecure (or secure). That's simply another argument, and there's no need to rehash it here.
NGO's will still not be able to see what the software is doing, will still not be able to change the software.
If that is a requirement for the work they do, they will chose something different. Is this a requirement for all NGOs?
NGO's should use free software.
NGOs (everyone) should use whatever software works for them and fits their budgets and philosophy. To each their own.
Grandma just can't say no to an install request.
You gave Grandma admin access?
What if someone needs to call 911 and only have their left hand available to hold the phone?
Jobs' has motive for saying the story is bullshit (especially considering there is a court case that has been granted class-action status). If he did not deny the story, it wil be used against Apple in the case. Moreover, he has a credibility issue right now.
Gizmodo is a third party, and they have been pretty consistent in reporting on both points of view on this issue.
Just sayin'
I really don't understand the issue: If you willingly radiate an unsecured Wi-Fi signal (or any type of signal), how can you claim a breach of "privacy"? *NOTHING* was "private"!
I can't believe the number of times this inane justification is being used!
If you use your computer on a wired LAN, anyone in the same collision domain can intercept everything you're sending and use a packet analyzer to reconstruct your traffic. Is it a privacy violation for them to do so -- yes! They need your express approval to do so.
Even if you use your laptop on public encrypted WiFi, anyone connected to the same WiFi hotspot can intercept everything you're sending and use a packet analyzer to reconstruct your traffic. Is it a privacy violation for them to do so -- yes! They need your express approval to do so.
Both these cases, people are actually authorized to use the network you're on -- but they still are not allowed to snoop your data -- just because the protocol/technology makes it possbile does not mean that you intended to grant them that access, or did not have an expectation of privacy.
In the case being discussed, Google did not even have permission to access the network -- forget snooping packets, storing them, etc. You should be going "holy fuck dude!!!" instead of defending them!! Even if the StreetView car were to happen upon some unencrypted WiFi hotspot, and even if that hotspot was meant for public access, and even if they had some way of knowing that -- they can only connect to that hotspot and use it to send/receive their own data. Anything beyond that is a violation of privacy -- and a huge fucking violation of trust!
http://news.cnet.com/Microsoft-security-guru-Jot-down-your-passwords/2100-7355_3-5716590.html
Of course, the rules are a bit different when you're a spy :)
Supposedly, his proposed timeline was 60 days, which MS rejected out of hand (since they never agree to ANY timeline -- see above). When they refused, he published. Maybe he was a jerk, but MS was at least as much of one.
If he wants to take matters into his own hands and enforce a 60-day timeline, he can tell MS "I'm giving you 60 days" and disclose after 60 days. To go public after 5 days is a dick move.
So 5 days (starting saturday) is a reasonable timeline then? If Ormandy had used any kind of realistic timeline, this wouldn't even have been news. At 5 days, he was completely unreasonable/irresponsible/attention-whoring, bordering on malice.