DRM Has Always Been a Horrible Idea 281
An anonymous reader writes "For years, the reaction of the big entertainment companies to digital disruption has been to try and restrict and control, a wrong-headed approach that was bound to backfire. But the entertainment companies were never known for being forward thinking whether it was radio in the 20s or cassette tapes in the 70s or VCRs in the 80s or Napster in the 90s. The reaction was the always the same. Take a defensive position and try to battle the disruptive force. And it never worked. And DRM was perhaps the worst reaction of all, place restrictions on your content that punish the very people who were willing to pay for it, while others were free to use it without restriction. It was an approach that never made much sense, and it's good to know that mounting evidence proves that's the case."
um, yeah... so? (Score:5, Insightful)
I expected a blog post with lots of citations and historical information... instead it's just some random guy's opinion... Hey, I have opinions too! Maybe I should submit them as slashdot stories?
Define worked (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time I checked Disney was still raking in the cash and redefining copyright length to ensure their cash flow.
DRM does not work for a specific product, but backed with a vast array of lawyers and donations to lawmakers, it manages to persist and have a fairly high ROI - enough to give major bumps up to CEO pay.
Will it be defeated eventually? Sure.
Will it be defeated earlier by those who tend not to pay tons of money without thinking? Sure.
But it is intended to be an irritant to defeating reasonable copying. And on that score, for those markets that have the money to pay easily and the attention span of a gnat, it works fairly well.
Personally, I hate it, but that's another matter.
They want complete control. (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason we have piracy; when Copyright lasts longer than a single human lifetime, nothing ever produced during your lifetime will ever be released to enrich the public domain, therefor there is absolutely no benefit for an individual to participate in copyright.
Netflix, Amazon, Steam, Hulu; these are a ruse to weaken and ultimately control piracy. They License for a set term their works to said services and can Revoke those contracts at any time as has been demonstrated today by the lively article about Disney removing already-paid-for streaming content from Amazon.
It isn't "Mainstream Media" it's "Media Monopoly"; Get it Straight and stop using their words to make their crimes sound better than they actually are.
Because those works cannot ever be copied, there will always be a dwindling supply; Imagine Star Wars, Ghost in the Shell, or Iron Man being forgotten and all copies of them being tossed down the memory hole 100 years from now. This has already happened with old movies from the 30's through the 70's and is starting to happen to what was made in the 80's and 90's.
Re:No Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Old skool history of copy protection (Score:5, Insightful)
A fitting end, obscurity.
Only if you believe that creative works are owned by their creators rather than become part of the culture once published and thus owned by everyone in society. If you believe the later, than any creative work lost to DRM is a loss to all of us.
I'm okay with most DRM (Score:2, Insightful)
Because most of it's pathetic and can be stripped from the content in seconds. But the suits think it's effective so they release content with their laughable controls. I buy their content, strip it clean, and access the content how I want to. I buy movies, rip the content off the disc, and store it on my media server in a platform-agnostic format that I can play on my media player, laptop, desktop, tablet, phone, etc. I buy ebooks, strip the drm, store it on my media server, and read it on my computer, tablet, or phone.
Without the false sense of security created by crappy DRM, there would be a lot less content available.
Just because some DRM doesn't bug you does not mea (Score:2, Insightful)
I use Steam. I don't like that it inconveniences me. Offline mode works most of the time, but when it doesn't, I get f---ed! I realize most folks have internet available all the time, but I work in remote locations, and often don't. Last winter I was one week into a four week trip when Steam decided it would not work without going online. Fortunately I had some non-Steam games and was not completely out of luck. Leaves me feeling I would be better off pirating.
Re:DRM is technology misapplied (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Freitas suggested the use of DRM techniques as a way of preventing the malicious use of nanotechnology. Seems like a "good" application to me.
Me too. That sounds like a well intentioned application that would be wonderful to realize. The problem is that in the real world, DRM of any sort only restricts legitimate users. This has been true with every instance of DRM anywhere in the world, ever. Would you trust DRM to protect us against nanobots with that track record?
Of course not. So his point stands, DRM is bad.
Re:No Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of the reason DRM never works is because, well, it doesn't work. There's always away around it.
Re:No Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see this as 'doing DRM right', so much as 'doing it less wrong'. Many of us tolerate Steam's DRM because it's less annoying than what other companies want to use, often much less annoying. Compared to Steam, some of the other DRM schemes we've seen are nightmarish. But saying Steam's DRM is good is still only true in the sense that brushing and flossing and having your teeth cleaned every 6 months is much less annoying than a root canal - it doesn't mean we actually wake up mornings thinking, "Oh swell, I get to have my teeth cleaned today!".
You list several things Steam does that are advantagious, but any company distributing content online should give you the benefit of not having to search out discs, that's a core function of their business. Sequentially reinstalling games after a drive failure or three, and having it generally work smoothly and 'painlessly', is something that becomes more critical to get right because of DRM, as people also sometimes need to redownload and reinstall if the DRM itself screws something up. When DRM has just done something annoying to the customer, you want the experience of fixing it to be as pleasant as possible so the greater experience of your business as a whole doesn't leave a negative impression.
Re:2003 called, they want their article back (Score:5, Insightful)
Source: "Slashdot: In a new Rasmussen poll, 75% of American adults would rather read a book in traditional print format than in an ebook format. Only 15% prefer the ebook format (the other 10% are undecided)." http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/07/21/1143210/poll-shows-that-75-prefer-printed-books-to-ebooks [slashdot.org]
Actually, the licencing policies of ebooks are the primary reason why I still read paper books instead of ebooks: I actually quite like the ebook format, and all other things being equal I would probably switch to ebooks.
However, with paper books, you buy a book and read it. Then you hand it to your partner, who reads it. Maybe you lend it to some friends to read. It sits on your bookshelf for a while. Then you have kids and in 20 years' time they read it and possibly pass it on to their kids. Maybe you decide to sell it for a small amount of pocket change. Conversely, if I buy an ebook from Google Play, I can read it... that's it - its tied to my Play account, I can't move it into my partner's Play aggount for her to read, I can't lend it to any friends, even if Play is even still around in 20 years time I won't be able to hand it on to my kids, and I can't sell it. In theory, I *could* lend my partner my entire tablet (tied to my play account) so that she can read it, but even this is explicitly disallowed by the Play T&Cs, so strictly speaking I can't even legally do that.
To my mind, this so greatly devalues the product that I'm not interested in handing over money for it. And, frankly, I'm surprised that anyone wants to buy an ebook with these terms attached to it - all of the things I've mentioned that I want to be able to do with my books are *normal* and acceptable things that most people have been doing with books for generations and I'm surprised that people aren't totally shocked and dismayed when they find they can't do any of this anymore with ebooks they had "bought".
Sounds like a lot of feel-good pirate nonsense. The music industry started selling DRM-free music years ago. It continues to decline.
Does it? The last figures I saw (admittedly around a year ago) seemed to clearly show a decline in album sales and a steep increase in single track sales. Even without copyright infringement this wouldn't surprise me at all - for CDs, except for a few selected tracks that are (expensively) made available as singles for a short period after their release, if you like one or two tracks you have to buy the entire album. Now, you can buy just the tracks you like, so is there any surprise that album sales are being rapidly surplanted by singles sales?
Also, its worth remembering that the economy has been utterly screwed over the past few years, so not entirely surprising that people might be cutting back on the amount they spend on nonessentials.
I think it's time to all admit to yourselves that *some* people will pay for stuff and some people are going to try to avoid spending money on music and movies so they can by expensive clothes, iPhones, expensive laptops, and other physical stuff.
Absolutely - some people are going to spend money on entertainment, irrespective of how badly they are treated by the industry, and some people are going to avoid spending money on entertainment (either by illegally copying, or simply by not consuming the products at all), irrespective of how well they are treated. The people the industry needs to keep happy are the middle-ground - the people who want reasonably priced entertainment and don't want to get screwed over - make the products too expensive, or artificially break them with DRM and the business from these people will be lost.
I do think that DRM is possibly doing a good job of training people to copy content who otherwise wouldn't - if you keep buying content and keep finding that the only way to do re
Science, engineering, and technology (Score:4, Insightful)
Computer scientists are scientists. They study the theory of how computers can possibly work. They discover the tools nature gives us for building computers.
Software and hardware engineers take the results of computer science and use it to build computers. They create new tools for us to use for our specific purposes.
Information technologists take those tools which engineers have created using the discoveries of the scientists, select the best tools for the job at hand, and make sure that those tools keep working.
IT is to SE is to CS as an auto mechanic is to an automotive engineer is to a physicists studying the mechanics and thermodynamics of theoretical engines.
Nope, absolutely wrong (Score:1, Insightful)
For one, copyright ends. DRM doesn't code in when it ends.
For two, laws of copyright define what rights are due to the copyright holder, NOT THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER.
For three, if the copyright holder wishes to take rights that they do not have right to do, then they must offer consideration for the exchange of rights or removal thereof. If there is no consideration (and "playing the game I let you buy" is NOT a consideration, else what is the money for? The materials? 10c.) then there is no exchange.
Re:No Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
That pretty much sums up how people feel about DRM. They also feel like that about security, btw.
It must not cut into what they want to do. It must not disrupt their experience. People don't mind DRM, just like they don't care about security. They're fine with either as long as it does not keep them from doing what they want to do. Within reason, of course. DRM will keep them from distributing copies, security will keep them from installing malware.
That certainly bugs a few users. But, and that's the important thing, not the majority of them.
While on the other end of the scale there is crap like the stunts that UBIsoft and EA have been trying to pull, with perpetual connection to servers for single player playing. Which predictably backfired to the point where you could not play their games if you bought them while your buddies who copied them could play them just fine. That does bother them. That bothers them like the overzealous security suite that keeps them from starting their games because they use some warped loader or because it doesn't like how the anticheat module hooks into the data stream to the server.
Steam found that sweet spot where most people put up with it. It's actually even more convenient for most people than the old "put the original CD in" DRM. Simply because you don't even need to have your CD ready. Steam also offers additional value, another key element if you want your DRM to take off.
DRM by its very definition lowers the value of the product to the user. At the very least it creates some kind of inconvenience. It forces you to do something to get what you want, even if that only means you have to insert that damn CD (which you can never find when you need it) or that you can only install it on one computer at a time. Steam offers that additional value, by keeping games up to date as well as setting some standards. Sadly not in terms of quality of the game, but at least the games have to install smoothly to be part of the fold. Something that can sadly not be said for all such services.
Re:No Shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm, No: What rights you have depends on your local laws. Sounds to me like you should read up on your rights.
It has never been considered copyright infringement to make a backup of something or to transfer it to another medium. DRM attempts to prevent exactly this. this is established all over the place. For me, the following excerpt from wikipedia seems relevant:
In late 2006, Australia added several 'private copying' exceptions. It is no longer an infringement of copyright to record a broadcast to watch or listen at a more convenient time (s 111), or to make a copy of a sound recording for private and domestic use (e.g., copy onto an iPod) (s 109A), or make a copy of a literary work, magazine, or newspaper article for private use (43C).
What DRM really does is two things: 1) waste resources on your computer providing absolutely nothing desirable and nothing that can't be bypassed in seconds, shortening its lifespan and increasing its energy consumption, and 2) piss off legitimate users who want to do things they're legally allowed to do, turning their customers into their enemies. Good job!
Re:No Shit (Score:4, Insightful)
In fairness, DRM is capable of preventing very casual misuse. The DRM on games keeps a kid from saying to his friend, "Oh, let me just copy that for you." If you could have something akin to DRM on guns, it might prevent little Jimmy from shooting himself accidentally while playing with it, and it might prevent a casual street thug with no expertise from stealing it.
But you're right, it won't stop a determined individual with expertise from gaining access. Even at best, you can't think of it as an absolute control over access. No security is absolute. The problem, to my mind, is not the abstract intention of embedding security to control the use of a product or technology. The problem is using security in digital media to restrict the access of people who have "purchased" that media. Specifically, the problem is that the people designing the DRM aren't able to anticipate (and therefore allow) all the possible legitimate uses. If they've sold me a movie, they don't know all the devices I might want to watch it on. They don't know what kind of conversion I might want to do on it 5 years from now. They can't separate the unlawful distribution from a legitimate fair-use distribution. What's worse, many people suspect that the media companies are actually attempting to use the DRM to restrict fair-use on purpose to force us all to constantly repurchase the same media.
So that's the problem. "DRM" is really just security. Security can be good, but poorly designed security will cause more trouble for authorized users than for unauthorized users. Security can also be designed, maliciously, to allow abuse by the designer. In short, the problem with "DRM" is that it's security for a product that I purchased, designed to benefit someone other than me. Putting a car alarm in my new car might make sense. Designing that car alarm so that the manufacturer can (and will) lock me out of my own car whenever they want... is not such a great idea.