DRM Is Toxic to Culture • Hacker News Board

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#11

Post by izacus » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 2:25 PM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #7

DRM and advertising tech have a similar problem of bad execution. Sure, there exists a way to do each of these that many may consider "reasonable" but in practice industries have shown that they would rather be obnoxious and make everything annoying or just much more difficult than necessary. This means they can't be trusted to do it well, and the solution must be to avoid it completely (DRM-free content and ad block…

I don't get this - why is DRM is friggning' NECESSARY? What makes it this forced law of nature?

The current multi-billion media conglomerates grew at times when being able to copy a piece of content from TV was encoded in the LAW. Content providers earned billions of dollars at times when you could press REC on your VCR and ("THE HORROR" now every content provider shill screams) rewatch the show many times and (GASP) give the tape to your friends to watch too!

What exactly was so horrible at being able to rewatch, store and borrow a movie to a friend that now seems to completely incomprehensible to people here on HN and outside? What kind of irreversible damage is done by existence of torrents when WB, Netflix and other content providers earn record profits?

Why are we even debating DRM as something that has a right to exist and helps anyone?

EDIT: Ergh, sorry for the tone, by DRM is something that really touches my nerves a bit.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#12

Post by JadeNB » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 2:26 PM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #7

DRM and advertising tech have a similar problem of bad execution. Sure, there exists a way to do each of these that many may consider "reasonable" but in practice industries have shown that they would rather be obnoxious and make everything annoying or just much more difficult than necessary. This means they can't be trusted to do it well, and the solution must be to avoid it completely (DRM-free content and ad block…

> DRM-free content and ad blocker

While I agree with the rest of your post, I think that comparing these two is not quite accurate. DRM-free content should, I think, be compared to ad-free content; and blocking ads should probably be compared to stripping DRM. (For the record, I'm not making any moral judgement here; I do the first two as much as possible, and the last two all the time.) My point is that the consumption of DRM-free content shows the seller that you approve of it, and encourages the production of more; whereas the use of an ad blocker doesn't (or at least doesn't seem to, in any direct way) discourage the use of ads.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#13

Post by DanBC » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 2:28 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #11

makecheck wrote: post #7

DRM and advertising tech have a similar problem of bad execution. Sure, there exists a way to do each of these that many may consider "reasonable" but in practice industries have shown that they would rather be obnoxious and make everything annoying or just much more difficult than necessary. This means they can't be trusted to do it well, and the solution must be to avoid it completely (DRM-free content and ad block…

I don't get this - why is DRM is friggning' NECESSARY? What makes it this forced law of nature? The current multi-billion media conglomerates grew at times when being able to copy a piece of content from TV was encoded in the LAW. Content providers earned billions of dollars at times when you could press REC on your VCR and ("THE HORROR" now every content provider shill screams) rewatch the show many times and ( GASP…

> The current multi-billion media conglomerates grew at times when being able to copy a piece of content from TV was encoded in the LAW. Content providers earned billions of dollars at times when you could press REC on your VCR and ("THE HORROR" now every content provider shill screams) rewatch the show many times and (GASP) give the tape to your friends to watch too!

TV and Movie industry spent considerable effort tackling exactly that type of home taping. You might want to have a look at Disney, who wanted to have "single use" video tapes that would need to be sent back to a factory to be rewound, or special DVDs that were sent in sealed packs and would oxidise to uselessness within 24 hours of being opened.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#14

Post by _jal » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 2:30 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #11

makecheck wrote: post #7

DRM and advertising tech have a similar problem of bad execution. Sure, there exists a way to do each of these that many may consider "reasonable" but in practice industries have shown that they would rather be obnoxious and make everything annoying or just much more difficult than necessary. This means they can't be trusted to do it well, and the solution must be to avoid it completely (DRM-free content and ad block…

I don't get this - why is DRM is friggning' NECESSARY? What makes it this forced law of nature? The current multi-billion media conglomerates grew at times when being able to copy a piece of content from TV was encoded in the LAW. Content providers earned billions of dollars at times when you could press REC on your VCR and ("THE HORROR" now every content provider shill screams) rewatch the show many times and ( GASP…

Well, to be fair, the VCR didn't have a distribution system attached that allows sharing worldwide.

I still agree with you, though; times change, and nobody "deserves" business-model protection. The legacy copyright industries already get massive state subsidies through the legal enforcement of artificial monopolies - degrading everyone's computing to prop them up further is insane.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#15

Post by _jal » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 2:32 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #2

We offer research reports and white papers for your management and Board from experienced advisors Strangely, I couldn't find any of these reports available for free download and in the public domain...

If only snappiness were logic, that would be a stinging rejoinder.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#16

Post by 0xcde4c3db » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 2:33 PM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #3

It’s like checking the lift ticket, yes, but also the guy checks you are only wearing gear hired from the resort shop, skis with you down the slope and trips you if you try any manoeuvres that weren’t taught to you by the resort ski instructor; then as you go down the slope he pushes you away from the moguls because those are a premium feature and finally you get to run the gauntlet of armed security guards at the bo…

This is probably an analogy for frameworks like the Protected Media Path [1] [2], which revokes authorization/decryption when "untrusted" components are detected.

[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Media_Path

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#17

Post by izacus » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 2:38 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #13

izacus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this - why is DRM is friggning' NECESSARY? What makes it this forced law of nature? The current multi-billion media conglomerates grew at times when being able to copy a piece of content from TV was encoded in the LAW. Content providers earned billions of dollars at times when you could press REC on your VCR and ("THE HORROR" now every content provider shill screams) rewatch the show many times and ( GASP…

> The current multi-billion media conglomerates grew at times when being able to copy a piece of content from TV was encoded in the LAW. Content providers earned billions of dollars at times when you could press REC on your VCR and ("THE HORROR" now every content provider shill screams) rewatch the show many times and (GASP) give the tape to your friends to watch too! TV and Movie industry spent considerable effort t…

They did, they failed and they still earned billions at that time. Why are we entertaining their sociopathic ideas now?

It's not that they're trying to stop mass distribution, they're trying to prevent you from rewatching content later (shows regularly disappear from Netflix and similar services), prevent you from showing them or sharing to their friends (does any service let you share a show from an ipad to another ipad?) or even let you watch anything when you're offline (how many services let you download their full catalog for later watching?).

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#18

Post by izacus » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 2:39 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #14

izacus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this - why is DRM is friggning' NECESSARY? What makes it this forced law of nature? The current multi-billion media conglomerates grew at times when being able to copy a piece of content from TV was encoded in the LAW. Content providers earned billions of dollars at times when you could press REC on your VCR and ("THE HORROR" now every content provider shill screams) rewatch the show many times and ( GASP…

Well, to be fair, the VCR didn't have a distribution system attached that allows sharing worldwide. I still agree with you, though; times change, and nobody "deserves" business-model protection. The legacy copyright industries already get massive state subsidies through the legal enforcement of artificial monopolies - degrading everyone's computing to prop them up further is insane.

True, but they still kept earning billions through peak global torrents distribution and Netflix happily made people pay for them because they were accessible. And now they run after the DRM train like everyone else.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#19

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 2:39 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #10

The problem with technology-enforced restrictions isn’t that they allow legitimate enforcement of rights; it’s the collateral damage they cause in the process. Indeed, but the problem with not making any effort to enforce restrictions technically is that typically you then aren't enforcing your legitimate rights. The metro analogy was interesting. If the system in Germany works, it is because people are honest and pa…

> set up their own redistribution channels and steal your customers and your revenues.

And DRM prevents that how exactly?

> A third lesson you will learn is that a lot of people may quite innocently assume that if they can do something then it's allowed

I would take this as a hint that it probably should be allowed then. If lots of people innocently assume that something is perfectly legal, the way of tyranny is to build a police state, the way of democracy is to make it legal.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#20

Post by comex » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 2:43 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #2

We offer research reports and white papers for your management and Board from experienced advisors Strangely, I couldn't find any of these reports available for free download and in the public domain...

Strangely, I couldn't find any of these reports available for free download and in the public domain...

No, but I bet if you pay for them you get them as PDFs, unencrypted, which you can view on a vast breadth of devices and OSes and applications, annotate/modify, clip parts out of, convert to other formats, and otherwise manipulate as you please, with no arbitrary technological restrictions getting in the way. (Compare to, say, Adobe Digital Editions wrapped PDFs, which can only be read in designated apps and limit you to the capabilities of those apps.)