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DRM Is Toxic to Culture

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Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#51

Post by samastur »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #36
skywhopper wrote: post #26

I would say that DRM is merely an inevitable outgrowth of our society's enshrinement and worship of the idea of "intellectual property". That word, "property", gives the opposite connotations of "copyright"--permanent rightful ownership vs a temporary grant of monopoly on an idea. But yes, it's definitely the case that the cultural idea that humans and corporations have the right to own a copyright for a length of ti…

> I would say that DRM is merely an inevitable outgrowth of our society's enshrinement and worship of the idea of "intellectual property". If intellectual property rights cease to exist, then there's no longer any legal basis to enforce the GPL and similar licenses and the Free Software ecosystem would collapse. Are you sure you want that? EDIT: Replaced "open source" with "Free Software". My thanks to other posters…

Free software might collapse, but open source certainly would not especially since so much of it is under MIT and similar licenses which already allow anyone to do pretty much whatever with that code.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#52

Post by maxerickson »

izacus wrote: post #46
coldtea wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still agree with you, though; times change, and nobody "deserves" business-model protection. Is that true though? Because laws against theft (physical theft of actual products I mean, let's not get into whether "copying" is theft here) are a business-model protection too. As are most business laws (e.g. contract law). Why pay at a restaurant when you can just walk out and run for it? Isn't making it illegal a "bu…

You're making false comparison here. DRM is extremely invasive - it's akin to being forced to wear handcuffs inside a store to prevent theft, or perhaps being strip searched every time you walk past a store. Both of those actions can also be sold as "business protection against theft", but our legal framework currently says that we're ready to tolerate some amount of shoplifting and we're not going to allow stores to…

At least for the US, I think you are overestimating the restrictions on private establishments.

Stores don't do invasive things because it doesn't make business sense, not because the legal system particularly enjoins them.

Like if I opened a candy shop that required agreeing to an NDA for entry, what law do you think would make me let people in without signing the NDA? It might not be enforced, but there isn't anything that would stop me from requiring the signature for entry (other than it being silly).

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#53

Post by izacus »

coldtea wrote: post #28
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! Yes, but you couldn't give the content to everybo…

And? As someone in this thread said, DRM-free music is standard these days and overall piracy is still rather low.

What do you think DRM is actively doing? Or is there another point you wanted to make?

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#54

Post by hellbanner »

jws wrote: post #23
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…

press REC on your VCR and … make a worse copy of the already pretty bad copy you received over the air. Subsequent generation copies would be really bad. Sharing your copy with a friend involved physically transferring it and possibly not getting it back. It really isn't comparable to a directly copyable digital form. If you like the 1970s way, prop your phone up on a table and use the camera to record a movie off of…

But that "worse quality" was still, for many people, "good enough"

Aside from that, I think you're arguing that it's a matter of scale, parent argues that it's the same thing.

A similar, modern example might be a slow, error prone cellular connection where a user copies 1 movie a day to their friends at tremendous cost to their cell bill.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#55

Post by hellbanner »

maxerickson wrote: post #52
izacus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making false comparison here. DRM is extremely invasive - it's akin to being forced to wear handcuffs inside a store to prevent theft, or perhaps being strip searched every time you walk past a store. Both of those actions can also be sold as "business protection against theft", but our legal framework currently says that we're ready to tolerate some amount of shoplifting and we're not going to allow stores to…

At least for the US, I think you are overestimating the restrictions on private establishments. Stores don't do invasive things because it doesn't make business sense, not because the legal system particularly enjoins them. Like if I opened a candy shop that required agreeing to an NDA for entry, what law do you think would make me let people in without signing the NDA? It might not be enforced, but there isn't anyth…

Showing that contract up front I would guess your customers would leave.

Many movie pirates aren't aware of the laws (eg. kids)

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#56

Post by hellbanner »

ioquatix wrote: post #6
tjoff wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you play your blu-ray discs on linux btw.? Bonus question if you succeeded: did you break any laws doing so?

1. Realise that you don't have a blu-ray drive. 2. Install Transmission and download a rip. Bonus answer: I probably broke laws making my morning coffee.

"The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day."

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6611240-three-felonies-a...

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#57

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #35
AlexandrB wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "All intellectual property should be free! Except the IP I create which I should be paid for!" That's a strawman. People should be paid for their work, but that doesn't give them the right to impose extralegal restrictions on how I use their work through technology. If you think that DRM is about piracy, you're living in a fantasy world. Almost all DRMd content - movies, books, music, news - is readily available th…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#58

Post by klez »

AlphaWeaver wrote: post #40
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say that DRM is merely an inevitable outgrowth of our society's enshrinement and worship of the idea of "intellectual property". If intellectual property rights cease to exist, then there's no longer any legal basis to enforce the GPL and similar licenses and the Free Software ecosystem would collapse. Are you sure you want that? EDIT: Replaced "open source" with "Free Software". My thanks to other posters…

If intellectual property rights ceased to exist, we wouldn't have a need for the GPL, wouldn't we?

I've been giving some thought about this recently. I'd say that, at least for software, we'd still need the GPL and, therefore, copyright. Which clashes a bit with my anti-copyright sentiments, but whatever.

Why is this? Because software is different from literature and visual arts. In a copyright-free world, once you copy a work of literature you have the whole work at your disposal to copy, modify and redistribute however you see fit. For music it's a bit different because you may need to reverse-engineer the music sheet, for example, but there's a lot you can do with just the recording of a piece of music.

With software, the only thing you could do is copying it, or try and modify the binary, because you still don't have the source code. Sure, you can reverse-engineer it (which is already legal in some situations in certain jurisdictions), but the software wouldn't be free in today's understanding of what many consider free software (i.e., software that respects the four freedoms outlined by the fsf). This means, you get your copy of, e.g., AutoCAD, but it would still be hard for you to modify it, because, despite the absence of copyright, you'd still have no way of getting source code to work on (unless someone leaks it).

So I'd say that, at least, absence of copyright wouldn't help with software. It will just create a situation where those who want to incorporate your source code into their products without publishing their source code will be able to do just that, and you'd have no recourse.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#59

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #49
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Beyond that, one can't be against DRM and for GPL enforcement at the same time and remain logically consistent. One can absolutely do that. Technical restraints and legal remedies are not the same thing, and it's completely consistent to say that DRM should be unavailable to both proprietary and free works while legal remedies should be available to both.

> Technical restraints and legal remedies are not the same thing, and it's completely consistent to say that DRM should be unavailable to both proprietary and free works while legal remedies should be available to both. "legal remedies should be available to both" was tried for media; that was the era where the studios were suing individuals for copyright violations. Needless to say, that proved to be impractical for…

First of all, you're moving the goalposts from a policy position being logically consistent to policy being practically equivalent.

Anyway, in practical terms, GPL and BSD license terms are violated all the time, and only a handful of the most egregious examples ever see a courtroom. I don't see how that's categorically different from the situation of works with other licenses.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#60

Post by izacus »

maxerickson wrote: post #52
izacus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making false comparison here. DRM is extremely invasive - it's akin to being forced to wear handcuffs inside a store to prevent theft, or perhaps being strip searched every time you walk past a store. Both of those actions can also be sold as "business protection against theft", but our legal framework currently says that we're ready to tolerate some amount of shoplifting and we're not going to allow stores to…

At least for the US, I think you are overestimating the restrictions on private establishments. Stores don't do invasive things because it doesn't make business sense, not because the legal system particularly enjoins them. Like if I opened a candy shop that required agreeing to an NDA for entry, what law do you think would make me let people in without signing the NDA? It might not be enforced, but there isn't anyth…

It was just an analogy to make it easier to demonstrate the disproportionate effect DRM has on paying customers.

I don't particularly care about entering into a debate about what kind of abuse of people US laws allows.

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