DRM only hurts legitimate customers. It seems increasingly rare that people aren't able to crack DRM's fairly quickly. So the only people that even see the DRM are the paying customer, and there is always some sort of inconvenient drawback for them.
DRM Is Toxic to Culture
201–210 of 263 posts
Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree, please provides examples of commonly used and almost completely transparent DRM. I use several major business software packages. I run the program. It loads and I use it. I put a DVD or Blu-ray into my player. I play the disc. I watch the movie. I'm not a big gamer myself these days, but I've rarely heard anyone complain about Steam's DRM in years.
So ... DRM is completely transparent if it doesn't get in your way when you only do what the DRM allows you to do? That's a whole lot like you are completely free to do whatever you want to do, as long as it's what we told you to do, isn't it?
That's a whole lot like you are completely free to do whatever you want to do, as long as it's what we told you to do, isn't it?
Well, since that's fundamentally what copyright is about... yes. What were you expecting?
Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture
#203Some background: I developed a software binary sandbox, in the 90's; patent cited 500+ times ... mostly by developers of DRM. Now, I am working on an open source project. IMO, DRM extends a presumption of scarcity. Hunters share their meat, whereas farmers guard their harvest. For the hunter, the kill is a short term abundance of value; if it isn't shared, it will spoil. For the farmer, the harvest is a long term sto…
There is no presumption of scarcity, because scarcity is a real phenomenon. There is a vast qualitative difference between the output of ten thousand amateurs and one highly trained and exceptionally talented artist (working in whatever medium.) This an immensely unfashionable idea. But the real problem with DRM isn't that it does or does not enable copying, but that it presupposes that artistic output is a commodity…
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Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture
#204Some background: I developed a software binary sandbox, in the 90's; patent cited 500+ times ... mostly by developers of DRM. Now, I am working on an open source project. IMO, DRM extends a presumption of scarcity. Hunters share their meat, whereas farmers guard their harvest. For the hunter, the kill is a short term abundance of value; if it isn't shared, it will spoil. For the farmer, the harvest is a long term sto…
There is no presumption of scarcity, because scarcity is a real phenomenon. There is a vast qualitative difference between the output of ten thousand amateurs and one highly trained and exceptionally talented artist (working in whatever medium.) This an immensely unfashionable idea. But the real problem with DRM isn't that it does or does not enable copying, but that it presupposes that artistic output is a commodity…
there is a whole ton of shitty thinking here that is the problem.
>There is a vast qualitative difference between the output of ten thousand amateurs and one highly trained and exceptionally talented artist (working in whatever medium.)
this is itself an elitism creating a meaningless distinction benefitting the gatekeepers. fuck off.
Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture
#205All forms of DRM can be defeated by pointing an iPhone at them.
It depends on what the goal of the DRM creators is. If their goal is to prevent copies that most people would consider watchable, then they would not consider the iPhone to defeat the DRM. But some screen recording technique with framerate sync would defeat the DRM. If their goal was to prevent sharing of the original compressed stream, then they would consider even screen recording to not defeat the DRM.
Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture
#206I would love to see some use cases of what people want to be able to do with DRM'd media that 1) can't be done with current DRM limitations and 2) is within the guidelines of what the distributor allows (or within the rights given by the user's local government). For example, my local library buys a set number of digital licenses for ebooks, so there's a waitlist system for ebooks and each digital copy is time gated…
For 1) Do you remember the Walmart music store (hopefully
not, but it was a thing about a decade ago). It sold Plays For Sure™ Music with DRM servers operated by Walmart. Then Walmart shut it down and from that point forward users could no longer activate new devices that could read the files they had for.
So the use case is simple: play the music they licensed.
For 2) why is that an intermediary's responsibility? Can you photocopy a book from the library or book store, copy a CD, strip macrovision from a VHS cassette and record it on a second deck, or hand write a copy of sheet music? Sure. Does it violate the license. Maybe, maybe not. Get get the courts involved.
Relatedly, what about the right of first sale? All changes for DRM'd media have benefitted copyright holders. There needs to be a return to balance. (Having to own DHCP enabled products increases cost to the consumer, BD+ makes it difficult for most to backup blu-rays, SACD audio cannot be transported digitally, unencrypted, etc.).
DRM (and crazy long copyright extensions) hinders preservation at both the personal and societal levels. Copyrights intention was a limited monopoly in exchange for eventual free access to culturally relevant works. It no longer serves that purpose.
Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture
#207> Thus your children won’t get to play your music, show your favourite films, read your books, share your culture, with your grandchildren because they won’t inherit anything digital from you that’s usable. Historians won’t be able to track the influences on an event because the sources have digitally corroded. You’ll not even be able to share what you like with your friends.
Even Kodi assumes by (sane) defaults that the user does not want to save their own particular copy of the relevant media on their own particular device.
Imagining a future where grandchildren can't inherit the digital libraries stored on their family devices is early-2000's futurism that somehow skips completely over the year 2017 where the greater bulk of these future grandparents are streaming everything.
Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Who said anything about draconian measures? DRM is a draconian measure, by necessity. > Most modern DRM is almost completely transparent to legitimate users What do you mean by that and how is it relevant? > Do you believe that financial models other than a complete, permanent purchase of a copy of a work are useful? Maybe. > And if so, how would you propose to set up a realistic rental/library/PPV scheme for digit…
By just leaving out the DRM? I once thought as you do. Then I ran a business that invested significant money, some of it my own, in making original content. We really tried to avoid going down the DRM path, because I didn't like the idea of risking inconveniencing any legitimate customers. Today, in light of the experience doing that, I am much, much less sympathetic to claims that DRM doesn't do anything or should b…
Well, as for your business I obviously can't tell whether it was a deserved market failure, but in the end, it mostly doesn't matter, because DRM is just such a fundamentally broken idea with so many negative externalities that it would be hard to find anything that I couldn't live without if it depended on DRM to exist.
However, I wonder about this:
> BTW, in case you think we're just being paranoid, we have literally had people asking us why they couldn't access our material with well-known ripping software, to give one example of how blatant the abuse can be.
What exactly is abuse about this? I mean, I get from what you are saying that you don't like it, but how is it abusive to use some tool to convert some content that you paid for into a format/transfer it into an environment of your own choice that you want to use it in? If your terms said that you couldn't do that, I would rather consider your terms abusive.
Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most modern DRM is almost completely transparent to legitimate users, particularly the technologies used with rental models rather than permanent purchases (where as I've said elsewhere I think both the ethics and practicalities are somewhat different). I disagree, please provides examples of commonly used and almost completely transparent DRM. I'll start with a counterpoint: a user on Chrome (not exactly a minority)…
I disagree, please provides examples of commonly used and almost completely transparent DRM. I use several major business software packages. I run the program. It loads and I use it. I put a DVD or Blu-ray into my player. I play the disc. I watch the movie. I'm not a big gamer myself these days, but I've rarely heard anyone complain about Steam's DRM in years.
I use several major business software packages. I run the program. It loads and I use it.
Without knowing which DRM they use, this example is irrelevant.
I put a DVD or Blu-ray into my player. I play the disc. I watch the movie.
This is a classic WORKSFORME. New Blu-rays are released with new versions of the DRM, which don't work with older players unless they're connected to the Internet to update their firmware - and if it exists.
Search for "can't play avatar blueray" and you'll find many people for whom it's not even close to transparent.
I'm not a big gamer myself these days, but I've rarely heard anyone complain about Steam's DRM in years.
If you beat them for a while, eventually people stop complaining. I don't know about you, but growing up, not being able to lend games between friends was unthinkable. Steam robs new players of this communal experience, excluding poorer kids from social groups because they can't play the games everyone else has.
It's not just not transparent; I find it vile.
Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture
#210I would love to see some use cases of what people want to be able to do with DRM'd media that 1) can't be done with current DRM limitations and 2) is within the guidelines of what the distributor allows (or within the rights given by the user's local government). For example, my local library buys a set number of digital licenses for ebooks, so there's a waitlist system for ebooks and each digital copy is time gated…
> I would love to see some use cases of what people want to be able to do with DRM'd media that 1) can't be done with current DRM limitations and 2) is within the guidelines of what the distributor allows (or within the rights given by the user's local government). Play it on my linux machine? Copy it to a different medium for my own personal use? Inspect it for security vulnerabilities? Build and sell a device that…
> more?
How about the highly experimental, expensive, poor-user-interface, precursors to whatever the next truly innovative killer app will be? We don't know what the really important use cases will be; we don't even know[1] which events or innovations are in the general direction of the next killer app.
The very idea that some ideas - aka information, intellectual works, or (bleh) "content" - can be owned is already offensive enough. For DRM to make any kind of sense you first have to presume you can enumerate the ways an idea will be used. If we knew that, we could skip most R&D.
Instead of trying artificially re-create scarcity, the Silicon Valley startup culture should be worried about of DRM fencing off next-decade's products.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29#Co...