Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DRM Is Toxic to Culture

meshedinsights.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 263 posts

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#211

Post by scarface74 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #178
scarface74 wrote: post #120

The usual spiel about DRM is that you don't own what you "bought" but in the case of subscriptions and rentals, why would anyone think they have a right to ownership when they are clearly paying for access ? Why should I have a problem with paying Apple for DRM free music from iTunes and paying for a subscription to DRMd music for Apple Music? I haven't pirated music since the iTunes Store opened in 2003. Even from 2…

I suppose people in general are not yet used to have everything in their life be some kind of service . With DRM, the part of the issue is how quickly we went from ownership (buying paper books, or even music/video on physical media) to renting. Personally, I'm not sure what to think about it. On the one hand, one could argue that everything becoming a service is a sign of a maturing society. On the other hand, it ma…

Currently I lean more towards thinking that service-oriented economy is a problem, and in particular that SaaS and DRM are cancer.

How is * aaS anything more than the specialization of labor?

I am the architect responsible for design and maintenance of an in house software platform with a very small staff. We run everything on AWS and use as many of Amazon's services as we are contractionally allowed to - messaging, hosting, logging, security, etc. and outsource other non specialized software to other companies -- mail, source control (github), project management (Version One), time tracking, expense reporting, etc. It's much better than the bad old days where you had to maintain all of your own servers and host everything in house. It lets me concentrate my efforts on my team's core competencies - the platform we are trying to build.

Almost anytime we have a choice between supporting it in house or paying someone else to do it, we lean toward paying someone else to do if it meets our contractual requirements.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#212

Post by anigbrowl »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #195
anigbrowl wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conceivably, but 'what would be enforceable legally' is often a function of practicality and transaction costs - that is, there are many infringements that publishers would ideally like to prevent, but don't bother because of the impracticality of doing so. Nobody tries to collect royalties from a street musician banging out Beatles tunes on a guitar, for example. I've gotta say that 10 years on HN has taught me not…

> Conceivably, but 'what would be enforceable legally' is often a function of practicality and transaction costs I actually meant legally, not practically, that's why I wrote "legally". As in, you could not convince a judge to decide in your favour. > DRM enforcement isn't isomorphic to legal enforceability, but it's a reasonably good approximation. Nope, it's absolutely not. How would you legally prevent someone fro…

By contract, which happens all the time. It doesn't seem like you're interested in having a discussion so much as an argument, so have a nice day.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#213

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

Silhouette wrote: post #202
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I guess I was expecting something that explains your argument?

I mean, unless I completely misunderstood you, you justified DRM by saying that it was ok because it doesn't get in your way ("it's transparent"). And now you are essentially saying that if it did get in your way, that would also be ok, because that's the purpose of DRM. Or in other words: Whether it does get in your way is completely irrelevant as to whether or not you think DRM is acceptable. So, what was your argument, then?

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#214

Post by Silhouette »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #208
Silhouette wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 literal…

The business I mentioned didn't fail. We were just forced to become more aggressive about protecting our IP, and contrary to everyone telling me otherwise, that strategy was very obviously effective even with still a relatively light touch. Like A/B testing a web site and hitting on a simple change that bumps your conversions by 20%, even making something a little less convenient to rip and share can make quite a big difference.

The objection to rippers is that we were effectively operating on a form of rental model. If someone is paying a lower price to rent your stuff, you can't let them rip all of it and keep it permanently anyway, and this was explicitly contrary to our terms. Obviously so was sharing it on major hosting services and even trying to monetize it, which sadly wasn't unheard of either.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#215

Post by sedachv »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #152
musesum wrote: post #89

Some 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…

Your entire comment boils down to repeating Sturgeon's Law over and over, which can be summarized as "ninety percent of everything is crap," which is to say, your comment is obnoxious and off-topic to the discussion of Digital Restrictions Management and its negative consequences (DRM only has negative consequences).

However, there is an idea there. HN user https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=maxxxxx made a very astute observation as to why so many "industries" (rich people that control companies) are so adamant about ramming DRM down everyone's throats:

Copyright and IP (and probably real estate) are pretty much the only way for capitalists to make money the more things like internet, 3D printing, AI, robotics and so on are available to the masses. To me it's the only way to keep the current power structures intact so for a lot of powerful people copyright laws are probably the most important laws. They don't need the state for personal protection (they can pay for security guards instead of police) but they need the state for protecting their livelihood.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12514611

The system you propose to invent is redistribution of wealth and socialism: free education for those that want to advance their abilities, and universal basic income to allow them the time to express those abilities. Liberating knowledge from rent-seeking should be the prerogative of everyone that wants to improve the human condition and advance humanity.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#216

Post by Silhouette »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #213
Silhouette wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I guess I was expecting something that explains your argument? I mean, unless I completely misunderstood you, you justified DRM by saying that it was ok because it doesn't get in your way ("it's transparent"). And now you are essentially saying that if it did get in your way, that would also be ok, because that's the purpose of DRM. Or in other words: Whether it does get in your way is completely irrelevant as to whe…

I mean, unless I completely misunderstood you, you justified DRM by saying that it was ok because it doesn't get in your way ("it's transparent").

With the extra qualifier that what you're doing is actually permitted/legal, yes, that's essentially my point. That condition rather changes the meaning, though. Indeed, the difference it makes is essentially the point of having DRM in the first place.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#218

Post by rayiner »

harryh wrote: post #115
rayiner wrote: post #85

I disagree with the characterization of all this media as "culture." They're entertainment products that exist for the sole purpose of generating a profit.

Shakespeare didn't write all those plays for free.

If a modern day Shakespeare wants to create "culture," they can license their works appropriately. But for the most part the stuff that people want to copy are entertainment products.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#219

Post by 3dk »

Phenomabomb wrote: post #201

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.

A good example of this is the Denuvo DRM for games. As I understand it, game data was temporarily decrypted, while playing which led to poor performance. Denuvo games were cracked and the pirate versions performed better. Developers paid a lot for Denuvo DRM which didn't even fulfill the promise of stopping piracy.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#220

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

anigbrowl wrote: post #212
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conceivably, but 'what would be enforceable legally' is often a function of practicality and transaction costs I actually meant legally, not practically, that's why I wrote "legally". As in, you could not convince a judge to decide in your favour. > DRM enforcement isn't isomorphic to legal enforceability, but it's a reasonably good approximation. Nope, it's absolutely not. How would you legally prevent someone fro…

By contract, which happens all the time. It doesn't seem like you're interested in having a discussion so much as an argument, so have a nice day.

So, how would you force someone to agree to that contract after you sold them the tractor?
Post reply on HN