DRM Is Toxic to Culture • Hacker News Board

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#231

Post by zeta0134 » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 12:12 AM UTC

type0 wrote: post #64

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the really weird part is that while the propaganda puts it as "protecting property", it really has exactly the opposite effect. When you buy a physical book, that book is indeed your property, and you can do with it whatever you want. Now, with DRM-infested ebooks, you are actually just licensing it for very restricted use. You might as well be claiming that making private home ownership illegal would strengthen…

The physical book comparison is interesting. Imagine there would be a way to publish physical books with DRM that all publishers would embrace. You open such a book without authorization and it's all gibberish. To read it you would need to have bought a special strip that you lay over the pages in order to read (don't matter the technical aspect, it's gedanken-experiment so let's consider such a strip magic for now).…

I think the biggest trouble, and the thing DRM-protected content producers have latched on to, is that the vast majority of our population will follow the path of least resistance. If it's easier for the average consumer to purchase an eBook on their Kindle than it is for them to find and purchase the same physical book in a store, they will often do so irregardless of any difference in value, perceived or otherwise.

By making the DRM-protected purchase the easiest, most frictionless method of initial acquisition, consumers are encouraged (often without realizing the risks) to buy DRM protected content, simply by being presented with an opportunity to do so.

I think the only thing we can really do to solve this problem is what we've been doing: educate our fellows, shout it from the rooftops, and work to make consumers aware of the rights they're giving up when they purchase content protected by DRM.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#232

Post by kgbier » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 12:13 AM UTC

3dk wrote: post #219

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.

Once the game has been cracked some publishers/devs have opted to release an update that removes the DRM and the potential performance hit (eg. Mass Effect Andromeda, Hitman, DOOM). The performance hit in question, however, is an implementation detail that some developers handle better than others (Rime comes to mind as a game that performed Denuvo DRM checks many many times per second, it's speculated it was tied to per-frame update calls).

Denuvo still has a place (if it stays effective) in reducing the number of day-one pirates, which is its main selling point at this time. On Steam, interested players have a choice to put money down on release (with the potential to refund), or wait an indeterminate number of days (weeks?) to download the cracked version. This uncertainty period has a conversion rate that Denuvo clients balance against the costs of the DRM.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#233

Post by Silhouette » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 12:19 AM UTC

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #224

Silhouette wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Now, did they ask for help with how to keep it permanently or with ripping it to their own device? You are constantly confusing those. If I paid for some content…

Without meaning to be rude, I'm not confusing anything, and what you would expect doesn't matter, only the law and the terms of our relationship with our customers do.

Still without meaning to be rude, I'm really not interested in discussing our position on that one in any more detail. What we offer is openly described, reasonable, and clearly stated before anyone commits to anything. We get overwhelmingly positive feedback within our target market and very few complaints. We tried playing nice about protecting our work -- far nicer than most people in this business, and probably for far longer too. But people abused it, and then straight-up lied to our faces to try to get us to release the locks and let them do it some more.

So now when someone tries to rip us off, we don't play so nice any more. None of our legitimate customers care, because they don't even notice. However, we do get to still have a business and pay the bills. As a bonus, we also waste far less time dealing with the kind of toxic "customer" who thinks a few dollars earns them 24/7 customer service to explain why they can't set up oursite.com.somecountry and resell all our stuff or give it away with their ads all over the place.

As I said, it's easy to snipe from the cheap seats, and it's easy to feel entitled as a customer. It looks a little different when it's you and your colleagues who gave up their jobs, sold their houses, didn't take holidays for years, and so on, and then a group of people carefully exploited your trusting nature to threaten everything you've built.

What I've shared in this discussion is just the real world experience of people who tried to be optimistic and trusting in the kind of way that others here seem to want, allowing the kinds of behaviour that others here seem to think don't cause any harm. The experience was not good, and operating on that basis proved to be unsustainable. That might upset people here who don't like the outcome we observed, but those are the facts, and to be honest I'm tiring of trying to explain this in the face of open hostility in comments and downvotes. If you want to learn the same lessons for yourself rather than taking my word for it, no-one is stopping you; the price of admission is explained in the previous paragraph.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#234

Post by ue_ » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 12:30 AM UTC

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…

>it presupposes that artistic output is a commodity that can be copied.

In the Marxian sense, artistic output is a commodity, however every subsequent copy is a commodity with very little value, depending on the value of the copying machine etc.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#235

Post by dpkonofa » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 1:57 AM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #102

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…

DRM and other anti-piracy measures are all about making piracy harder, not impossible. It's not an all or nothing venture. Every little bit you make copying harder results in fewer people copying. Cntrl C Cntrl V makes it so my mom can pirate. And she did during the Napster days. But she can't figure out BitTorrent on her own. Well, she could, but there is a learning curve, and most people aren't interested in it. Th…

I don't even know that this is true. In my personal experience (so completely anecdotal), pirated content is always much easier to ingest than paid, DRM'd content. There hasn't ever been a single DRM system that actually made piracy more difficult. If anything, it just made usage for legitimate users difficult. The only exception that I can think of were the DRM systems for video games that existed (and some still do) where it takes them a week or 2 to crack the DRM. Even then, the people that weren't going to pay for those games just wait until the DRM is cracked. It didn't actually make pirating the games harder, it just made it inconvenient for a little while longer but that's never been shown to equate to more paying customers.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#236

Post by ucaetano » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 2:39 AM UTC

"Travelling frequently in Europe, I’ve had the chance to use two approaches to the underground/metro/subway, the Paris Metro and the U-bahn in various German cities."

The author failed to understand the actual cultural issue driving the two approaches: In Germany you don't need a gate to have people pay the ticket, most people will do it anyway. In Paris, most people won't pay and just ride for free, and tragedy of the commons ensues.

So by his own argument, DRM is a product of the culture of a people.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#237

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 4:21 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#238

Post by cyphar » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 4:51 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #111

pdkl95 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMS has been warning[1] about that specific problem for decades. Unfortunately, very few people listened. Now we have the additional problem of people already giving up property rights for shiny digital baubles. -sigh- [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

I'm getting a little exhausted in every thread about DRM and the likes to read about how "people don't listen to RMS". People don't listen to RMS because he makes no effort to be listened to and constantly takes absolutist stances which only harm what he defends. In the case of DRM, many people have been talking about this problem for a long time. It's not a matter of consumers not listening, it's a matter of alterna…

> People don't listen to RMS because he makes no effort to be listened to and constantly takes absolutist stances which only harm what he defends.

I used to feel the same way quite a long time ago before I sat back and asked myself "what is the root cause of my distaste for his method of communicating his ideals?" I found that it was because I hadn't fully grasped his views on an emotional level. This argument that "even though RMS was right, the way he said it was reason not to listen to him" falls back to an appeal to emotion -- the fact he has very strong convictions is not relevant to the discussion of whether his arguments are valid.

But to explain why he is so absolutist, look at things from his point of view. From his view, all proprietary software is an injustice with no exceptions. Any attempt to take away user freedom is similarly an injustice. Now, if you fully accepted that view, how would you act as RMS? Would you make concessions on your sense of morality and ethics? Personally, I wouldn't and I don't.

> In the case of DRM, many people have been talking about this problem for a long time.

And RMS has been talking about the more general problem of user freedom since the very beginning. Not sure what your point here is. RMS is the single reason why we have the free software movement, and that movement came from a philosophical view that is fundamentally inseparable from the other pro-user-freedom sub-movements.

> Steam, the #1 platform, doesn't enforce DRM.

That's blatantly false. steam_api.dll implements DRM.

> Who do you fault for alternatives not developing/not catching on in the ebooks/video world? Consumers for making the wrong choices? Companies for not trying hard enough? Governments for not regulating consumer rights?

Governments pandering to publishers for several decades in strengthening the power of copyright through WIPO and similar treaties. Those publishers then had an enormous amount of power over artists. Combine this with the propaganda campaign by those publishers of "intellectual property"[1] to indoctrinate people into thinking that the ethics of property are at all applicable to things that aren't property.

So, at the end of the day, it's the fault of publishers making the government write laws that then unfairly strengthens the publishers' grip on the industry (where the industry is basically any artistic industry), and then using that control to convince the public that the status-quo is entirely justified and not unethical.

By the way, publishers mistreat artists all the time. So literally the only people that benefit from this system is publishers, not the people who actually make the things that you enjoy.

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#239

Post by jasonkostempski » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 5:00 AM UTC

thomastjeffery wrote: post #154

jasonkostempski wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they could all refuse to sign, or demand a much higher salary, due the high risk of that contract easily being broken by accident. 1 stolen unencrypted laptop, or source control checkout over an unencrypted channel, is all it would take.

That isn't any different from the current situation.

It is different because it's currently a crime by default. If someone wants to add to my contract that saying "riboflavin" out loud can get me fired and sued for damages, I'm gonna want a ton of extra money to cover the ubsurd risk.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#240

Post by mwfunk » Mon, Jul 10, 2017, 5:00 AM UTC

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #123

scrollaway wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm getting a little exhausted in every thread about DRM and the likes to read about how "people don't listen to RMS". People don't listen to RMS because he makes no effort to be listened to and constantly takes absolutist stances which only harm what he defends. In the case of DRM, many people have been talking about this problem for a long time. It's not a matter of consumers not listening, it's a matter of alterna…

> People don't listen to RMS because he makes no effort to be listened to So ... you should only take advice from people who put in extra effort to specifically reach you? > constantly takes absolutist stances The concept of an absolutist stance as an accusation is nonsense, as it's orthogonal to whether it's right. If you are not willing to compromise on slavery, you are taking an absolutist stance. So should people…

I am much more likely to pay attention to someone who makes at least a token effort to communicate his beliefs to human beings (including ones with very different backgrounds or values), yes. Of course. When people don't do this, it doesn't just make it harder to find common ground with them- it's evidence that they themselves are not credible or motivated by reason. The more outside the norm their message is, the more of a burden they have to figure out how to communicate that message to people who might not have the context to understand it. If they don't even make a token effort to do this, they're narcissists, not deep thinkers. Nutty people writing manifestos and going out of their way to drive away everyone who isn't 100.0% in agreement with them are a dime a dozen and generally don't make positive contributions to the world (which is fine by them, because their motivation is to write manifestos and call people out, not to make a positive difference in the world). If you truly care about this stuff, trying to prop up RMS as a spokesperson for these views is counterproductive. If you care about this stuff, you should be focused on getting better messages out there, and not even remotely concerned with trying to rationalize RMS. If anything, you should be among his harshest critics. People don't hate on RMS because they're opposed to everything he stands for, they hate on RMS because they really truly care about this stuff and he trivializes it.