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The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

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Re: The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

#101

Why the conspiracy theory? It works very well to stop piracy (since it's a hassle to have to pick a bottorrent program, install it, deal with it's annoying popups and ads (because you're a normal user and chose a popular bittorrent client), avoid the popups on the pirate bay, know what a magnet link it, find a player for .mkv files. It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. Anyone who disagrees hasn't tried t…

It's always weird how people keep insisting pirating stuff is hard and only for "techies", when all it takes is to go to a trusted website and hit the play or download button. You can literally get pirate streaming sites in google results by searching "watch online", often in reasonable video quality. I wonder what kind of hoops you have gone through in helping your friends with something as simple as this to have su…

Trusted websites are hard to find, though. Any site that gets sufficiently popular (e.g. Megaupload) gets shut down or taken off search results via DMCA, and anything you do find is usually some extremely sketchy site which (if it does actually have the content you want) spams you with popup ads for gambling/cam sites and whatnot every time you click anywhere.

That said, downloading Bittorrent + a VPN, browsing the Pirate Bay, and clicking a magnet link isn't some Herculean effort, either. If you can figure out how to download software on a computer, it's not hard to figure out how to pirate it, too.

Re: The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

#102

Off-topic but the archive.org page is unusable for me on mobile due to the donation banner: the close button is obscured by the timeline and can't be clicked, "maybe later" replaces it with a different banner asking for contact info which I also can't close. I love IA and have donated to them before but this is slowly sliding into the dark UX patterns making web unusable.

It works for me. I am using chrome on android

Re: The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

#103
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take: "The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices and their own consumers." How have I regretted purchasing Blu-Rays in the past. They require an update to the drive firmware, they require their own GPU driver version, they require an update to the player software, and they try to sneak spyware onto my PC anyway. It is almost impossible to legally watch an authent…

It has been like that for a long time. The non-skippable intro screen warning viewers of the evils of unlicensed copying was only ever seen by people not watching an unlicensed copy. FWIW, I think movies need to take the same route music did. Ever since I found out I could just buy DRM-free high-quality audio at a reasonable price, I have happily paid for the music I like, because it was so very convenient. If it was…

Where do you buy audio? I don't use apple (itunes) and only some stuff is on bandcamp...

Re: The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think that it's people taking from corporations, while UGC is corporations taking from people, spamming them with ads, monetizing their hobbies and selling their personal data. anyway, if I pay for Netflix who has produced their own content, why should I also watch the ads for other Netflix content? Isn't it enough to pay for it?

You get ads on Netflix? Which country are you in?

You don't get the pre-roll ads? A button to skip them eventually appears, but it is still annoying.

Re: The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

#105
post #54

>> The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices. This is a good spot to place the pin. The "theological" view is that (1) copyright is a moral right. (2) The Law just protects right against wrong, and(3) economic side effects of laws are incidental. Real life is a lot less naive, so to speak. The commercial intellectual property concerns at stake are are record labels,…

My take: "The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices and their own consumers." How have I regretted purchasing Blu-Rays in the past. They require an update to the drive firmware, they require their own GPU driver version, they require an update to the player software, and they try to sneak spyware onto my PC anyway. It is almost impossible to legally watch an authent…

I mean, it might not be legal where you live(definitely not illegal here) but MakeMKV takes about 20 minutes per disc and you can just watch the movie in VLC, works 100% of the time. Why bother with any special players.

Re: The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

#106
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My take: "The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices and their own consumers." How have I regretted purchasing Blu-Rays in the past. They require an update to the drive firmware, they require their own GPU driver version, they require an update to the player software, and they try to sneak spyware onto my PC anyway. It is almost impossible to legally watch an authent…

It has been like that for a long time. The non-skippable intro screen warning viewers of the evils of unlicensed copying was only ever seen by people not watching an unlicensed copy. FWIW, I think movies need to take the same route music did. Ever since I found out I could just buy DRM-free high-quality audio at a reasonable price, I have happily paid for the music I like, because it was so very convenient. If it was…

Netflix & Spotify are currently worth $275bn & $45bn. I think it's quite unlikely that such results would be achieved with a pay-x-get-y store model.

Even Disney & Universal, themselves enormously valuable companies, are greedily eying the platform model. It has everything they want. Recurring revenues. Content pushing abilities, which is usually the most strategically important asset. Platform monopoly potential, where most artists/studios take your take-it-or-leave-it terms.

They don't hate you. They just do whatever is most valuable to them. They don't care about you. They may or may not value your custom, but that's about it.

Re: The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

#107

Off-topic but the archive.org page is unusable for me on mobile due to the donation banner: the close button is obscured by the timeline and can't be clicked, "maybe later" replaces it with a different banner asking for contact info which I also can't close. I love IA and have donated to them before but this is slowly sliding into the dark UX patterns making web unusable.

Same.

Re: The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

#109

Off-topic but the archive.org page is unusable for me on mobile due to the donation banner: the close button is obscured by the timeline and can't be clicked, "maybe later" replaces it with a different banner asking for contact info which I also can't close. I love IA and have donated to them before but this is slowly sliding into the dark UX patterns making web unusable.

That banner was annoying enough for me on desktop that I removed it with my ad blocker a while ago.

Re: The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

#110
DRM currently works very well to prevent copying of PC games during initial sales window. There is a long list of not cracked Denuvo games. Some have been on the list for years.

I think it is interesting that this is the case now since 5+ years ago games were cracked within days, always.

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