The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013) • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by b3morales » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #106

krylon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, wh…

Netflix and Spotify don't model their service as a purchase, though. Netflix in particular is very clearly still shaped like a rental with their DVD service. I think of them as more convenient radio and TV: I can choose the thing I want, but I don't expect that it's portable.

This is sharply contrasted with the so-called "purchase" model of Amazon or iTunes video, and even more with the way physical media works these days (comment above about Blu-ray).

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

#192

Post by otrahuevada » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

xhkkffbf wrote: post #174

otrahuevada wrote: post #169

The purpose of DRM is ultimately asserting the will of a couple corporate ghouls over your use of the thing they basically cheated you into renting. Which wouldn't even be a thing if intellectual property rights, which are at the core of the whole debate, were untransferable and only endured for the lifetime of the creator. If anyone were able to lobby those simple, clear changes into law, the effects of that would p…

Sorry to be a bummer, but I make my living creating copyright protected material. DRM protects me and my livelihood. Yes, I often cut deals with the people you refer to as "corporate ghouls". While I often lament the terms, they aren't horrible. In the end, I make enough money to avoid searching for a job with other corporations trading in material goods. I would feel differently about the system if it weren't perfor…

Your use of scare quotes on plain self-evident terms kinda makes me think this is going to be entirely pointless, but here goes nothing.

Do you understand that your being more or less content with the results of a deal does not have a bearing on how good, or decent, or moral, the system overarching that deal is?

Tons of people seem more or less into Nestlé products despite their long track record of profiting from slavery, do you believe that being the case makes agricultural slavery a good thing?

On your last statement, how exactly do you think not paying for a thing you wouldn't pay for anyway prevents that thing from existing? Like, if I torrent "Superheroes in Body Gloves 27" instead of, you know, ignoring it, then a time travelling ghost will materialize in the set and kidnap the directors? Or how would that work

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

#193

Post by criddell » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #185

netcan wrote: 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,…

>> The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices. I think it's noteworthy that game consoles do this in the opposite direction: give creators of playback devices leverage over content providers. This was basically why console DRM evolved in the first place (in the early forms of the 10NES lockout chip and the Atari 7800 signature scheme). Accordingly, console DRM scheme…

I think this is true in ebooks and ereaders as well. There's a whole generation of readers that have bought a lot of ebooks from a single vendor. It has the effect of locking them to that vendor or possibly losing their collection.

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

#194

Post by hirako2000 » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #180

wbsss4412 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re severely discounting the value Netflix and Spotify provide in discovery and ease of access. I vastly prefer those services because I don’t have much interest in managing my own library.

>You’re severely discounting the value Netflix ... provide in discovery and ease of access. What the what? Discover on Netflix? If you mean accepting what they think you want to watch based on their curated lists of what they want you to watch shoved into your face in their carousels of boredom, then I'm going to have to disagree with you.

I think the parent meant that he favors convenience over tinkering.

Download Netflix app on pretty much any device, subscription is affordable, scroll and click to play. New content gets added each week or whatever which is more than one can consume.

it's a bit like cooking vs going to a restaurant. how can someone with a sense of real taste and care for health/nutrition understand the millions of people who regularly hit fast food chains. Convenience. It simply has to be 1/ affordable 2/ saving time, and bingo.

of course learning how to cook, going shoping to 7 different local suppliers, having a large range of stocked spices and other condiments, spend 1h and half putting things together and appreciate a great healthy meal is a better approach to eating, but not everyone accept the burden, some don't even understand the actual pro/cons of each option.

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

#195

Post by dylan604 » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

wbsss4412 wrote: post #187

dylan604 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You’re severely discounting the value Netflix ... provide in discovery and ease of access. What the what? Discover on Netflix? If you mean accepting what they think you want to watch based on their curated lists of what they want you to watch shoved into your face in their carousels of boredom, then I'm going to have to disagree with you.

You don’t have to like Netflix, but as far as the UI goes, where are you finding better content discovery for shows and movies?

They all suck. Look at each platform's verion of "Trending Now". It's just a rehash of titles in the other categories prominently displayed in "Just Added" or other some such listing of 10 to at most 20 titles. Of course those are trending because discovery of titles suck and people just give up and choose something that's right in front of them.

I want to "discover" by browsing not the most current titles available in this current licensing window. I want to be able to browse from the evergreen catalog. I want to see the things that don't have a high dollar marketing campaign guaranteeing prominent placement. Maybe these platforms don't have a large inventory of evergreen content??? There are times I want to find some title that is older. The content that wasn't along the outer walls of Blockbuster.

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

#196

Post by Kon-Peki » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

throw10920 wrote: post #173

Kon-Peki wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IA is fighting a lawsuit over its pandemic digital book lending service - where they begged for a lawsuit by deliberately offering unlimited lending of scanned books. This is obviously something they must win, so it's going to get really expensive. A quick search shows that the lawsuit is currently in the discovery phase, which is around the time that lawsuits start to get really, really expensive. And apparently the…

Why is the lawsuit that they intentionally begged for "obviously something they must win"?

The publishers that sued them are asking for a seriously large amount of money and the deletion of all the books they've ever scanned. That's a pretty big deal, don't you think?

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

#197

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

zinekeller wrote: post #136

gcr wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonprofits gotta solicit donations. NPR does this, PBS' infamous pledge week does this. This isn't "falling," it's an old practice.

I don't know IA's budget (might be just the pandemic has tolled its finances), but I have reservations about Wikimedia's use of money. (Only the main foundation, others like the German affiliate is efficient about money and except for 2020 has a surplus which obviously went to cover inevitable shortfalls.)

[deleted]

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

#198

Post by tomc1985 » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

dbrueck wrote: post #186

I worked in the online media space for a long time, and the fact of the matter is that DRM enabled the era of networks putting their content online, it enabled Netflix, etc. - DRM was the only way to get past the liability gridlock between content owners and distributors. Also, in practice DRM is bad for users only when its presence causes friction in the legitimate viewing process. It has a bad rap because, historic…

> DRM is a bandaid whose need arises from trying to apply traditional economic models (of buying and selling physical, tangible things) to digital assets that never wear out and cost /essentially/ nothing to duplicate and distribute

We need to embrace the digital model, not fight it. Detach ownership and control from the output, there are plenty of business models that work when the product is freely reproduceable.

Because right now we've created a hellscape where consumers have zero control or agency over their media, and we are erasing the old ways of physically possessing it.

#199

Post by wbsss4412 » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #195

wbsss4412 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to like Netflix, but as far as the UI goes, where are you finding better content discovery for shows and movies?

They all suck. Look at each platform's verion of "Trending Now". It's just a rehash of titles in the other categories prominently displayed in "Just Added" or other some such listing of 10 to at most 20 titles. Of course those are trending because discovery of titles suck and people just give up and choose something that's right in front of them. I want to "discover" by browsing not the most current titles available…

I would agree with you that that all suck, and the quality of Netflix has certainly gone downhill.

But you pretty much answered your own question. The platforms don’t have giant catalogs of evergreen & niche content, because that is extremely expensive to license. That’s not really a discovery problem, though.

The trade off is of course, the old buying/renting model. But that’s oriented much more towards the enthusiast consumer, which I am not and it would seem you are.

#200

Post by dbrueck » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

viscountchocula wrote: post #190

dbrueck wrote: post #186

I worked in the online media space for a long time, and the fact of the matter is that DRM enabled the era of networks putting their content online, it enabled Netflix, etc. - DRM was the only way to get past the liability gridlock between content owners and distributors. Also, in practice DRM is bad for users only when its presence causes friction in the legitimate viewing process. It has a bad rap because, historic…

That wouldn't obviate the need for DRM, though, as there would still need to be a way for the content owner to be confident that players register each use. And we sort of have this use-based system now, but with unlimited uses per month of active subscription.

> That wouldn't obviate the need for DRM

Yes and no. In order for the scheme to work, yes, you'd always need something that encourages people to play by the rules, but it would look very, very different from many of the DRM systems of today, whose focus is on shoring up the ill-fitting concepts of ownership and possession. For example, in today's DRM, it's typical to have mechanisms for granting a license to allow playing the media N times, or being able to play the media from startDate thru endDate. Most (all?) of that would go away.

Ideally the new system would not have any noticeable friction for end-users, but as a practical matter, things can still work if we at least get to the point where the friction is significantly lower than just stealing it (much like today - if it's easy enough to just consume the media legitimately, for many people piracy just isn't worth the effort).

> And we sort of have this use-based system now, but with unlimited uses per month of active subscription.

It's definitely a partial step in that direction, yes, and I'm encouraged by the fact that I don't buy DVDs or music anymore because it shows consumers are being weaned off the concept of digital media ownership (and I hope the NFT fad dies out, because it runs counter to this).

A couple of big hurdles that remain are (a) content distributors are still way too bent on gatekeeping and content control - for this to really work they are going to have to dial that back quite a bit, and (b) too little of the compensation is making it back to the content creators and/or the compensation is still often one or a few transactions (Bruce Springsteen recently sold the rights to all his music for half a billion dollars) instead of an ongoing compensation for as long as people are using it.