DRM Is Toxic to Culture • Hacker News Board

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#81

Post by AlphaWeaver » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 4:00 PM UTC

klez wrote: post #58

AlphaWeaver wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If intellectual property rights ceased to exist, we wouldn't have a need for the GPL, wouldn't we?

I've been giving some thought about this recently. I'd say that, at least for software, we'd still need the GPL and, therefore, copyright. Which clashes a bit with my anti-copyright sentiments, but whatever. Why is this? Because software is different from literature and visual arts. In a copyright-free world, once you copy a work of literature you have the whole work at your disposal to copy, modify and redistribute…

Great response! I didn't think about that!

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#82

Post by coldtea » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 4:02 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #74

coldtea wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) give the tape to your friends to watch too! Yes, but you couldn't give the content to everybo…

> And you had to waste 1 hour or so in real-time to make a copy (which was degraded anyway). No, you didn't. You either watched while recording, or just started recording, went to do something else and came back in an hour. Either way, the time wasn't wasted.

Why constrain your response to the arguments above? Why not try to answer by covering the whole spectrum and the gist of what I tried to convey?

The gist of my argument was about the scalability of today's piracy vs the old time VHS piracy. And that doesn't change just because you could "watch the show you copied" too so "that time wasn't wasted".

The "watched while recording" part only makes sense for a show you already wanted to watch. And you just got one copy out of it. And the "do something else" part still takes a few minutes.

On top of those you still needed the physical giving of the tape to the other person, PLUS to cover the non-insignificant cost of the tape. And lets not even get about how much selection you could produce or store at your home.

In contrast, today you can download and share 10,000s of shows without having watched any of them and without wanting to watch them in the fist place, in just the time it takes to make an upload or share a link. And not just to one person, but to the WHOLE internet.

Only the original pirate needs to do any real-time capture (and that's only for some special cases, like camera captures of movies or VCRed shows -- more often than not, they can just rip something in a few minutes).

And even them, after the capture can immediately share the digital copy with BILLIONS of people, instead of the just one person you got in the VHS days.

There's really no comparison.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#83

Post by RandomOpinion » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 4:03 PM UTC

ivanbakel wrote: post #42

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say that DRM is merely an inevitable outgrowth of our society's enshrinement and worship of the idea of "intellectual property". If intellectual property rights cease to exist, then there's no longer any legal basis to enforce the GPL and similar licenses and the Free Software ecosystem would collapse. Are you sure you want that? EDIT: Replaced "open source" with "Free Software". My thanks to other posters…

Would there even still be a need for it? Releasing code without the approval of your managers would stop being a crime, and it's not like most people are only releasing free software because of licenses in the first place.

Businesses could prevent that by requiring employees to agree to a separate, permanent contract not to release any code as part of the conditions for being hired.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#84

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 4:04 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #70

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business model protection is if some particular model gets legal privileges that give it an advantage over competing business models without a justification based on the common good. So, none of the examples that you cite are cases of business model protection.

Just because a business model (e.g. retail sales) is so prevalent as to be invisible as such, and laws that enable it seem like natural laws or obvious for the common good, doesn't mean it's not a business model like any other. Just that some are unable to see it as such. There has been criticism of the prevalent model too (e.g. from the "property is theft" type to money-less sharing communities etc).

That does not make it business model protection. Please try to actually understand what people write, it doesn't help discussions if you simply ignore the other's point.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#85

Post by rayiner » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 4:04 PM UTC

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.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#86

Post by eastWestMath » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 4:06 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #48

eastWestMath wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge difference between lending your friend a VHS and uploading a torrent. And the idea of owning a license to a piece of intellectual property shouldn't be a hard thing to wrap one's head around if you work in software.

I can wrap my mind around idea of licensing just fine. That in no way means I agree with current one-sided state of affairs in copyright law. I also don't see why did you bring torrenting into the debate - do you consider me sharing am movie to my friend from my iPad to his a crime? Is that the same as torrenting? Or why am I prevented from doing that due to DRM?

Strictly speaking, you don't have the right to do that under the licensing agreement for digital media. You're perfectly within your rights to lend your friend a DVD.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#87

Post by pdkl95 » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #29

_jal wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to be fair, the VCR didn't have a distribution system attached that allows sharing worldwide. I still agree with you, though; times change, and nobody "deserves" business-model protection. The legacy copyright industries already get massive state subsidies through the legal enforcement of artificial monopolies - degrading everyone's computing to prop them up further is insane.

> I still agree with you, though; times change, and nobody "deserves" business-model protection. Is that true though? Because laws against theft (physical theft of actual products I mean, let's not get into whether "copying" is theft here) are a business-model protection too. As are most business laws (e.g. contract law). Why pay at a restaurant when you can just walk out and run for it? Isn't making it illegal a "bu…

> So what makes some business models (selling physical stuff) more protectable?

Food is a scarce[1] resource. Concepts like "property" and "theft" relate specifically to managing scarcity. Taking food deprives the owner of their meal, because we cannot make perfect copies of baryonic matter. After Shannon introduced the idea of "digital communication" that allowed information to be copied indefinitely without errors, the bit was no longer scarce.

Note: I didn't say anything about how the information was created in the first place. The creation of data - which requires work/energy - should not be conflated with copying existing data. The method used by the restaurant to create or acquire a recipe doesn't create the scarcity that is inherent to the food that implements that recipe.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#88

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #70

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business model protection is if some particular model gets legal privileges that give it an advantage over competing business models without a justification based on the common good. So, none of the examples that you cite are cases of business model protection.

Just because a business model (e.g. retail sales) is so prevalent as to be invisible as such, and laws that enable it seem like natural laws or obvious for the common good, doesn't mean it's not a business model like any other. Just that some are unable to see it as such. There has been criticism of the prevalent model too (e.g. from the "property is theft" type to money-less sharing communities etc).

Contract laws and laws forbidding theft (and establishing the private ownership of physical objects) are literally cornerstones of almost all human societies that ever existed. Protecting retail is incidental.

Consider this thought experiment: we invented Star Trek replicators and made them as expensive as computers or microwave ovens. Retail business would, and IMO rightfully should, literally stop existing that very moment. Trying to restrict replicating everyday object would be wrong, and would go against the very nature of replicator-enabled reality.

This is to show that laws should align with the reality they exist in, instead of making lives of the many worse to make lives of the few a bit easier.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#89

Post by musesum » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

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 store of value. Scavengers exploit the asymmetry of effort in which to obtain that value.

Once value became easy to copy, the symmetry of effort has shifted. As a result, culture is shifting with it. Freely copied recorded music shifted the value back to live concerts. Back to a short term abundance of value. When was the last time you posted on Twitter or FB? These are freshly hunted moments. Wait too long and that muse will spoil.

Re: DRM Is Toxic to Culture

#90

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC » Sun, Jul 09, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #62

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…

Indeed it would, for the parties that would argue this. In business, property rights seem to be seen primarily, if not only, as a money-making asset - if you own something then you can license it and thus make money from it. It works well for media companies, which is why I feel their primary business is moving property rights and licenses around, with any end-user benefit being a side effect.

Yeah, sure ... but the weird part is that they use that in their propaganda, and successfully so, it seems. Totally would make sense in their internal communication on the matter of course.