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Solving DRM in the BitTorrent Age
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Jan 31, 2007 11:49 PM
from the just-let-us-steal dept.
from the just-let-us-steal dept.
An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has a new article on DRM in the BitTorrent Age. They argue that the movie industry looking for "perfect DRM" should aim for the printed book model (people still buy books even though they can read them for free at Barnes & Noble). They argue that the missing element is that screenwriters are not marketed by Hollywood in the same way the book industry markets its authors."
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Auteurs (Score:5, Insightful)
Moore's law, etc. (Score:2)
In some ways, the HD ecosystem is going to buy time to help DRM reach that magic steady state that we enjoy with books. With HD movies requiring huge amounts of space, there's already a barrier to casual copying if only for HDD space issues. The
Re:Moore's law, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
At the moment, typical home-bandwith is perhaps 1Mbps. Typical home-storage is perhaps 300GB. Which means (order of magnitude-estimates)
Which means for most people, bandwith and storage is a limiting factor for the last few of these options. (depending on patience) High-def movies migth add another order of magnitude size, so we're up to a week of downloading and you can store like 5-10 of them, which is definitely way into impractical-land.
But that's all today. Bandwith and storage grows exponentially, and though 1Mbps may be *typical* even today a significant (and rapidly growing) part of the population has a lot more.
Lyse, my ISP have stopped *offering* speeds lower than 6Mbps. Their top offering currently is 50Mbps. Which brings the high-def movie in original (blueray/HD-DVD) quality back down from a week and to 4 hours.
I expect 100Mbps to be the norm in my neighbourhood before the decade is out. The infrastructure is certianly already there, the only reason it's not the norm today is that few care for it. For 99% of the users today, 6Mbps (symetrical, same upload!) is adequate enough that they have no interest even in the "premium" 50Mbps offered for a modestly higher price.
Already today, people are downloading albums rathe than songs. And to some degree complete discographies rather than albums. And books are tiny compared to music.
We're only a short way away from being able to in effect say: "Screw it, I don't know yet what I want to read on the plane, let's just download 'all_books_published_in_the_usa_this_decade.zip' and put it on the reader, that's only a few TB anyway."
Just how large would "all_movies_ever_shown_in_an_american_theatre-dvdr ip.zip" be anyway ? How many years away from being able to download that in say a day are we ? How are the *AAs going to deal with it ?
We live in interesting times.
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Re:Moore's law, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't agree though. Most devices I've seen also suffer from one or more of the following:
Ok, so maybe these don't matter to you, and are all trumped by bookmarks. But I'd be willing to pay quite a bit for a device without these problems, and I *have* been deliberately searching, with no luck whatsoever this far.
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That's exactly it (Score:3, Insightful)
There are other cost issues, as well. A $10 book provides more entertainment hours per dollar than a $20 DVD, and further you can buy it on a whim and use it immediately, without any other devices.
Re: (Score:2)
Foreign films have always struggled to reach an American audience, and a director so precious and conceited as to call himself an "auteur" has a particularly hard row to hoe.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They got called "auteurs" because it is believed that their directorial vision colored their work enough that they effectively authored it--regardless of who wrote the screenplay.
Those intending to sell films the way books get sold should use directors, not screenwriters.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Books vs Music/Movies - No comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Copying a movie or music onto a disk and playing it on your home theatre, stereo, computer, is exactly what you would be doing if you paid for it.
Interesting thought - but not a valid comparison.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Books vs Music/Movies - No comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Books vs Music/Movies - No comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
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PDAs have other advantages over books (Score:3, Insightful)
I read a lot of books on my smartphone. The screen is bright & crisp, even in daylight, the text is well-defined, and I can read for hours with no hint of headaches or eye fatigue. The "page" is small, but flipping pages is effortless with the scrollwheel under my thumb.
However, what convinced me to prefer it over paper are the things books can't match:
Re:Books vs Music/Movies - No comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
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convenience, not DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
The only DRM that works is having movies that are large enough, that most people won't want to spend the time downloading them. (i.e. 24gb HD-DVDs.)
Re:convenience, not DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
The only DRM that works is having movies that are large enough, that most people won't want to spend the time downloading them. (i.e. 24gb HD-DVDs.)
This works for books, even though people can read them for free in electronic form or at the book store. The reason people buy books is that they're nicely bound and easy to hold, take with you, etc.
I don't get into downloading movies - got better things to do than chase my tail with all the garbage files, encrypted RAR files that ask you to go to installspyware.com with Internet explorer to get a password only to find out that the file has some 60 year old movie you never heard of and now your machine is part of a botnet (no, I dont' do it but i know people who do).
There is huge diversity in books. You can go to a book store and find lots of different books on lots of different themes. There are a selection of mainstream authors that publish the same junk over and over, then there are the lesser known authors who publish unique works. People actually pay for that stuff. Also, technical references are so much better in book-bound form. Electronic and printed/ringbound just don't cut it for quickly looking stuff up.
The only people you hear complaining about piracy of movies (and music) is the *AAs who really only care about the huge-ass big budget mainstream (that is mostly the same formula-based crap over and over). The best DRM is make movies that people really want to pay for.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:convenience, not DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
If you rewind to play again you should pay again.
As you increase resolution you should pay more
Hit pause and pay extra for the still frame.
Someone looks over you shoulder they should pay for the number of seconds they see the screen and if they can actually hear it they should pay more again.
The whole family watches then the whole family should pay.
If you read the cover to decide whether or not to buy it, you should pay, they never gauranted a free quote.
Fot the same content on three different devices then you should pay three times.
Backup, BACKUPS, your not entitled to any stinkin' backups.
Lend the media to a friend then the friend should pay a rental fee.
You also stricly forbidden buy law to comment upon the quality of the content, in any way shape or form.
On the others side you have reasonabe customers who are only willing to play a reasonable price and fuck the publisher if they think they can control how the end users choose to make use of the licenced copy for the equivalent life of the content copyright. Copyright last for 70 years beyond the authors death, the your licence should be warranted to survive exactly the same amount of time regardless of the media and it should be the media publishers responsibility to ensure that it does.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just as bandwidth is always increasing, so too should the quality (and file size) of Hollywood's product. Rather than focusing on making it difficult to pirate their content with DRM, they need to focus on consistently improving their product, and ease of use to legally enjoy it. The carrot rather than the stick, as it were.
Print Version (Score:3, Informative)
Umm, how about quality? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are so many movies out there that I do not care about, but if it's a movie I really like, I will go out and buy the DVD.
Ditto for a book - if it's good, I will go ahead and buy it.
And people with tastes different than mine will do the same for books and movies.
The advantage of a book is that most books are quite cheap (well, unless you are looking for a specific one in a narrow area, say something by Springer Verlag or something).
Movie DVDs are getting there, but music is far, far away. That is the problem. And the signal to noise is terrible for music - so much crap out there.
And finally, I can do anything I want with my book - photocopy it, scan the pages, rip it - whatever the hell I want.
The music and movie industry is trying to stop me from doing just that - and that is the heart of the problem.
IMHO and all that.
The perfect DRM is no DRM (Score:4, Interesting)
And the funny thing is: if they ever end up developing a really hard to break DRM or copy protection scheme it won't really succeed in most of the world. Technology in emerging economies (such as Brazil, Russia, India and China) only gets widespread usage when their copy protection is broken.
As a brazilian gamer I used to track down PlayStation 2 adoption around here. PS2 only got mainstream after pirated games were available. But that doesn't mean Sony lost revenue. It didn't. If the copy protection had never been broken, PS2 would've never succeeded around here.
In the end, DRM only hurts those that try to play by the rules (well, at least until they get tired if being abused and get their [pirated] goodies for free).
Re: (Score:2)
Lost revenue=Crap (Score:5, Insightful)
What they lost is a POTENTIAL sale of game. If people pirate 20 games, buy 3, it is still 3 bought AND NOT 20 LOSS. If people were going in supermarket and hammering/stealing/crushing those 20 PS2 game this would be a loss. But what you describe isn't that. There has been NO REAL LOSS FOR SONY. Hammer that in your head. A copyright infringement is at best a POTENTIAL LOSS, but not a real. CAse in point, if everybody on earth was copying FFIX and sony would still have done the same sale in the past, then they would STILL BE WRITING THE SAME NUMBER AT THE END OF THEIR FISCAL Q.
I do not condone copyright infrigement, but NEITHER DO I CONDONE BAD RETHORIC ON "FANTASY LOSSES".
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The cost is incurred when you manufacture the consoles, not when you sell them. If you spend $500 to make the console and sell it for $200, you lose $300. But if you spend $500 to make the console and then don't sell it, you lose the whole $500.
Hollywood? Promoting Writers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Haven't you heard the joke? "Did you hear about the Polish starlet? She was so dumb, she slept with the writer."
Hollywood pays writers very well compared to non-film jobs, but also treats them like dirt and screws them over at the drop of a hat. They're well below actors, directors, and producers on the Talent Totem Pole. Here's an easy way to confirm for yourself how little heed Hollywood pays writers: Without looking at the IMDB, name any writer who has won an Academy Award (other than Peter Jackson) for best original or Adapted Screenplay. Get one and you're probably doing better than 99% of the movie-viewing public.
Or to put it another way: We'll see Hollywood start promoting writers right after they stop making films based on TV shows or video games.
Make DRM illegal. (Score:2)
Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
Online books don't take over physical books because physical books have more value.
BT takes over TV and movie theaters because movies/episodes downloaded over BT have more value than their original equivalents.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And you don't copy them because it's expensive, inconvenient and produces a very low quality product.
The article claims that we buy books because we want to "support our favourite authors" or something like that. But the truth is that we buy books because they are good value for money, copying is a real pain, and the quality of the copy is substantially inferior to that of the original.
Movies, on the other hand, are dead cheap to copy an
Where to read books (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Article misses the point (Score:4, Insightful)
This article ignores the detail that the people who get their hands on cracking tools, or get their hands on drm-free versions of movies are enjoying a higher quality user experience than those people using legally purchased movies/music. I've heard several accounts of having to fiddle with the connections, or turning the power off and back on again just to get the player to handshake correctly with the TV or to reset the correct in-memory keys. There are also frequent issues with players/tv downsampling video even if everything should be working at the highest possible quality. The article really misses the point that DRM is becoming a cause for piracy rather than a side effect of it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
User experience. OK. How about the user experience of P2P:
Bogus titles. Bonus points if "Corpse Bride" or "Over The Hedge" downloads as triple-X porno.
The camcorder video that looks like a shot of a 16mm print projected on the walls of Mammouth Cave during a blackout.
The amatuer's artifact-ridden DiVx rip. "Back to the Future" Drive-In sound.
I've played this game and I've gone back to Netflix, Movies Unlimited, The Ser
The reason... (Score:3, Informative)
Hollywood not marketing its screenwriters like book authors has nothing to do with it. And the only way this realisation that books are "perfect DRM" could be applied to, say, music or movies would be by... going back to vinyl records and film reels. Yay.
Yes, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's not the reason (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Screenplays are fundamentally different animals than novels. They're written to be the blueprint for a movie, not something to be enjoyed in their own right. This isn't to say that a screenplay can't be enjoyable to read, but you're never* going to read a screenplay for enjoyment unless you've already seen the movie it was made into -- because if a screenplay was good enough to sell copies of it to the public, then it was more or less by definition already made into a movie.
2. Screenwriters can't be marketed by Hollywood the same way novel authors are marketed -- for one thing, the screenwriter is one of dozens, maybe hundreds of people involved in the movie's production. Even if you just consider the 10 or 15 most important people -- director, a few stars, a producer or two, writer, DP -- the money is going to focus on promoting the biggest names, and that's the stars (and maybe the director). Stars are always the most well-known people involved with a movie, and that's not just because that's who the studio markets; it's because you stare at their faces for 2 hours.
An author, by contrast, is one of only a very few people involved with the creative aspects of a novel -- even if you take an editor or two into account, the author is still responsible for 99% of what you read. So there's a single, obvious focus for the marketing effort.
Hm. (Score:2)
Get rid of it.
Everyone knows DRM doesn't stop the "pirates"- it blocks legitimate use. The "pirates" will crack it anyway.
Article Missing Point, Substance (Score:5, Insightful)
Magic? Enjoy? The books should have been digitized like 30 years ago, and e-books are at least 5 years overdue. Thanks to copyright being infinity minus one day, some books are almost impossible to find. My personal grudge is that many great old textbooks are prohibitively expensive simply because they are rare. No one is printing them anymore, and no one is allowed to digitize them either. Enjoy? I don't think so.
And for the love of me, I have no idea how to comment on his screenwriter theme. Yeah, there are other people working behind the curtains. But if movie people themselves think that the most important and creative part is done by the actors and the director, are they going to lie to the rest of us? That makes no sense at all.
substantiate that substance (Score:3, Funny)
Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
"Let's make movies hard to copy like books are hard to copy, because you don't see much piracy in books, do ya?"
One day, hopefully soon, this whole concept of scarcity of information will just vanish.
Not everyone wants a real book. (Score:2)
Really what it comes down to though is that these industries have been price fixing for years. They always put pretty window dressing on it like making you b
Books are much better value for money (Score:2, Insightful)
A DVD will give you two hours of mindless entertainment then merely take up shelf space.
A book costs about the same, or less than a DVD.
No contest.
Vast differences (Score:3, Informative)
However, when it comes to movies, you're talking about a solid one to two hour viewing. If Blockbuster worked like Barnes and Noble, they'd have little to no rentals or purchases - people would watch a movie and leave.
But anyway, back to the topic. It's doubtful that any DRM will work swimmingly with BitTorrent, simply because the method with which you activate the DRM/authenticate the movie would most likely be transferred in the torrent. (Like Windows XP, you can just hand off the CD key with the ISO.)
I can see an effective DRM being an IP-based solution. For instance, a client would have the movie file downloaded and the player for that file would contact a central server for a one-time key. If the client's IP doesn't match, then no key is issued. But this has its downside as well (Dial-up and dynamic IPs... although if you're downloading at those speeds, just buy the damn DVD.)
DRM is a useless trend, just like SOA and 'Web x.0' and all the other buzzwords (People put DRM on podcasts, for Christ's sake). Give it time and it will die.
Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Mod me off-topic (Score:3, Insightful)
but, why is it when anyone mentions free reading, it's never about libraries anymore? It's all about Borders/Barnes & Noble/etc.
Break out of the marketing and go to a library where, for once, you can't buy anything.
MPAA, DRM, libraries? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, you can read a book at some stores rather than purchasing it and taking it home, which is not true of DVD movies. But you can get a book at the library and take it home and read it, for free. And now, MANY, MANY libraries also lend DVDs, meaning you can take movies home and watch them, for free. The biggest library system in NE Ohio, at least, is usually pretty good about getting new releases (there may be a little bit of lag time) and has a fairly large catalog, though you may have to wait in line. So how long will it be until the big-money movie folks start really looking at some of our greatest national resources as their enemies? Will they include licensing restrictions that somehow prevent libraries from buying their products?
You'll never get rich just by "managing" rights (Score:5, Insightful)
People are going to be making digital copies of stuff with the Internet because that is what the Internet is: a vast digitial distribution machine. Copying and hyperlinking aren't "problems" to be solved, they are facts of online life. How can artists and distributors and publishers use these facts to their advantage?
Google has certainly shown one way to make money from the web. And no, it's not by advertising. That's merely one way of making money. The real mother lode is in LINKING. Google makes money by bringing buyers together with sellers right at the point where the buyer has pre-qualified themselves. Any time you can do that, you can make money -- lots of it.
Things to note here:
1. It is in Google's interest to provide real value to the customer in clear exchange for the right to lead them to a commercial link.
2. It is in Google's interest to be completely up-front about which links are commercial and which ones are not.
3. It is in Google's interest to only offer commercial links that are as closely-related as possible to what the customer appears to be looking for.
Let's apply these lessons to the music industry. Imagine a large copyright holder having every song in its catalog available on a web site. Visitors can listen to samples of each and every track -- good samples that give a true feel for the music, not just some arbitrary clip such as the first 30 seconds. A search engine helps people find not just the big, popular numbers, but other interesting pieces that are related. "If you like this artist, have you tried these three others? People who have listened to this track have listened to these 10 others. Here is a list of every track of every album that features this drummer."
Every opportunity to share information about music, artists, and compilations is an opportunity to offer a tangible product or service to sell. The web site has clearly marked commercial links to buy physical media, purchase the track, add the track to a mix CD, purchase concert tickets, get a t-shirt, subscribe to a download service. It also has non-commercial links to share what the user has discovered with others. "Hey, listen to this track. It's awesome."
There is a lot of money to be made here. DRM is a distraction. It's leaving money on the table, and one of these days some smart music exec is going to wake up and leave the rest of the competition in the dust.
Cheaper movies (Score:4, Interesting)
If I could buy the film I want in HD for £3-£5 ($6-$10) and get it the next day, I'm hardly likely to bother downloading a 20GB torrent link am I?
Unfortunately even SD DVDs cost a ridiculous amount of money here in the UK and I don't see why I should spend £15 ($30) on a DVD when I can rent it for £3 in a few months time. I rarely watch the same film several times before it's shown anyway on sat/cable.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Movies and music need to be seen and heard (Score:4, Interesting)
Except that even the lightest DRM will keep honest people honest. For that matter, since honest people are, by definition, honest, a complete lack of DRM will also keep honest people honest equally well, and fairly light-duty DRM will also keep mostly-honest people honest just as well as the most restrictive DRM would.
Thus, the continued constriction of DRM serves only two real purposes: to cause problems for honest people and to help create an artificial boogeyman to distract people from the real revenue problem in Hollywood: current movies suck.
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