Cory Doctorow on Digital Rights Management 415
VerdeRana writes "I just heard the EFF's Cory Doctorow give this fantastic argument critiquing DRM. He makes a great case for why DRM is bad for society, business, and artists, why it simply don't work, and why Microsoft (the audience for this talk) should not invest in it. Broadcast this far and wide, and maybe someone will listen."
DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't blame them for trying (Score:5, Insightful)
These people/companies are getting desperate. Sure, I don't think DRM is a silver bullet either, but it is at least slowing the problem until they can figure out a better, long-term solution.
The real thing we should be worrying about in all this is the laws they're passing in the meantime, like the DMCA. While the companies themselves will evolve through this, the rights-stripping provisions enshrined in legislation will be much, much harder to phase out. Laws are rarely repealed, and THAT is what should concern us.
Nothing new here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Do people really want to copy DVDs? (Score:1, Insightful)
To protect your Toy Story Disc from damage by children, you put it in a a safe place, and make them ask you for it before they watch it.
If the blind wanbt to read a book, then, yes there may be a problem with anticircumvention technology. I agree this is somethign that should be addressed, but how many of you would be happy if there was an exception in the DMCA solley for circumventing copy protection to allow the disabled to access a work? Would this make it a good law?
People keep bringing up the case of Jon Johansen, and Dmitri Skryalov. They neglect to mention that both of them were found totally innocent, and in the makers of the garage door openers lost their case. Okay, so the law is badly worded to allow these actions in the first place, but we now have soem case law that explicitely spells out the exceptions.
Then there are the limits on audio copying. Well, yes, there are limits, but you are able to copy a CD to a cassette for the car, copy iTunes onto a CD, and on a number of other machines, and that is more than adequate for most people.
And just about nobody wants to build their own TV or DVD player!
The fact is, DRM and the DMCA rarely prevent people from doing anything they actually want to do. If you tyhink they're bad, then you need to come up with some reasons that are more convincing than these.
Re:You can't blame them for trying (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why DRM will work (Score:4, Insightful)
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
Counterpoint to "1. That DRM systems don't work" (Score:3, Insightful)
I am going to state a counterpoint purely from a technical stance (my stance on DRM is not pro- or anti- as I still have a lot to learn). It is possible for the key to remain a secret, even if it is in the hands of the consumer. Right now apps such as iTunes have it in software. You can generate keypairs and store keys in a medium analogous to that used in smart-cards, in the player hardware such that if it is ever tampered with to get the key, the key itself is destroyed. The hardware would probably be the sound-card or the speaker system if it is digital where the decoding of the compressed audio would take place. Yes this is not available now, but there's a good chance of such systems coming into operation.
Also like somebody in the MPEG committee recently said, the job of such DRM systems is not to put off the super clever guy who can break the system anyway... most systems are breakable. The plan is to put off the average consumer who may drag himself/herself into investigating the use of copyrighted content illegally if software and tools are available to *easily* circumvent such content-distrbution-restriction systems.
Right now, to crack iTunes songs using a software program is super-easy because of easy availability of easily-usable software. Hardware systems will likely be much harder to crack if implemented properly (every tried cracking an iButton?). The key-pair can be generated by the hardware in question and can be used only by that hardware and the user will have no access to the private key. Tampering with the hardware will destroy the key.
Unlike cracking the firmware (example: DVD firmware is 'patched' before update to play multi-region DVDs) the device may require the firmeware to be cryptographically signed by the vendor before it accepts it, hence voiding the ability to tamper with it.
Of course, we have a long way to go before such hardware is designed and adopted.
Same (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The history of copyright, complete with exhaustive descriptions of the piano roll and the Monarchy.
2) A sob story about some poor honest member of the global audience who can't watch the latest Hollywood crap-fest because they don't have eight copies of it arranged so they are never more than 10 yards from at least two of them.
3) Ringing, strident statements about how Anything can be copied(tm) do you hear me??!?! WELL, DO YOU??!?!?!?!?!!?!
4) The argument then swerves into the ever-popular "in the future, the Internet will make copyright obsolete and artists will all live in a Utopian paradise where everything is free, free, free like the book they spent 4,000 hours writing which is at this very minute available on 4,000 warezzzzzzz sites for your convenience"
5) This is usually followed by the standard "books are worthless, music is pointless, art is disposable, inspiration is a commodity" argument which offers the idea that because something can be cheaply copied, it has somehow become worthless.
Throughout each of these discussions, there is always support for "well, we'll just copy it anyway" which is why this argument has long since lost even the remotest shred of credibility.
There is only one question that needs to be answered. Is there any set of conditions under which the "copy every last fucking bit on Earth" people will just pay for the fucking movie/book/CD/whatever?
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Not neccesarily true. DRM scemes often add extra restrictions beyond those of federal copyright law. For example, they block one or more of the types of copying allowed by fair use [wikipedia.org], many tie protected files to one computer, etc, etc...
Besides, If I've legally bought a CD, I don't see any moral reson that I shouldn't copy it to a computer/MP3 player/other more convenient form, for my own use, no matter what the law says or the DRM restrictions are.
Re:The problem with digital right is (Score:2, Insightful)
The copyright owner does.
The copyright owner has only limited rights on his creation. The moment he publishes the work he can not control further trade in the copies that he made. (And who gets to read/see/enjoy the work.)
Re:not copying yet, but they will. (Score:3, Insightful)
Eventually, people are going to want video at their fingertips not unlike music/mp3s is now. People want to make copies, not for the sake of having copies, but for ease of use.
See, its easier to have a remote-device that selects "spiderman," "cowboy bebop," "return of the king," or "big breasted asian honeys 4" then it is to get up off your chair, walk to the dvd shelf, find the disk, and swap out the dvd currently in your drive.
Before you call me lasy, remind yourself again of what is happening to CDs.
I think DRM is stupid, as it simply has never worked. Why bother wasting the money on something that has been demonstrated time and time again as a faulty non-working system that _always_ has workarounds. They should spend their money on something profitable.
Yeesh.
Re:You can't blame them for trying (Score:5, Insightful)
- Heinlein's Lifeline
Your argument is flawed! They have continually faced these types of onslaughts. From monks handwriting manuscripts to the printing press, to the copy machine. Live performance to wax phonographs to LP's to tapes and now digital. With each change in technology the cost of production changed just as dramatically then as it has now. Since the cost of production has fallen to the level that is very near free you can not justify a cost to the consumer that is way way above free. And the fact that you business will go under doesn't matter one little bit. If the RIAA and all of its studios went out of business today there would still be lots of music to listen to tomorrow.
He missed the point (Score:5, Insightful)
It wants that key protected inside the CPU.
It wants OEM's to pre-register the computer with Microsoft and the key exchange will be done at that time to avoid man in the middle attacks.
Your PC will have an encrypted channel, done via private key encryption between your CPU and Microsoft.
So now all DRM keys for all encryption flow down this channel, direct into the CPU's store.
You DON'T give the attacker the key in this instance, you give the COMPUTER the key. The COMPUTER works against the customer to protect the copyright holders wishes.
It's still a breakable scheme , but the EFF guy didn't give them full credit for the scope of the scheme. Palladium & DRM are ONE AND THE SAME strategy.
Without MS you can't send your DRM key securely, so any DRM seller has to be pay MS even if it doesn't use MS's DRM.
I wonder though if governments will stand idly by and let Microsoft create a private encryption channel between everyone's computer and Microsoft.
I strongly doubt it.
Re:You can't blame them for trying (Score:1, Insightful)
They didn't take us up on that challenge. Yes, they've made it $1/track, but they also put DRM on it, which decreases its value. The challenge was that a song, as had been sold previously, was worth $1/track. What they're doing is selling a different type of song which has DRM and lossy compression. Those decrease the value, so they still haven't met the challenge of $1/track at the same value of the track it would have on a CD.
Plus, the experiment still isn't complete. The DRM has the side effect of limiting the size of your customer base. Online music stores are also not well advertised. Sure, "everybody" knows about iTunes, but not everybody knows about iTunes. Competing services are even less well known. The market is still significantly smaller than the CD market. Once the sizes are close, then you can start to make conclusions.
Here's solid financial reasoning for you. When piracy is easy, goods carry an extra "ethical" cost to them. Every person has their own price for their ethics. If the price of your good exceeds that price, they're going to pirate it. Now if your good was reasonably priced, you've got a problem. If it's not, as CDs and software are not, then you should take it as a sign you need to lower your prices. Once you do that, and come back with proof you're losing to piracy -- meaning don't give us numbers of expected sales minus actual sales and do distinguish between people who would otherwise pay and those who wouldn't use your product otherwise -- then we'll talk.
Until then, DRM is nothing but a substantial detriment to the value of the protected product. I, for one, find it makes music worth less than $1/track, and thus I do not buy it.
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM CAN work (Score:3, Insightful)
iTunes is simply too new for the problem to have hit home to non-ubergeeks who don't buy a new laptop every 10 months. Yet.
Re:You can't blame them for trying (Score:5, Insightful)
You obviously haven't read the article. It is littered with examples of how companies have in fact dealt with "piracy" and "infringement" many times before in the past. Going back over a hundred years in fact.
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
The fiasco of DVD restrictions runs counter to every single principle of the free-market which these companies supposedly hold dear.
The reality is that free-market is only supported when it benifits the big guys, and in the case of digital media, it dosen't.
It's time for people to realise, music and movies are only big business because the few have a monopoly on their, inexpensive, reproduction. Now that Joe Sixpack has the ability to reproduce, they want to take it away from him. It's shameful. The way to deal with piracy is to reduce the cost of your products. That way they'll be so cheap people won't bother pirating. It's only the monopoly that makes them so expensive.
Re:You can't blame them for trying (Score:5, Insightful)
There are lots of songs I'd happily pay a buck for if it had the same quality and versatility as what I'm used to from CD's. And that means lossless compression and no DRM. And I'd happily buy songs with a lossy compression but at a good bitrate and with no DRM for
Re:DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You can't blame them for trying (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not 'slowing the problem', and quite possibly it's making the problem _worse_. Today, if I want some music I can buy a DRM-crapped CD and have to fight to play it on my PC, or I can just download the songs for free from the web. If I want to play a game, I can buy it with some braindead 'copy protection' that will probably screw up my system by installing stupid fake drivers, or I can download a cracked copy from the web.
If free distribution of your products is a problem, you don't solve it by making your products more of a hassle for your paying customers to use, and treating those customers like criminals.
Formats (Score:3, Insightful)
CD's aren't going out of style anytime soon
Vinyl isn't going out of style any time soon.
Customers have choices. And that isn't going out of style anytime soon
Re:Do people really want to copy DVDs? (Score:3, Insightful)
There speaks someone who's never had kids.
"They neglect to mention that both of them were found totally innocent, and in the makers of the garage door openers lost their case."
LOL... yes, because there's no cost to anyone from being jailed for a month, or having a criminal lawsuit hanging over your head for years.
And yes, I for one most certainly do want to copy my DVDs. I've paid for several hundred DVDs, and just like CDs they're a huge pain in the ass to store and catalog... just finding the disk I'm looking for can take five minutes. I want to be able to rip every single one of those disks onto a my hard drive and have them there ready to play any time I want.
Why shouldn't I, when I've already paid for the DVDs? What is so horrid about the idea that a customer might avoid having to spend five minutes faffing around looking for a particular movie? Companies that want my money should be making this kind of convenience easy, not hard.
Re:Poor logic (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, lets compare this with DRM free audio tapes or CDs.
Skipping over the apparent violation of the terms of the DRM by using one auth for his mom in another household,
If it was a violation of the terms of the DRM, then the DRM should have prevented it. Of course, traditional media allows you to make copies for friends. This is legal in most countries.
he failed to mention several points, like how you can call Apple and they will remove the dead auth for the dead machine
Oooh, how kind. If you ask nicely, then Apple may, at their sole discretion, give you permission to listen to music that you paid for. If my CD player breaks, I can play all my CDs on a replacement.
and that Apple extended the limit to 5 CPUs.
Yes, but they hadn't at the time.
But that doesn't even account for the fact that Cory was just a damn idiot that didn't deauth his machine before sending it in for service. Still, Cory whined and ranted about this problem on BB, rather than placing the blame on himself for making a stupid error.
Why should he have had to do this? DRM should be transparent. Deauthorising is not transparency.
The ultimate point of his lecture is where he rants about how nobody's calling up manufacturers and begging them for features that restrict rights, therefore there is no market demand for DRM. But he overlooks the obvious fact there are whole markets that would not exist if not for DRM.
They would if the media cartels would let them. It would only need someone to take the risk of releasing without DRM, and you'd see how succesful that is.
Re:Nothing new here... (Score:3, Insightful)
He's actually appealing to the money-making side of Microsoft, to get them to make a product that will sell. I suspect that this is about the only tack that has any chance of succeeding at a place like MS.
Re:Persuit of DRM policy (Score:5, Insightful)
His point is that Microsoft, like Sony with VCR, has no incentive to make a less capable tool.
DRM should be seen, from Microsoft's perspective, as a Linux/free software incentive program: if you build deliberately crippled tooks, you give your users reason to walk away from them.
And Microsoft has (or should have) far more interest in retaining the userbase than it does in
receiving micropayments every time somebody plays a song on a DRM'd system.
It also bears pointing out, of course, that there is a version of events in which DRM is a winner for Microsoft -- it's the version where we posit strict legal enforcement of restrictions on the right to create new digital technology and innovation is never allowed to outstrip DRM. Setting aside for the moment the moral arguments against that, Cory points out that history suggests that betting on the 1984 vision of DRM and computers is pretty long odds.
Re:Same (Score:4, Insightful)
> the "copy every last fucking bit on Earth"
> people will just pay for the fucking
> movie/book/CD/whatever?
Yes, the case where they respect the authors.
Think about it. Most people don't steal stuff. Also, they don't copy stuff done by bands or people they have a personal connection to.
The problem is that the whole industry is now geared towards giving customers a totally skewed perception. They are left with the opinion that a) creative artists have something unique called "talent", b) that this makes all of their work of creating art become easy, c) that they are special, distinct and superior from everyone else, d) that they never have to work hard, etc..
You see that everywhere. Pop Idol, tour shows, glamour shoots, synapse sequences that don't show any work being done, "fun on the set" outtake tapes.. and it's all rubbish. Talent isn't proven to exist, and even if it is, there's no way of knowing in finite time that any person doesn't have it. Even talented people work hard to create art. Artists are pretty much like everyone else, and have problems of their own.
But instead the industry is persisting in holding onto the glamour that they're super special stars. And then they're shocked when people's response is, "since they're super special, why apply conventional morality to them? Why worry about ripping off their work - they never had to work hard anyway?"
And when laws get passed, they're shocked when people think "Well, those laws don't apply to US..." After all, you've taught them for the last 10 years that all the opportunities and rewards and advancement methods and skills that apply to creative artists don't apply to Joe Soap, so why should Joe Soap rush to embrace the negative side too?
No. Enough. Start showing the truth. Nobody does anything in one take. Every piece of art has had huge amounts of pencil eraser pressure. Like your teacher used to say: show your working, it proves you're not cheating. And when your customers know you're not cheating, they won't cheat you back.
Re:DRM (Score:2, Insightful)
If you don't want to share, never let people know you actually create something.
Re:Strange.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies like Microsoft steer like old Buicks, and this issue has a lot of forward momentum that will be hard to soak up without driving the engine block back into the driver's compartment.
really ads much to his argument or is likely to MS to dump DRM or anything. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for papers written in a readable manner, but this guy just seems a bit off the mark.
I imagined I was sitting in a room full of smart-but-skeptical Microsoft employees and it sounded just fine to me. These are employees who probably can feel that Buick momentum as software development cycles -- such as for Longhorn with its entirely relevant NGSCB (or whatever it's called now) -- seem to drift from years into decades. The metaphor was as straightforward and legitimate of a criticism as I could imagine.
It's called trustbuilding, and Cory Doctorow seems to be doing it about as well as I'd imagine anyone would in that situation. I think he walks the light-but-incisive line pretty well.
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on here. If you don't want people listening to/using your work, then DON'T PUBLISH IT!
I do agree that it is wrong for somebody to make money off of your work. If somebody wants to re-mix your music FOR THEIR OWN USE, then it should be OK. If they want to sell their mix, then you should get a penny or two. However, you should NOT have the right of refusal. The law is there to guarantee that you get paid, not for you to be a primadonna. If something happens that you don't like, tough luck. Life happens, and people's feeling get hurt. The declaration of independence gives you the right to pursue happiness, not the right to get all pissy if things don't go your way.
I apologize if this appears troll-like.
Re:You can't blame them for trying (Score:4, Insightful)
That's part of it, but the larger issue that riles tech types is that protection of copyrights on music and movies is only a small part of what the entertainment industry's new laws affect. The fundamental issue here is that these laws limit the dissemination of information in ways that run counter to the values that we believe the United States was built on. For example, the DMCA makes certain math equations illegal to use or even tell people about. You could invalidate large swaths of public domain knowledge by demonstrating that such knowledge pertains specifically to breaking your stupid protection scheme.
In a nutshell: techies hold the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge in all its forms dear to their hearts - after all, computers were designed for those very purposes. DRM stabs at the core of this ideal by limiting said pursuit and dissemination.
The MPAA and RIAA, slimy and evil as they are, deserve to not have their content pirated. But they are trying to do this by legislating away the idea of a free knowledge-based society, and that is where I have a big problem.
(I apologize for any factual errors and welcome corrections.)
You didn't read the article, did you? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of us would like to protect material from damage or destruction, or would prefer not to keep subjecting our originals to constant exposure to use. (This was more of an issue with tape because of friction.) Or maybe I don't want to have to buy two copies of the same disk or tape because I don't want to have to keep a copy upstairs and a copy downstairs in order to watch it. I can afford to buy duplicate 50c-$1 used books; buying, say, 500 duplicate DVDs at 15-30 bucks a pop is out of the question. My sister has a DVD player in her room that holds 300 discs. It also has a system to allow you to type in the names of every disc. You can use the remote (if you're masochistic or a lunatic) or you can (much closer to sanity) plug in a keyboard. But if you remove a disc from the machine, you lose the stored data. (If you take it out and put it back without doing anything else, you're okay, but once you watch any other disc it will lose the stored info. I can't watch any of the disks from her machine without losing the stored disc info unless she does not use the machine at all for anything. Would be simpler for me to make a copy and watch the copy upstairs than to go downstairs, remove the disc, watch it up there, take it back downstairs, then re-enter the stored data for that disc when she's not using her machine. If I was using DVD-RW, I could simply copy the disc, make a copy, watch it, then erase the copy and use the DVD-RW for watching a temporary copy of a different disc. But I can't do that because of anti-copying protections.
One time I was copying the master CD of an application we make and by accident I dropped it, which scratched it so badly it would no longer work. And I'm careful.
There are lots of legitimate reasons for making copies of things, none of which has anything to do with piracy.
I've never been a parent but I have the suspicion you've never been either. Do you really expect to keep kids out of any place you can think of to hide things? And it doesn't matter even if you do make them ask; kids can damage things unintentionally in unbelievable ways. And not just kids, either. My sister has a friend whose child comes by to visit. I have to remind this little girl on a constant basis not to slam the door on the car I'm driving. (I have also had to remind my brother, who is over 50 and older than me, not to do the same thing, so it isn't just kids that have problems (he's broken the side mirror on two of the cars I've owned)). This little lady did something to the Windows Me computer we have that completely destroyed the ability for it to boot-up normally; windows kept saying there was a protection error and would not boot. Would come up in safe mode but not otherwise. Reinstall from the CD would not fix the problem. I ended up having to wipe the hard drive and reinstall on bare metal. I'll tell you this: I have been doing programming for over 20 years and I'll be damned if I can figure out how she did it. I'd even be willing to redo the reinstallation of everything if I could see and find out how she did it.
After spending time in jail and thousands of dollars in legal fees to have to prove they were innocent.
After spending thousands of dollars in legal fees to prove their actions were non-infringing.
Re:DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is that free-market is only supported when it benifits the big guys, and in the case of digital media, it dosen't.
The same way certain large corporations are pro "globalization" when it means they can get the cheapest possible raw materials and labour. But get upset when customers and retailers (some of whom are themselves large corporations) try to choose the cheapest sources of goods.
Re:Bad for artists? Not so. (Score:3, Insightful)
How is the DRM going to "know" what is and isn't original. e.g. could it be used to ensure that the "artist" has control over what a publisher does with their work?
Believe it or not, most serious artists actually want to retain the hope of selling their work and making a living,
The vast majority of those aiming to "make it big" never do so in the first place. There are also plenty of people who don't rely on their music/writing/etc to be their primary/only source of income in the first place.
Re:The problem with digital right is (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. The copyright law makes it clear that once you sell a work you have no right to control its future distribution and that the purchaser of a work has every right to the normal use, enjoyment and even resale of that work. See Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus [findlaw.com] , 210 U.S. 339 (1908) where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that once the copyright holder sells a work they lose control of that copy and may not prevent transfer or future resale. If a copyright proprietor has no right to stop resale, it certainly should have no right to determine how or under what conditions you read or use a work as long as you aren't making copies for others.
Raiders of the Lost Art (Score:5, Insightful)
At the screening, they informed us that security guards would be monitoring the audience to make sure none of us were taping the film to distribute it across the net, since it is a reproduction of the original film. As I was watching the grainy film of a 13 year old adventurer mock fighting 13 year olds wearing turbins in the streets of Gulfport, MS, a security guard walked up the aisle scanning with a night vision scope to make sure nobody had any naughty cameras.
The whole situation just seemed so ludicrous. Nobody was going to mistake this film for the actual Raiders. The point of watching this film was not to be entertained by the movie's plot (though it does hold up well in the re-telling), but in seeing how these kids with limited resources managed to pull off outrageous stunts and ingeniuously improvise set pieces to make a film that actually held together.
They succeeded bigger and better than you would think. But Industrial Light and Magic doesn't have to worry about their jobs. I still bought the Indiana Jones Trilogy DVD set. In fact, I watched the real Raiders that night when I got home because the kids did such a good job that I felt like seeing the original.
That fan film may not be creative in the sense of creating a new work from whole cloth. But it was extremely creative in execution, and inspired a few of the kids involved to become a part of the movie business. Ironically, one of them works for a DVD production house.
I wish more people could see this film; it is truly inspirational. I felt like running out and making my own movie. Why can't it be out there on the 'Net if nobody is going to make money from it? Would it really cut into LucasFilm's profits if someone did make some money on it?
One of the producers of the film introduced it at the festival and said that they occasionally show it for educational purposes. What kind of message does it send to show kids this film, and then tell them that there are these bizarre boundaries on their creativity? Do they send security to those screenings? I've heard a lot of complaints on this site and others that kids don't do these kinds of ambitious projects anymore. Why do you think that is?
You build a good strawman (Score:3, Insightful)
One point you fail to address is that competition and innovation are good, in the end, for the artists. When VHS machines came out, the MPAA screamed that it was the end of the universe and they were going to take their marbles and go home if congress didn't stop it. Well, lo and behold, an entire industry was created for renting and selling videos which not only added to the MPAA's bottom line, but in some cases actually surpassed box office sales. The very industry screaming for ARM (analog rights management) actually ended up benefiting greatly from the thing they were trying to control, because they lacked the vision to see what it would do for them.
I'm not going to sit here and pick apart your strawman, you seem pretty proud of it. I'll just say that where it even resembles the very insightful speech Cory gave, it's too simplistic to be considered anything other than a (*cough*) troll.
Re:The problem with digital right is (Score:3, Insightful)
However, controlling "intellecutal property" is an excellent form of censorship.
They don't care! (Score:3, Insightful)
They know this and they don't care. They are going to, once again, leverage their monopoly to try and change the market.
And sadly, even if their customers are so unforgiving it is a long strech to see joe-sixpack and sally-homemaker deciding to break with everything they know and install Linux or makeing a whole new investment in a Mac.
At the end of the day they will grumble and bitch but swallow that bitter pill and reinstall Windows and deal. MS knows this and so does its partners.
DRM Observations (Score:5, Insightful)
What iTunes, et al, do with DRM is actually very lenient in light of what the 5 majors want (and are actively seeking). They have appeased the RIAA and brethren by perpetuating the illusion that digital material can be fully protected. In reality, all that these DRM schemes have done is place a bump in the road... and a pretty insignificant bump at that. However, that is the price that they (as retailer) must pay to allow major label content to you (the consumer).
There is a bit of a solution though. Companies like mine [netmusic.com], AudioLunchbox [www.audiolunchbox], Magnatune [magnatune.com], and a few others, are skirting the entire DRM issue by offering indie and quasi-major label material (eg, a compilation put out by an indie that contains tracks by major label artists).
As time goes on, I sincerely believe that DRM will become *less* of an issue, as the majors begin to realize that while they need to aggressively protect their copyrights, they also need to make sales to the consumer. In the interim, please support those of us who are working to bring you quality music unfettered by DRM.
Re:DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
You can dislike unsolicited remixes, but to be pissed at someone for doing one and then presenting it to you as "Hey, I did this. If you don't approve, no one else will ever hear it." is a bit much, don't you think? If you did sue someone on that basis, I hope you lose.
If they distribute it outside of themselves and you, I would hope you win, but by making your music publicly available, as far as I'm concerned you've given permission to do *anything anyone wants* with it, so long as they either do not distribute it, or seek your permission prior to distribution. Implicit in seeking permission is obtaining your approval, which generally means that they would have to run it by you, which means that you've given them an implicit permission to distribute it back to you.
I'm glad your album failed, to tell you the truth. You have every right to not accept and to restrain distribution of remixes of your work. But your statement of "anyone including me" is what makes you a twit.
Re:You didn't read the article, did you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if you didn't want to do this, or you think you don't know anyone else who might want to do this, why should there be artificially created restrictions stopping other people from doing this?
Re:DRM (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
Moreover, and I think more importantly, the artist wants you to do that (though he or she may not realize it). Why? Because if you can derive more enjoyment from the product, you will be willing to pay more for it and buy more of it. In economic terms, by increasing the utility, the demand curve is raised.
Re:Bad for artists? Not so. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Raiders of the Lost Art (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you realise what you just said? "Completely remaking the work of other artists without permission" has been the foundation of the whole of art and literature since the flipping dawn of time, and now suddenly there's no good reason for it?
Okay, look, do you know what the most famous work of literature in the English Language is? Arguably it's Shakepeare's Hamlet. Do you think Hamlet was an original work? I hope not, because in fact versions of the story had existed using that name since around the tenth century AD, and the basic features of the story can be found as far back as written records exist.
Aha, you say, but that's different. Obviously there's no problem with reusing common themes and revisiting old stories, like Disney always does and so on. You're talking about taking a new creative work, only a year or two after it was first released, and remaking that without permission, and that's a completely different case.
Except it isn't. Shakespeare's Hamlet was written circa 1600. So how come there are references to performances of a play called "Hamlet" in 1594? Why, because Shakespeare's Hamlet was a close and unauthorised remake of an existing and recent play, of course.
Shakespeare was a pirate who stole someone else's creative work!
And in doing so he also happened to create the central work in the canon of English literature.
Maybe remaking other people's stories isn't such a bad thing after all...
Re:Do people really want to copy DVDs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Your framing of this issue as a question of changing copyright law for the benefit of a few "rare exceptional cases" is a red herring. Copyright law is not the issue here because the DRM/DMCA combo has trumped it.
My only complaint ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The music and movie studios rant and rave about how piracy is their target with this whole DRM push. Fine -- DRM the movie reels, the review disks, the portions of the chain that are never held by a paying customer, the portions that have in fact have been repeatedly shown to be the source for piracy, and drop those restrictions at the end of the supply chain.
DRM your business lines boys, not the end product. That way we know you're fighting the pirates -- after all, if you only DRM the end product, somebody might get the mistaken idea you're fighting the customer!Re:unfortunately... (Score:3, Insightful)
What I got from this article... (Score:3, Insightful)
The lawyers always get paid.
They get paid by the old companies to fight the new companies and they get paid by the new companies to defend against the old companies and they get paid by the artists to make sure they get their cut.
History teaches us that it doesn't pay to be a creative artist, inventor or even business man.
Kids, be a lawyer and get all the others coming and going.
Re:DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
As for your software example, if a applicant came into my office with my source code modified to do something else, my first question would be to find out how he got it, then to revise my security practices! Unlike a song, source code is a copywrighted work that you normally dont release to the public unless you are giving it away. Thus this does not make a good argument. If the guy had access to the code legally and if it was a good hack, I would definatly call that high marks.
In any case, you seem very close minded for an artist. Most artists I know encourage creativity, and understand that just because they dont like something doesn't mean it sucks. Do you tell children they are not allowed to sing your songs because they might be out of tune? You have a right to make money from your work, and as long as you are getting paid, I dont feel you have a right to say what the public does with your work.
But thats just me. Everyone has their own opinon :-)
Re:DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
RMS is not the first person to try to paint forced taking as sharing, you know, and I'm sure he won't be the last. It's an old rhetorical trick, to paint the extortion as redistribution for the good of the many at the expense of the greedy few. But there's a good name for the tactic: demagoguery.
WIth copyright, there is no "taking", it's all "sharing". There is no diminishment of property in copying. Your ROTK quote is about redistribution of physical property, i.e. food. Sharing a song, a story, or an idea with 100 people results in 100 people having a full song, a full story, or a full idea. It's important to keep this in mind when discussing copyright issues.
DRM may be good for Microsoft (Score:2, Insightful)
Free Software cannot seriously implement DRM. (Any that does, will just get forked.) The most it can do is work around it, like libdvdcss does. But that's against the law (DMCA) so that keeps interoperable Free Software products underground.
It's in Microsoft's interest that all content be DRMed so that they only have to compete with other proprietary vendors. And more specifically, only the proprietary vendors that are big enough that they can pay DRM licensing fees. This helps to keep the lighter, more nimble competition out, so that MS only has to compete with large companies.
Re:WRONG, WRONG, WRONG (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't you have it backwards? It's the particular purpose--redistributing a work in its entirety--that copyright restricts.
Ripping a CD to mp3 isn't something copyright "permits" you to do. It isn't "fair use." It's use that the copyright holder simply doesn't have a right to have any control over. DRM, therefore, isn't a means of protecting the copyright holder's legal rights. It's just something they do because they can. That's why it's wrong to make a law against circumventing DRM. It creates a new right for copyright holders where none existed before--the right to continue controlling how you use your property after they've sold it to you. It isn't merely the protection of copyright, it's the creation of a new right that benefits very few at the expense of many other things that we ought to value more highly.
I think it's reasonable that Apple limits the number of times a playlist can be burned to CD. On the other hand, I don't think it should be illegal for me to circumvent that if I have a reason to. They shouldn't have a legal right to restrict the way I use something I've purchased from them. If they want to come at me for selling CDs of music I don't own the rights to, that's fine. But that's what they should have to do. Not take rights away from everybody just to preempt a few thieves.
You probably agree with me, but I think the semantic distinction--that copyright applies only to a particular case, and all other copying is unregulated--is an important distinction.
Call it Digital RESTRICTIONS MECHANISM (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
As a musician who has written some tunes here and there, it should be exactly that. Someone can take my music, and do whatever what they want with it for private use. If they want to sell it, then they should be required to give me a cut if I am so interested, over some nontrivial threshold. But I should not be able to say "you can't build on my work, even if you don't plan on selling it."
It really makes me mad that whoever who rewrote Gone With The Wind from the servant's perspective can't. Part of me believes if you're lucky enough to have your bit of art enter the culture, that doesn't mean you and your estate owns the idea forever. Imagine if someone had to pay to write a story about Santa Claus. As far as I can tell, the only different is good ol' Santa came around before these laws came about.
Sadly many people, including many fellow musicians that I know, think the stuff they write or perform is an absolute property right.
Those almost people fail to see that they have built their purportedly "original" work on others. Maybe not as obvious and direct as a sample, but all artists have influences. And what's the difference really, between a sample of a chord, and that same chord recorded by the same instruments by myself? Very little, except you have to go through hoops for the former. And as time goes on, and people bitch in court, suddently it won't be legal anymore, and you'll have to find something else. Then nobody will be able to create any art without someone else's permission.
Re:DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
I can go to an art gallery, buy two paintings and take them home. I can then cut up one of them to paste parts on another painting, therebye creating something completely different, and hang it on my living room wall.
I can go the the bookstore and buy a book. I take it home, cross off some of the parts I don't like and write stuff in wherever I want.
When its time to move, I have a garage sale and put both up for sale.
AFAIK, I've broken no laws. If any of the artists involved are offended by my compromising their artistic vision, that's their problem.
So why do some people seem to think that music or movies deserve any more protection than paintings or books?
Well funded lobbying groups is the only thing that pops into mind.
Re:DRM (Score:3, Insightful)
This doesn't harm the original creator in any way and in fact helps them market their work.
Besides, it's exactly in line with the stated goal of copyright - to preserve the marketing rights for the creator, to encourage creation of new works, while enriching the public domain by making more works available for public use.
IMHO, if you DRM a work in such a way that nobody can build upon it (quote it, use pieces of it in a substantially new work, etc) you should lose the copyright on it. It's all about a give and take - my tax dollars fund the protection of your copyright, as long as I get an enriched public domain. When you stop living up to your end of the bargain I think you should lose my protection.
Re:What about the promise of the World Wide Web? (Score:3, Insightful)
He does propose a solution: Microsoft should a) grow a pair of balls, and b) tell the RIAA to fuck off. Building a "record player that can play anything" (his phrase) is the first step.
The problem is Microsoft sees DRM not just as a way to protect music and video; it's a way to protect Microsoft software. This is Microsoft's real motivation and, unfortunately, the reason this won't just go away soon.
Re:Or maybe happily? (Score:3, Insightful)
Worst case scenario (which happens to be the best case scenario for Microsoft, and also for Disney and Dell and the rest, which is why it may happen): You're running Linux (or Windows XP) and using Thunderbird and OOo (or Office XP), and someone (your brother, your boss, whoever) emails you a document. You try to read it, but it's a Word 18 (or whatever version) document, and it's got DRM enabled (by default) so your softwear can't read it. So you email the sender and ask that they bother to save a copy without DRM. Except you don't use Outlook 23 (or whatever), so you don't send a DRM-enabled email, so their Outlook 23 rejects it as spam and they never get your email.
Here's the weird part. By switching to Longhorn and the whole DRM-enabled Office suite, that person has effectively cut themselves off from the rest of the world, yet they will frame the debate in terms that paint the rest of the world (including you) as spam-enabling, copyright-infringing luddites. That spam-enabling copyright-infringing arguement (plus a few billion in campaign contributions) will buy legislation that mandates DRM for all internet transactions, including email and simple file transfers. Just because you own the copyright on that letter to Aunt Millie doesn't give you the right to send it in plaintext! If you're really the copyright holder you should have no problem producing a DRM-enabled copy that can be legally sent to Aunt Millie, and she should have no problem with the idea of buying a new Dell just so she can run Longhorn, which is required for Office 34, simply to read your email.
Hey, I did say "worst-case scenario." But it could happen. Open source code could become illegal in the USA, simply because open source code can't deliver DRM and meet the DMCA at the same time, and the richest, most powerful company in the world is trying to make this happen, with the help of a lot of their Fortune 500 friends. In this scenario, Apple will be lucky to be allowed to use the DRM required by law. (IANAL, but I believe if the law requires you to infringe a patent then you must either negotiate a pantent royalty or get out of that business, and you'd better believe Microsoft's DRM will have patent protection, much to Apple's dismay)
Cory doesn't get it -- Microsoft is counting on DRM to drive Longhorn sales, because without DRM there's no reason for anyone to move from XP to Longhorn. I doubt anyone with the authority to change this policy was in that room. You'll note that Microsoft has repeatedly said their DRM-enabled applications will only run on Longhorn and will not be back-ported to XP.
I rest my case, and I pray I'm wrong.