The Real Purpose of DRM 213
Jeremy Allison - Sam writes "Ian Hickson, author and maintainer of the HTML5 specification, comments about the real reasons for DRM. They're not what you might think. Ian nails it in my opinion. He wrote, 'The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations. The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices. Content providers have leverage against content distributors, because distributors can't legally distribute copyrighted content without the permission of the content's creators. But if that was the only leverage content producers had, what would happen is that users would obtain their content from those content distributors, and then use third-party content playback systems to read it, letting them do so in whatever manner they wanted. ... Arguing that DRM doesn't work is, it turns out, missing the point. DRM is working really well in the video and book space. Sure, the DRM systems have all been broken, but that doesn't matter to the DRM proponents. Licensed DVD players still enforce the restrictions. Mass market providers can't create unlicensed DVD players, so they remain a black or gray market curiosity."
Today is officially "No shit Day!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Today is officially "No shit Day!" (Score:5, Funny)
I was misled! I was told that DRM would help me to manage my rights. Is this no longer the case?
As has been said, (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM manages you rights in the same way jail 'manages' your freedom.
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With DRM, regardless of what the feedback is, you're screwed. The question is just by how much.
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Of course, the DRM is provided by the company selling your product and calls back to their servers, so they could just as easily lie about that as they could about the sales figures...
Re:As has been said, (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, you're quite right. DRM doesn't manage the user's rights. It "manages" the publisher's "rights", by infringing on those of the users.
Re:As has been said, (Score:4, Insightful)
Carlin was a funny man with a good deal of insight, but he's said a lot of shit over the years and I would not say his ultra-cynical view of the world matches reality, nor is it useful to think that way.
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That would be ARM (no connection to the cpu).
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Union of the Socialist States of America..
or maybe the Allied States of America fits better with today's politics, with the whole corporate-run socialist state angle going on there..
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Looks like someone has got no idea what "socialist" actually is.
Stock options for the complete staff at some startups may be the closest thing you've got.
Re:Today is officially "No shit Day!" (Score:5, Insightful)
I was misled! I was told that DRM would help me to manage my rights. Is this no longer the case?
Well, there's a reason they call copyright owners "rights owners", and they call you a "consumer". Because otherwise, you'd own your personal digital devices, and you'd do whatever you want with them, and we can't have that. There's money to be made in taking away your rights and then selling them back to you as a privilege that can be taken away at any time.
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And we should consider ourselves fortunate that content providers "are forced to provide a user experience that, rather than being optimized for the users, puts potential future revenues first (forcing people to play ads, keeping the door open to charging more for more features later, building artificial obsolescence into content so that if you change ecosystem, you have to purchase the content again)". It makes our content maker overlords happy.
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Well, there's a reason they call copyright owners "rights owners"
You know, every time I hear that term I've taken it to mean that they are owners who have rights, or something similar to that. It seems more like the rights that they purport to own are my rights.
Re:Today is officially "No shit Day!" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about getting around "first sale" rights. They don't want you to be able to sell what you bought to someone else (hence "no copy"), and they want you to re-purchase if you want it on a different device (hence the "device control"). They want you to rent, not own, content.
Re:Today is officially "No shit Day!" (Score:5, Interesting)
DRM prevents first purchase. My MP3 players (all under $20 US) do not support DRM. I use them for Libravox audio books. I am catching up on the classics for free. http://librivox.org/ [librivox.org]
Recent titles include;
The invisable man
The little princess
Moby Dick
Tom Sawyer
Journet to the center of the earth
I listen to old radio shows too.
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Re:Today is officially "No shit Day!" (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you care to share what mp3 players you use and what you like best about them?
Also, if you're in the US, you can get a ton of audiobooks to listen to for free at your local library. If they don't have them at your local branch, they can probably get them via inter-library loan. I've listened to tons of books this way.
Libravox is nice, and I fully support the idea. But I find many of the readers difficult to listen to over a long book - and I'm sure my own reading would be hard for others to hear as well. There's a reason professional readers like Scott Brick, George Guidall, James Delotel, Lloyd James, and Jim Dale, are popular and hopefully well-paid. They're essentially actors and doing a lot more than just reading words off the page.
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Re:Today is officially "No shit Day!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Private property rights are a system of privilege (Score:2)
And you try and tell the young people of today that... They won't believe you.
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Private property rights are based on respect for the integrity of your fellow man, they are not a system of privilege (though of course it's granted that some of the same rhetoric is often borrowed and misuses by defenders of privilege.) As long as private property rights are properly understood, to apply only to the rights of quiet enjoyment and disposal of rivalrous goods you create or acquire in honest trade, there is no privilege involved, at least as I understand that word.
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More specifically for game DRM, the vendors want to ensure you're locked into their platform when you buy games from them, and DRM enforces this. I don't use Origin, Uplay or even Steam anymore, because (for the most part) anything you buy on a platform requires a client to validate your eligibility every time you try to run a game. You're locked into that ecosystem the vendor has provided. If you decide that Valve are being dicks for whatever reason and you don't want to deal with them anymore, you can't j
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In response to myself...
I will say that I also play Deus Ex: Human Revolution via a prated copy instead of Steam? Why? Because in late 2011 (just before I gave up on Steam) I bought the game, hence I feel morally OK with playing the torrented version since I bought it full price anyway. Technically this isn't allowed as it breaches the license agreement despite having paid money for the Steam version, but fuck it.
Re:Today is officially "No shit Day!" (Score:5, Informative)
I think you slipped up there. RIAA is NOT a content producer. RIAA is a parasitic organization that has never produced anything other than a sense of satisfaction for it's members, and grief for consumers. Some of RIAA's members produce content, but RIAA produces nothing.
Re:Today is officially "No shit Day!" (Score:5, Funny)
RIAA produces money for its members and lawyers. They also produce written works in the form of legislation.
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This doesn't explain why DRM is on games and other software though...
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The news is that maybe this will be disseminated to people who don't read slashdot. Too bad it's just a G+ post, normal (non nerds) people need to learn about this stuff. And the only ones who can teach them is us.
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While you may say "That's their problem," it's also our problem, since such unethical practices being profitable makes things worse for those of us who do know that DRM is a scam. If you play games, you likely either are stuck with few quality games, or games that have at lea
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Consoles have high piracy rates too, on the xbox 360 for instance there are several methods of modding which permit piracy but not homebrew such as flashing the drive or installing a drive emulator and both of these methods are extremely popular.
PC game sales are lower because the platform is simply less convenient... Dealing with the hassle of the platform (eg drivers, updates, malware, etc) not to mention the cost of keeping the hardware up to date so that it can actually run modern games vs simply buying
Short version (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM is an attempt to circumvent one of the primary functions of a computational device: Copying of data. The reason for this is money and power. One group thinks they deserve money or power over another group. This is the simple truth of all DRM, and I can explain it shorter than the article, and even the summary of the article. It is what it is.
Re:Short version (Score:5, Interesting)
The most evil drm I always thought was region coding.
I can think of many purposes, but none of them really stand up if you study them, like the "official" reason to allow continent proce discrimination. It implies that the block of countries has something in common that will always make them separate from other blocks somehow and that each block has some kind of ruler that controls those countries and only those.
If the distributors has their way, I'm sure they would have made the region coding specific to every DVD-player (like player keys like bluray, but worse)
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The best way around region coding is to live in a country that doesn't make it illegal to remove such restrictions. (read: Pretty much anywhere except USA)
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and in those countries nowadays you're hard pressed to find a DVD player that actually supports those restrictions... most made-in-China players simply don't support DRM beyond the decryption part. Cheaper for the manufacturers (less software to write).
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I haven't seen a DVD player whose region code cannot be removed by a simple procedure on a remote. How is that a grey market curiosity? Or is it different in the US of A?
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But but piracy is good for media sales... (Score:2, Funny)
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/03/19/209213/study-piracy-doesnt-harm-digital-media-sales
I'm so confused. Goddamnit Slashdot.
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Nothing to be confused about piracy is good for sales, DRM is bad for sales. As simple as that.
Some people have learned it with Walmart music store, many will soon learn it. SimCity fiasco is another example. Users are slowly starting to realize, that DRMd stuff is as good as damaged goods - a gamble in which you are much more likely to lose.
Also, this anti-circumvention bull does not fly in most countries with the exception of USA. Here in Europe I can do whatever it takes to make my legally obtained devic
The author has it partly right.. (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM is about distributive control... but they've always had distributive control in one form or another anyways.
The purpose of DRM is to supplement the diminishing faith that the content makers have traditionally placed in the strength of the copyright claim alone to keep people from copying the work without authorization.
As copying has gotten easier and easier, the mere social contract between publisher and community, which essentially says that the latter will not copy it without permission, effectively granting the publisher a form of distributive control, has started to break down... people are no longer adhering to their side of that contract, and so it is inevitable that publishers will seek alternative means to protect their interests.
Before copyright itself, effective distributive control still existed for people who made content because the work involved in making a copy was very time consuming and difficult. At the very least, it involved sufficient manual labor and errors in reproduction that the counterfeits rarely obtained as much notoriety as the originals. This is hardly the circumstance today, where it's pretty much an an everyday occurrence to see movies that wer3e just released up on Pirate Bay within days or sometimes hours of release, for download by anybody who simply doesn't want to pay the cash to see it in the theater.
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The purpose of DRM is to supplement the diminishing profit that the content makers have traditionally placed in the strength of the copyright claim alone to keep people from excercising their fair use rights.
FTFY.
As copying has gotten easier and easier, the mere business contract between publisher and community, which essentially says that the latter will not copy it for personal use, effectively granting the publisher a form of monopoly, has started to break down... people are no longer adhering to unfair and restrictive business practices, and so it is inevitable that publishers will seek alternative means to protect their interests.
FTFY (again)
This is hardly the circumstance today, where it's pretty much an an everyday occurrence to see movies that wer3e [sic] just released up on Pirate Bay within days or sometimes hours of release, for download by anybody who simply doesn't want to pay the cash to watch something once and decide they don't like it because most movies are shit today.
FTFY (yet again)
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Your opinion of a product has nothing to whether you should be allowed to violate an owner's copyright without compensation.
It very well might be relevant for some people.
Re:The author has it partly right.. (Score:5, Informative)
Nice try. But the DMCA came before Napster, and DVD DRM (and Macrovision before it) came before general-purpose computers could play back video well. This isn't a chicken and egg problem, we know which came first. It seems likely that the main original purpose of DVD DRM was to enforce region coding, not to prevent copying.
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You seem to be under the impression that copying is something that is relatively recent... or exclusive to the digital realm.
It isn't.... there is a long history of analog piracy that is decades older than the DMCA... something that as newer technology was developed, the manufacturers were hoping to nip in the bud with legislation before it became an issue. (Didn't really work though, did it).
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the mere social contract between publisher and community, which essentially says that the latter will not copy it without permission
That's not a contract. A contract has a consideration for both parties (or it's not a valid contract)
people are no longer adhering to their side of that contract
It's going both ways. The public aren't adhering to their side of the contract, but then, neither are the publishers. The idea is that the public lets the publishers have the exclusive right to distribute (and thus, make money) in return for the publisher generating creative work for us all to access.
But the publishers aren't giving us access to creative work - they're locking it down. Region controls, DRM,
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Except that providers use DRM to go above and beyond the restrictions that copyright law imposes.
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As copying has gotten easier and easier, the mere social contract between publisher and community, which essentially says that the latter will not copy it without permission, effectively granting the publisher a form of distributive control, has started to break down... people are no longer adhering to their side of that contract, and so it is inevitable that publishers will seek alternative means to protect their interests.
That's funny... in my country, every time you buy storage media (e.g. SSD, HDD, DVD, CD, memory cards) or anything that contains storage media (e.g. tablets, MP3 players), you're actually charged a private copying levy [wikipedia.org], specifically to compensate "content producers" (actually "publishers", but let's pretend for a second) for the fact that PRIVATE copying is actually legal here (as it is in most of the World).
So... you see, in my country, it's actually PUBLISHERS who are breaking the social contract, since t
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That would be the limited time period which keeps getting extended?
Copyright was meant to be a time limited contract between the copyright holder to monetise the copyright, and the copyrighted article reverting to public ownership... Except nothing drops out
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Such as DRM.
Cheap hardware mitigates (Score:5, Interesting)
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Try a free software version for your PC.
Skipping the previews and just playing the movie is a huge plus.
http://www.geexbox.org/download/ [geexbox.org]
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I prefer VLC [videolan.org] but the point is well taken. Reclaim your freedom to watch the content you paid for in the manner that you wish by using open source software to re-enable your rights as a consumer.
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I've never tried using VLC to play a DVD. I'll have to check that out. I use VLC for most other media on Linux. It just plays what I throw at it. A reboot to Geexbox takes care of DVDs.
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I've never tried using VLC to play a DVD. I'll have to check that out. I use VLC for most other media on Linux. It just plays what I throw at it. A reboot to Geexbox takes care of DVDs.
VLC often craps itself hard and then gets into a state where I have to xkill it when trying to watch a DVD.
This never happens to me running XBMC, although sometimes it chokes on a menu. This has not happened to me in a long time.
Except on a seriously limited system, you will not have to reboot to run XBMC. You do need shaders to run it. It will use VDPAU if you have it, and I hope you do if your computer is bunko. I switch user profiles to launch XBMC, but you can just run it, too. I only wanted a "pure" mo
Re:Cheap hardware mitigates... if you can get it! (Score:2)
Region codes (Score:4, Interesting)
Not something we here in the USA give much thought to. But in the rest of the world, region-free DVD players are more than a curiosity.
Re:Region codes (Score:4)
Not something we here in the USA give much thought to. But in the rest of the world, region-free DVD players are more than a curiosity.
Tut now. Some movies aren't available in region-1 format. Spread your wings a bit, try something with subtitles.
DVD players? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm confused. Why would anyone care what a DVD player does or doesn't do, when there's a free, high quality, ad-free version of pretty much anything on the Pirate Bay (and countless other distribution channels) that will play on any device, in any way I want, whenever I want?
They can (somewhat, temporarily) control their own distribution channels. But once it's out in the open, any and all control over these closed channels is moot.
Re:DVD players? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't pirate movies because I can do so free of charge. I got to a point in life where my time is actually rather valuable, so I am willing to pay for convenience. And I am certainly willing and able to pay for content because it's the right thing to do. Yet I pirate movies because the pirates offer a vastly better product and movie distributors stubbornly refuse to follow suit. Well, fuck 'em.
And fuck the book publishers too. I still get told all too often that I am not allowed to buy certain ebooks because I don't live in the USA... even though the same companies are happy to ship me a paper copy. Guess what, the customer you refused to do business with found what he wants on the Pirate Bay
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I've gotten to where I'd rather rent a movie and rip it than download it. Most really good blu-ray rips are in the neighborhood of 10 gigabytes and I can just drop by Redbox and pick up a few, take them home and rip them and drop them back at the Redbox the next day. Then I watch them when I feel like it using my WD TV Live HD player hooked to my TV. It looks just as good as it does through the blu-ray player then I can keep the movie if it's worth rewatching ( about 1 out of 20 ) or just delete it. I n
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In my case, it goes way faster torrenting a bluray than going out and renting it, especially when factoring in the return and selection.
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Agreed.
All I want is for the studios to provide something comparable with what I can get on torrent sites:
* A standalone file that doesn't require authentication with some server somewhere.
* A file encoded in an open (enough) container & format like MP4/MKV, such that it can be decoded by anything and on any operating system/platform. I don't want to have to rely on a propritary Windows-only program to play my purchased files.
* HD quality files (720p or 1080p - even better, having a choice at purchase/d
Complete and utter nonsense (Score:3, Informative)
People who make IP are pissed when other people can easily copy and distribute their work for free. It is a VERY common Human emotion from creators.
DRM is nothing but a modern version of 'copy protection'. Or perhaps the idiot Hickson wants to argue that copy-protection sought by people like the Beatles, or used on VHS tapes, happened because the 'content providers' wanted 'leverage' over the people making the playback hardware.
DRM is a super-set of basic copy-protection ideas, that has vastly enhanced functionality ONLY because modern levels of tech make such functionality possible. Everything that DRM causes is a 'down-stream' consequence of tech possibilities, NOT the reason DRM exists in the first place.
All current legislative pressure (the actions of your government) insists that DRM must NOT relate to issues of hardware monopolies- the exact opposite of what idiot Hickson is saying. Hickson is like the idiots who try to argue that EULAs over-rule your 'first sale doctrine' rights.
Governments will only allow DRM to ultimately serve two purposes. 1) to stop illegal copying and distribution. 2) to allow media to be provided as a 'service' (where the data is no longer accessible when the service conditions end). Companies that use DRM do NOT get to trump the law of the land.
An idiot might ask "why then are so many DRM schemes associated with particular hardware". The answer is, of course, down to the emerging state of the technology. Universal DRM systems require technology to reach a level (cost and capability) where they become commercially feasible. In the interim (as with all new technologies) a lot of proprietary intermediate solutions get implemented.
The example of 'licensed' DVD players is laughable and humiliating. There is no such thing as an 'unlicensed' DVD player in the sense the idiot Hickson means. Unlicensed in this case means companies that illegally refuse to pay to use the patents of Sony and Phillips- patents that have nothing to do with DRM, but patents that describe the fundamental workings of DVD players. Refuse to pay for the patents, and you can make a cheaper DVD player. None of these so-called unlicensed players (stand-alones) allow for illegal copying of protected Disks. Idiot Hickson is obviously confusing the idea of 'region free' players- a feature found in the majority of LICENSED players via a service menu function.
Of course, in the short term, many companies will attempt to illegally exploit their DRM system in order to restrict the rights of their customers. But let me ask you a question. Did Apple do this? Cheap crooked behaviour is for small fry criminal companies. You want to be the biggest player? You are going to have to respect consumer rights.
A neat example of this is with Sky TV in the UK, the world's most advanced broadcast service. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Sky (and Fox in the USA) may be rotten to the core, but he is no fool. He has hardware built to spec for home reception, but has embraced the Internet and all mobile devices. He intends that all of his televisual content can be received on ANY mobile device owned by his customers, including offline storage of shows with DRM. Hardware issues play a part here, but not in any way Hickson describes. Media companies require 'protected video playback paths' in the video hardware subsystems so that the decoded video stream may not be intercepted and copied. You may imagine this as the concept of 'write-only' memory for the video-buffers.
DRM has NOTHING to do with seeking control of those that build the playback hardware. PS now I know why HTML 5 is proving to be such a bad joke. Isn't it time open-source grew up, and started to worry about the intellectual abilities of those that control key projects.
What about "unauthorized producers"? (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition to unauthorized distribution of copyright works, I assume that DRM is also intended to prevent "unauthorized producers" of content from being able to distribute their works. Now that distribution no longer absolutely requires going through "official" channels, some means of preventing "pirate," that is to say, non-major-studio-authorized, content is needed.
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It still comes down to the same thing (Score:3, Insightful)
... one industry wants to create a distribution monopoly by controlling everything, and eliminating competition.
No... (Score:4, Interesting)
1) eBooks have apps for just about anything. You can read your Kindle on your Kindle, on your iPhone, on your Android, on your PC, on your Mac, etc. And there is a bonus to using these services because theoretically it should keep track of where you are in your book. But when Amazon eventually stops supporting X, customers are screwed.
2) Video is limited by sheer size, downloading a library of 100 songs takes up, what, less than half a gigabyte? Downloading a library of 100 movies in full HD can easily take up several hundred gigabytes. Video is also limited by what devices really "work" for it, you're unlikely to want to watch Netflix on your new iWatch on its 3 inch display. They've also done streaming which makes the DRM more bearable.
But the problems that are inherent in DRM is that it punishes people who want to buy things legitimately, but can't. Just look at region-locking which is often paired with DRM, you're essentially telling someone that if you want what we're selling, you need to acquire it through illegitimate means. I'm sure there's lots of non-Americans who'd pay for Hulu, I'd easily pay the BBC to have access to iPlayer, but instead I pay for VPN/Proxy to access it illegitimately.
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DRM is about controlling the distribution channel (Score:3)
DRM doesn't work if..... (Score:2)
But you (consumer you) have bought Blue Ray devices, you've consumed from the Apple walled garden, you've bought into Microsoft, you've spent money on Sony Products, you gave EA a couple of bucks... you suck.
You have supported the DRM pushers - and no - you didn't have to. You could have gone without. But instead you consumers choose to bend over backwards.
So stop your f'in Bellyaching and own up to the fact that DRM is your own fault.
God damn you.
-CF
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But... I just had to buy the newest shiny, drm-infested game! I can't live without it! Clearly this DRM problem has nothing to do with me.
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The average consumer won't complain. And that's because, as TFS states, the purpose is not to restrict customers as much as it is to control channels.
In effect, DRM does not effect customers much, if at all. As soon as it would affect them (e.g. it doesn't play) they wouldn't buy. Or start protesting really loudly (e.g. Amazon retracting sales of e-books, like they did to 1984, or the problems with that computer game last week). DRM or no DRM doesn't make much of a difference to them. Which of course also s
ADA isses with locking down books and other (Score:2)
ADA isses with locking down books and other media so that screen reader can't read them.
This is BULLSHIT (Score:2)
Essentially the article says the restriction is placed there for legal and not for technical reasons. It walks around that, and doesn't say it in straight language, but that's what it's saying: users will bypass restrictions, companies won't because of fear of legal retaliations. Well, you don't need DRM for that. Sure, you do need DRM to be able to abuse the DMCA, but you can still license your service under certain rules, and sue companies that distribute non-compliant players. You don't need DRM to enfor
The opposite position... (Score:2)
So clearly the answer is... (Score:2)
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The point is, regardless of what you or I might think about it, life finds a way. And the more onerous the circumstances, the more life will endeavor to find a way.
In this case, by trying to lock down the player manufacturers, DRM creates a brisk market in solutions that defeat DRM. I also suspect that since ripped video can be played on a variety of media, the big losers are the DVD player manufacturers. Which is probably part of the reason they're trying to branch out into other media sources, like net
I would argue that it doesn't work (Score:2)
From the article.
Arguing that DRM doesn't work is, it turns out, missing the point. DRM is working really well in the video and book space.
I refuse to buy an ebook with DRM. I don't even take the time to figure out how to get the free ones from the library. It would probably not work very well with my Android phone or, who knows what. In the end it doesn't even matter if it works great. I haven't tried it because of the DRM. It is much easier to download thousands of ebooks from bit torrent than it is to deal with the DRM. I don't know what reader I might have in 10 years, so purchase is right out.
Movies are a little better b
Reminds me of... (Score:2)
... the "if you are a paying customer" vs. "If you are a pirate" graphic:
http://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg [imgur.com]
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But on the book side, it seems many E-readers can easily read PDF and other formats which makes for easy licensing.
Yeah, and it was the wide range of supported formats that persuaded me to opt for a Sony reader. But as it turns out, I would still do the same even if that were not a factor. IMO the epub format is far superior to any of the others (fortunately .mobi and .lit formats can be converted by Calibre), since these files are so easily tweaked for better readability. I really dislike having to put up with PDF files on the device, since they are invariably prepared with silly page layouts that just don't work very
Calibre (Score:2)
Calibre is my favorite. Convert anything to anything. You can load up one reader with anything and everything from any source, then load up your friend's competing reader with any or all of the same content. And, you don't even need the reader, of course - your laptop or desktop works perfectly well for all of it. I haven't done it, but I suppose you can send any of your content to your phone as well.
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The sooner we get rid of artificial scarcity the better.
Re:Only a small piece of the puzzle (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not even that.
DRM allows content providers to enforce restrictions that go above and beyond vanilla copyright law.
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Re:Only a small piece of the puzzle (Score:4, Insightful)
He had the candy analogy forced on him - imagine if somebody had mentioned this fictional machine that copies books, records, and pictures losslessly 100 years ago - you'd have said something similar about paper being consumable.
He merely turned the useless baby / candy analogy on it's head, and put it literal terms (unlimited flawless copies). It is you who missed the point, not your parent post.
Re:Only a small piece of the puzzle (Score:5, Insightful)
Right of first sale bitch.
Region locking flat out puts nails in it, and tries everything possible to kill it with fire.
Without region locking, the right of first sale would permit entreprenurial individuals to buy up cheap(er) product in one target market, then resell the units at a higher (to them, but lower for the downstream customer) price elsewhere, and undercut the phyrric bloodletting bullshit of the publishers and distributors.
That is completely legal. See the supreme court ruling concerning foriegn textbooks.
Modern playback equipment boasts scaler chips in their design already to support the many different HD television formats, so claiming "regional formatting" is bullshit. Doubly so considering that the data is digital, and the medium itself is a universal standard.
I agree that people should pay for their candy. I disagree that they should be barred from buying candy in one place, and selling it in another, taking advantage of price differences. The supreme court recently ruled in my favor on this.
Region locking exists exclusively to compartmentalize the world economy, and relies on de-facto collusion for price fixing. Laws to enforce the region locking restrictions directly add legitimacy to that collusion. It only works when everyone plays the collusion game, which is why they are lobbying so very fucking hard to kill first sale. First sale lets the cat out of the bag, and deflates the collusion enforced price by opening up alternative markets and pricing.
Basically, I should be allowed to pay some guy in botswana to buy a dvd for 5$ for me, and ship it overnight air for 15$, for a net of 20$, if I want to. The fact that this would undercut the "handed down from god" price of 50$ in my region for the same product simply doesn't mean dick, other than that the big distributor has a control fettish, and is being abusive. There should be no technological obstrctions to my doing this. The disc is a legitimately printed and authorized copy. The guy in botswana is permitted under the first sale doctrine to transfer his user licesence to me. No illegal copis are made, and no illegal activity is being performed. Especially if free trade agreements remove all import duties and tarrifs as considerations.
That it makes you feel "oh so bad" as a rights holder that I don't share your estimation of what constitutes a fair market price for your product does not factor into the equasion, and you do NOT have a legitimate basis to enforce your price by locking out foriegn markets from domestic purchasers.
Competition. Deal with it.
Re:Only a small piece of the puzzle (Score:5, Insightful)
*rofl*
Here, let me help your addled mind.
1) the cost of production is fungible. There is no real need to subsidize any market in a true free market. You are confusing the employment of a command economy with price fixing and subsidies with a free market economy. This is because when you factor out a ratio of unit production cost as a part of the price component, and retain it in all sales, you will always recoup the unit production costs. Eg, I can look at the supply and demand curves, and see the projected sales price, and use historic data to compute a sales estimate. I can then factor my cost of production into the price as a ratio. Eg, if it costs me 10,000 dollars to make the product, and I expect to sell 200 thousand units, the ratio comes out to .05%. I can therefor realistically recoup some of my development costs from the botswanan economy, if I bake in my costs, computed for their market's demand and currency power.
That is to say, I still get my money if I sell 500 million units at 5$, or 50 million at 50$. There is no legitimate reason to price gouge one market, and subsidise another, other than that one CAN do so, and get away with it.
Here's the kicker, AC.
If everyone rushes to buy the resold botswani dvds instead of the 50$ local offers, money will rush into botswana as a result of the trade. This devalues the american dollar in botswana, and changes the equation. The influx means more money changing hands in botswana, and thus, more disposable wealth in the economy. The local price for the DVD stops being 5$. The incentive to buy from botswana dries up, as the system reaches equilibrium. Eventually, it is cheaper to buy the DVD locally, now for 30$, instead of paying the newly inflated price in botswana, plus shipping, plus markup. The drain stops.
Even while the drain is occuring, while sales at 50$ have dropped precipitously, demand for the 5$ price unit has skyrocketed. Again, if I have been smart and not greedy, I have baked my production cost ratio directly into that unit price, and the huge surge in demand produces my profit. I sell many times the unit number at the lower price, but still hit the same financials.
Your argument that the reduced price in botswana is the result of necessary subsidization makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Here is why:
If we accept the absurd notion that the distributor cannot sell for less than the 50$ point, irrespective of local economies, then selling at 5$ is selling at a loss. Not only that, we are offering and advertising that product at a loss, warehousing the product at a loss, creating regionally locked units that can *ONLY* be sold at a loss, since they can't be used elsewhere.... see where this is going? What you assert as being true will only serve to radically increase production cost, with no sensible benefit. Allowing the rampant piracy you complain about would actually cost significantly less than making physica product available at such a substantial real outlay.
The truth is that due to the overall reductions in market costs of the botswani economy, it costs significantly less to send the freight, significantly less to warehouse, significantly less to advertise, etc. The result is that the costs associated are proportionally reduced in conjunction with the price. It is simply easier to do business in botswana. The ratio remains the same. All that changed is the unit price compared to a different market, with higher penetration costs.
Allowing the customers in the more costly to penetrate market to buy like crazy from the easily penetrated and lower price market, and relying on the free advertisment that will flow as a result of entreprenures marketing their discount DVD shopping services, you can simply invest in a little infrastructure in the cheaper economy and make a fucking killing.
(Gasp! That's what fucking china is doing! They are making it simply cheaper to do business in china, then getting everything set to pull the rug when the sucking lev
Re: (Score:2)
Again, that is because of region locking itself. Removing the DRM from the picture completely, such as with the wood pulp based textbooks so that we don't have to deal with absurd legislation about redistribution, (since region locking is straight up protectionism and market manipulation.) And suddenly the comparison between the textbooks and the DVDs becomes much different.
If you can't hande apples to oranges, try this: region free dvds with different sales prices.
I buy the region free dvds that are made
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That's because the Australian regulations add to the development costs of games.
To legally sell in Australia they have to go trough a ton of legal bullshit your elected officials inflict in the name of 'The Children'.
Re:Only a small piece of the puzzle (Score:5, Interesting)
That's because the Australian regulations add to the development costs of games.
To legally sell in Australia they have to go trough a ton of legal bullshit your elected officials inflict in the name of 'The Children'.
Really? So how about all the non-game software, how about Adobe, Microsoft [afr.com] and many others?
From the article:
“If you go to Apple’s iTunes and buy Macklemore’s song Same Love, which is number two in the Australian charts, it’s 69 cents in the US and over $2 in Australia,” he said.
“[And] we found it cost $5795 more to buy Microsoft’s Visual Studio software in Australia compared with the US. These are downloaded products with no Australian labour involved and no local distribution costs – it’s simply a matter of where the computer server thinks you’re coming from.”
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I live in New Zealand, we have no such regulations. We've always had R18 game ratings. We get screwed on price just like Australia.
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Why not? The hardware on which to play the game costs roughly the same in all of those locations because the price of hardware is based on a realistic calculation of production/distribution cost plus a small profit.
There is no such thing as piracy of hardware, the closest you get is cheap clones which are usually not identical to or better than the original.
If users cannot afford the hardware, then the price of media becomes irrelevant.
And let's not forget that media is never sold at a loss. The per unit pr