Solving DRM in the BitTorrent Age 254
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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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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I've been using Palm and PocketPC devices to read ebooks for years. While the device costs a lot, and the books don't cost much less, I still far prefer them to physical books. Why?
Bookmarks.
I long ago found the 'best' bookmark for physical books. It's a device that clips to the back page of the book, and has an arm that holds the page. As you flip pages, it automatically moves to the next page. This device isn't perfect,
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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I know the theory.
But I can't think of anything more likely to be the ruin of an American original like Orson Welles.
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They say they're tired of it, but they keep buying it. Same as healthy food. Everyone says they want it, but junk food is what sells.
There are thousands of movies made every year. They're not all crap.
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That why most of my favourite films nowadays are either European or made by small non-hollywood directors.
The question is why are hollywood now such cowards with regard to backing anything that might cause a fuss?
Take a film like "La Haine". There is no way hollywood could manage to produce a film about disadvantage
Re:Auteurs are not screenwriters (Score:2)
It's interesting what this (and the parent) says about the changing way films are made. In many of my favorite movies, the screenplay is one of the least important and unique parts of the entire work. Think about Citizen Kane or Apocalypse Now and you realize that the screenplay was very nearly unnecessary to the creation of the film. In fact, I wouldn't be surprise
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It's interesting what this (and the parent) says about the changing way films are made. In many of my favorite movies, the screenplay is one of the least important and unique parts of the entire work. Think about Citizen Kane or Apocalypse Now and you realize that the screenplay was very nearly unnecessary to the creation of the film. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if in Apocalypse Now, Coppola accidentally dropped the screenplay off the side of a boat two weeks before shooting started and never looked back.
A screenplay is what gets studios to back your film when you go in trying to convince someone to spend millions on your idea. A screenplay is what actors learn their lines from. A screenplay in its final shooting script form is also what allows someone like Coppola to film scenes X, Y, and Z in one place with complete notes on what each camera angle will be, changes to the dialogue, etc., while his assistant director(s) are somewhere else filming scenes M, N, and O with complete notes on those scenes as we
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.
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Re:Books vs Music/Movies - No comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Books vs Music/Movies - No comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
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Maybe I'm just not "with it", but the idea of reading more than a few paragraphs on a PDA makes me want to shoot myself in the head. Not to mention all the other disadvantages of a PDA when compared to a book.
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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:
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The idea? But have you actually tried it? I've read about a dozen or more ebooks on my PDA (lying on my side in bed) and find it far more convenient than a "real" book because I just turn on autoscroll and I don't even have to hold the PDA - I prop it on a cushtie pillow FWIW. I also made a rig for my cross-trainer to hold my PDA and now train while reading (again no page tur
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Books are nice. You can flip pages, you can put a bookmarker in them, and they require no boot up time.
However, a tablet PC is really the next best thing. The aspect is perfect for full page documentation, they are self lit, and you can store a ton of books on a the HD.
The best of both words would be
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Re:Books vs Music/Movies - No comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
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Unwanted, mostly. Audiobooks have had remarkable success. Hands free, perfect for the road. The hardcover or the paperback is for the bed, the bath or the recliner. No batteries to replace. No dynamos to crank. There is a market still for the book as art or craft. People for whom names like Bruce Rogers and N.C. Wyeth still have resonance.
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and comparing downloading movies for free with reading a book at barnes and noble for free is apples and oranges. your time is limited in BN, while your time is unlimited downloading movies at home.
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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It depends on how one remembers what you want to look up. If it's a specific word or phrase, sure, electronic is ideal. If you remember that it's 3/4 of the way down a right-hand page, with about an inch-worth of pages left in the book, paper is probably going to beat electronic for look-up speed. Some people remember tactile/spacial information better, and electronic doesn't (yet) provide such feedback too well.
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I also prefer to have the desk reference open rather than a document on
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If you actually believe any of this is generally the case then the RIAA have done a better job than I thought.
Without getting into it, unl
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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$for pass in `seq 1 2`
do
mencoder -dvd-device
-x264encopts subq=7:4x4mv:8x8dct:me=3:frameref=6:bframes=6:b_ad apt:b_pyramid:weight_b:bitrate=512:pass=$pass \
-of lavc -o pretty_small_file_by_comparision.mp4
done
OK, lavc won't actually work with b-frames at the moment, but there are ways around
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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.
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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.
I've never really understood the idea of buying DVDs. If there's a really good movie, I prefer watching it in a theatre. You can download a DVD, but you can't do that with a proper movie experience, unless you have a badass home theatre.
One problem I have with buying DVDs is that I rarely watch the same movie twice. There are so many great movies yet to see, and so little time. I also don't like hoarding physical books/DVDs that would spend most of their lifetime gathering dust in the shelves. Then ag
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What's worse is comic books (for those that are into that thing). A single 30 page comic (containing 6 pages of advertisements!) costs > 2 US $. Go to a comic book
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).
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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".
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The thing with games is that people can only play a limited number of them. I had an atari 2600 and bought ~30 games for it. A few years later I bought a Commodore-64 and bought a total of 2 games for it. The rest (probably ~50 games) were copied tapes and floppy discs. Because of my piracy those media companies sold less C-64 games.
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Re:Rhetorical logic = Crap (Score:2)
"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."
See? Twisted logic.
If everybody was copying FFIX, then Sony would be entering a zero on their fiscal qtr from that point on for that product. And, to further your own example, if everybody copied, Sony would have sold one, count 'em, one copy, which would have th
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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.
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The conventional trade agreement with Sony is this: they give you stuff, you give them money.
If you neither buy nor use Sony's stuff, they don't get your money, but they have no claim to your money because you don't have their stuff. If they aren't making something worth buying, let it be on their head.
If you get pirated Sony stuff for free, then they don't get your money, but you get their stuff. The agreement
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.
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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)
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There's quite a bit, actually. Pirate Bay top 10, by seeds:
But, to help you point, (1
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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.
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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.
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Harlen Ellison's adaptation of I,Robot, published in Asimov's Science Fiction because Isaac thought it was so good it needed to be seen, but was never going to be made into a movie.
KFG
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You've gotten to the heart of the matter, I think. People might be a bit reluctant to screw their favorite author by pirating their work. That's because the author is a single person. You wouldn't brag on your warezing skills if the author was in the room with you. OTOH, Hollywood movies are massive collaborative efforts where the big name talent is very well paid. It's all orchestrated by a faceless corporation. If the star were in the room with you, you still might not brag on your warezing skills,
What about theatre? (Score:2)
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Films are often written by committee. We can have up to four writers under "written by," perhaps another four under "story idea," another if the work adapts an extant non-film, and any number of unacknowledged minor writers.
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In the theater, the director's job is to work in service to the playwright to bring his vision to the stage.
In film, the screenwriter's job is to work in service to the director to give him the raw material to bring his vision to the screen.
Evidently this author of TFA is not aware of this reality.
One can certainly imagine things being different but this is how it has always been.
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.
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You, Sir, fail to make the fundamental distinction between CREATION of information and DISTRIBUTION of said information.
Creative information IS scarce. If you disagree, I challenge you to produce a novel / movie / song which has the potential to become widely popular and/or receive critical acclaim. By next Monday.
However, once this information has been created, it
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The "information wants to be free" crowd knows that people will quit producing the moment everyone can legally rip them off at the post. They just don't care beyond their immediate wants.
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.
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My DVDs of Futurama have been watched as many times as any of my books and several films certainly made me think.
Whereas there are plenty of throwaway books just as there are films.
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.
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And to extend this point, wherever you read that book, you're getting the full experience. Whereas watching a movie on the TV screens round Blockbuster is absolutely not comparable to at home in your comfy chair with 5.1 and a beer.
drm and bittorrent (Score:2, Interesting)
By this strategy (Score:2)
In order movies to be of the same quality, I'd need some way to make cheap, reasonably-good quality videos easily available, highly portable, and very power-effective. What we need is a decent-sized, fairly tough, f
erhm? (Score:2)
Notice how crappy movies are consistently in the top 10 at the box office [rottentomatoes.com].
People who read books have higher standards... (slightly?)
Comment removed (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.
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Frankly, when it comes time for me to start getting rid of my CDs and DVDs, I'm donating them to a local library. That way others can enjoy them in the future.
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In other words, I can find Disney DVDs at the library that are essentially out of print elsewhere. When my kids outgrow their movies, my library will get a windfall.
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?
I have just given op. (Score:2)
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)
Some studying for you (Score:2)
You should also read Irony [wikipedia.org], Sarcasm [wikipedia.org] and maybe Droll Humor [wikipedia.org].
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.