DRM

[Doctor V]

Something thats probably going to generate flames, DRM is something that seems to generate a lot of tension among open source advocates, I just want to play devil's advocate so I can hear new opinions about the issue.  I don't really understand why DRM is seen as such a bad thing.  DRM make is so AV files require digital licences to play them.  So if a company works for months to generate a piece of media, decided on a fair price for it, and wants to make it available not only on CD, in theaters, or video stores, but on customers PCs as well, isn't that a good thing?  That would be convenient for customers who might not want to leave their home, because of say, bad weather, or a physical handicap.  If someone dosn't like it, there's no obligation to buy anything.  Typically, the condidions being put on DRM protected material are so strict that customers are staying away.  But it dosn't have to be that way, its quite possible for a company to use DRM in a way that give consumers a good degree of freedom over the media they download after they've paid for it.  Perhaps a company could make a media with heavy restrictions that last a year after the initial release, but became free and open after that.  DRM content can exist alongside free content perfectally well.  Now I'm all against using draconian copyright laws to smash competition the way Lexmark did, or Adobe's poke at Elmscroft.  I also think mandatory DRM tech into all digital devices is just plain crazy.  I also think Fritz chips push the issue way beyond the limit, as DRM exists today and works fine without the hardware component.  But I don't see why the current DRM is so bad, and would like to hear differing opinions.

  :cool:  V  :confused:

[psyjax]

I agree and disagree.

Yes, its great to be able to restrict media judiciously, vut like all things who gets to be the judge?

I make a DRM music file and sell it, I dunno, for a buck... but what's to stop me from gouging the shit outta the price, say 20 bucks. Say Im the only act in town, and you gotta buy my music.

Kinda the way printer companies gouge prices on ink, and even put smart-chips in cartriges to prevent you from refiling without a workaround. DRM is like communisim, in a perfect world it would work, but while greedy and unscrupilous folks like M$ and others are around, it won't be very friendly for long.

Expect to be forced into perpetual upgrade cycles, and Drakonian EULAs much more often.

[billy_gates]

I think DRM is a good thing.  The only thing I don't like is combined with the DMCA it is illegal to crack or break the license.  My personal opinion is if you aren't smart enough to keep people from stealing your music then you should have it stolen.  You shouldn't be protected from some stupid law.

[Doctor V]

quote:Originally posted by psyjax: plain 'ol psyjax:
I agree and disagree.

Yes, its great to be able to restrict media judiciously, vut like all things who gets to be the judge?

I make a DRM music file and sell it, I dunno, for a buck... but what's to stop me from gouging the shit outta the price, say 20 bucks. Say Im the only act in town, and you gotta buy my music.

Kinda the way printer companies gouge prices on ink, and even put smart-chips in cartriges to prevent you from refiling without a workaround. DRM is like communisim, in a perfect world it would work, but while greedy and unscrupilous folks like M$ and others are around, it won't be very friendly for long.

Expect to be forced into perpetual upgrade cycles, and Drakonian EULAs much more often.

In response I'd like to say that if a company charges 20 bucks for an act, people won't buy it.  They will move on to the act that costs only 5 bucks or so, and there will always be free content as well.  In other words, as far as music and other entertainment goes, nobody is ever going to be the only act in town, especially not with online content.  So if someone is going to charge alot of money for somthing, it had better be damn good.  And if it is damn good, the company should only be expected to have some sort of price tag on it no matter what form its presented in.  Its going to have a small price in the video store, and theatre.  And if they want it available on line, cool.  Charging 20 bucks for a CD online is outrageous, but charging 8 bucks for say a 2 hour concert with audio and video isn't bad at all IMHO.

Now I'd like to separate the Lexmark issue from DRM because I believe they are very different issues.  Putting copyright protection on a toner cartridge to prevent refilling and granting oneself a de-facto monopoly on toners is pure BS, and any effort to break that copyright protection should be lauded.  But thats an issue dealing with the creation of competing hard/software and the use of copyright protection to stop it.  The sale of online content protected by DRM can exist even if companys are allowed to make printer cartridges compatible with Lexmark.

Some people will certainly try to use DRM to excert draconian controls over content, but not everyone will, and those who don't will probably see better sales than those who do.  And that will act to balance DRM out.

[Doctor V]

Again, I'd like to clairify:

DRM is a system used to encrypt content making it so that playback requires a digital licence.  The licences can be sold for money, and they can be designed to allow or disallow a variety of activities, such as controlling the number of times a file can be played, or a time period that it can be played in, or whether or not it can be burned to a CD.

DMCA is a US copyright law.  It is considered by most to be very contraversial.  It makes breaking any copyright protection for any purpose very illegal.  It is often used to prevent competition.  It defines copyright so strictly that even free speech is put into question.

So I want to make sure to everyone that I am questioning as to whether or not the top one, DRM, is such a bad thing in itself.  The second one, the DMCA, I am very strongly against.

V

[Faust]

quote:They will move on to the act that costs only 5 bucks or so, and there will always be free content as well.

Unfortunately competition doesn't work to reduce prices if all the companies involved get greedy.  It's like with the petrol station companies in Australia - they all decided to jack the prices up so they got good profits, and because they _all_ decided to do it they were happy.  Now they wont lower prices because even though this may give them a higher amount of customers, they don't want to rock the boat.  And if a new mon and pop station comes out with reasonably priced petrol, the big companies in that area just start selling petrol at a loss until the mom and pop station goes under.  Then they go back to normal prices.  It is a good idea for music - really people should be paying for good music, it is an artists only livelihood.  And its not like you can "improve" art so there is no parallel to free software.  I'm just a bit worried that record companies will use this to hold CD prices at their horrible values and still end up shafting the artist - $30 AUS for a CD, costs them less than $3 to make and the artist gets what, 5 cents a CD? 10 cents if they're lucky?  Advertising costs don't cut it either, they're are plenty of record labels doing perfectly well without the record moguls level of advertising cashflow.  The radio has always been the best method of advertising music and that has always just required giving a radio station your CD.  I'm happy for the DRM to be in place on artistic works if I can be assured the big companies won't use it to shaft the consumer - but I don't think we can trust the big companies.

[Doctor V]

What you have described, all big companys in an industry colluding to keep prices high, is what the recording industry has been doing for ages, which is why we see almost 20 bucks for a CD that takes penniies to make.  I don't think DRM is going to change this in any way.  It will give them the ability to continue this with online sales, as opposed to not providing online sales at all.  Competition will still exist on 2 fronts.  They will have to compete with their own contents that are illegally circulating online with p2p.  Meaning they will have to make content that is above and beyond just the music, and make it at a price fair enough so that it will sell dispite the free contents.  I just don't see them stopping p2p anytime soon, its too widespread and decentralized.  The next front from competition is from indys, and smaller record labels.  Nothing the big labels can do will stop the small labels and indys from making content and either selling or giving it away online.  Lately, smaller labels have been doing very very well, and will probably keep growning.  DRM *Might* even help the smaller labels and indys by giving them a way to market their content without help from Tower Records and MTV.

[flap]

No. Digital Restrictions Management is a bad thing, full-stop. No-one has the right to tell you not to copy.

 

quote:DRM protected material

"Protected" is a progaganda term in this context. You can't protect a work of art; you can only stop people from enjoying it. That's the opposite of protection. If anything "protects" works, it's free licences like the GPL and the free art licence.

[Doctor V]

quote:Originally posted by flap:
No. Digital Restrictions Management is a bad thing, full-stop. No-one has the right to tell you not to copy.

 

"Protected" is a progaganda term in this context. You can't protect a work of art; you can only stop people from enjoying it. That's the opposite of protection. If anything "protects" works, it's free licences like the GPL and the free art licence.

One thing to note, DRM will not prevent anyone from copying anything, it will just prevent people from viewing the copied material without a licence.  And actually some companys want their work to be copied and even use P2P networks to spread their work out.

While letting a work be available to anyone free of charge certainly ensures that it will never completely die out, some works take millions of dollars to produce, movies for example.  And if a company gives the work away for free, they might not make a profit off it.  And that would stop them from being able to produce anything else.  A work is really going to be destroyed if it is never poduced at all.  And if somthing is really good, its not going to remain bottled up forever.  As soon as it looses it newness the content owners will release it in several different formats eventually.  That or someone will break the encryption and set it loose on P2P.  Their is no perfect encryption and when encryption is broken, DRM is broken.

Since the term 'protected' can be ambigious in this context, I'll say 'licenced' content from now on.

V

[flap]

quote:One thing to note, DRM will not prevent anyone from copying anything, it will just prevent people from viewing the copied material without a licence

Oh great, so we can copy but not use it?

 

quote:While letting a work be available to anyone free of charge

Once again, I'm not saying that artists should give away their work for free. This is about restrictions on users copying.

 

quote:That or someone will break the encryption and set it loose on P2P. Their is no perfect encryption and when encryption is broken, DRM is broken.

So you're saying DRM measures are ok because they can be cracked anyway?

[Faust]

quote:I don't think we can trust the big companies.

Just in case anyone missed it and assumed I was all for this.

[Doctor V]

I said the above because people often say that DRM destroys culture by locking up content.  Thats the line of thinking that goes along with the free licences protect work arguement.  They say that if content is released in licenced format, that it is locked up forever and erased from existance as soon as people start buying it.  Saying that it can and will eventually be copied and cracked is just my way of saying that DRM will not truely be able to bottle up content to the point that it becomes completely inaccessable as soon as the company that puts it out stops profiting from it.  This certainly isn't the way the companys that put DRM out intend, but it is the way things are.  DRM will not destroy content.  Works will survive even if they exist only in a proprietary format.  If someone copys a work, even if they cannot view it, a physical copy will still exist.

What does it mean if somthing can be copied but not used?  Alot.  If person A buys a work, person B copies it from person A, and dosn't buy it, person C can still copy and buy it from person B.  In other words a work can spread far and wide, with only a small minority of the people who have it actually viewing it.  This makes a work more readily available to people who might want to buy it.  This way, any artist can get their licenced work out without using tower and the other big record store chains who have contracts with the RIAA lables.  It will be kept available, yet still will let artists get paid for their work.  In fact, I think all producers of licenced material should try to get it out on P2P.  And yes, company's that have encouraged people to copy their licenced material have had very good results to date.  Ask the people at Sherman Networks (makers of Kazaa) about that one.

Anyway, maybe I mistook the arguement you were tyring to make.

It sounds to me now like you believe that people should have a right to do whatever they want with whatever content they own, including copying it.  Is that right.  This way a very very small number of digital works will be sold, and people will start copying them like mad, and they will be spread out so far and fast that consumers will lose any incentive to buy it.  Artist will sell their stuff sure, but very few people are going to buy it.  If it took millions of dollars to make they are in the hole by a hugh sum of cash.  And likely they won't make any more.

V

[flap]

I don't think DRM 'destroys' culture; it just damages society by placing artifical restrictions on natural co-operation between people.

 

quote:with only a small minority of the people who have it actually viewing it.

Well that really amounts to not allowing people to copy it. When we talk about being free to copy something we really hope that the freedom to use it will be implicitly guaranteed.

Artists could earn money in a few ways. At the moment people still buy millions of cds every year, and it's not because they're afraid of breaking the law. It's because they don't have high speed internet access or they're generally unaware of P2P (of course some of them are also won over by propaganda and feel they don't have the right to music without paying a record company for it). Thus there's still money to be made from physical distribution. Music can be sold on CD but still be freely distributable. If CDs were sold under this licence, but more cheaply, people would still buy them for the convenience. This is similar to how GNU/Linux distributors charge for free software. When high speed internet is more widespread and people stop buying cds, they could be invited to electronically donate a very small amount to the artist when they download or listen to a song.

 

quote:It sounds to me now like you believe that people should have a right to do whatever they want with whatever content they own, including copying it. Is that right.

Of course it is. It's a bit sad when people look at sharing and view it as being ethically wrong, while seeing restriction of copying as being absolutely fine. That's not even just wrong; it's backwards.

[Laukev7]

It is not the CD or the medium the people are paying for, it is its contents. Spreading music on the network is wrong because people take advantage of a product without giving anything in return to the producer. This is more akin to stealing than sharing  because sharing implies a division of a product amongst a group of people, whereas copying music multiplies it across the network and deprives the purveyor of profit, just like stealing a material product.

Intellectual property is better compared to a service, rather than to a product. In other words, you pay the singer, and in exchange you may benefit of his/her work. Same thing goes for software.

[flap]

It isn't vaguely akin to stealing. If someone copies a cd from me, the record companies would say that's "stealing" so they try and prosecute. What if someone breaks into my house and literally steals my cds? Do the record companies go to the police?

Not even the record companies think it's stealing; that's why they try to claim they've been denied profit, rather than had anything tangible "stolen" from them. If a car showroom has 4 cars stolen from it, the owner won't say "We've had X thousand $/