Miscellaneous > Applications
DRM
Faust:
quote:I don't think we can trust the big companies.
--- End quote ---
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.
--- End quote ---
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.
--- End quote ---
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 $/
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