DRM

[Laukev7]

You understand that producing music/software should be a service, and you are right that the RIAA are not claiming their loss of profit in a credible way. I think that they are taking advantage of the situation, of the confusion about how to treat the trade of intellectual property.

However, I'm not sure if you correctly understand my point about stealing. You are trying to argue by saying that theft of intellectual property is difficult to claim, but the fact still remains that if people copy music, they unjustly claim the right to benefit from a service they haven't paid for.

[flap]

I'm saying that the whole concept of "intellectual property", to use another propaganda term, is flawed. I'm suggesting that you can't steal or own information, so you can't use the term "theft" in this context. Artists have the right to be paid for a work, but not the right to demand to be paid everytime that work is used or copied.

Similarly, a person who builds a road has no right to claim compensation for every single person who uses it, as the number of people who use it makes no difference to them - whether 10 or 10,000 people drive along their road, they've still expended the same amount of effort to build it.

If you're talking about a person being compensated for doing work and providing a service - which in itself is perfectly reasonable - then terms like "theft" and "property" are immediately invalid. In this case the people in question aren't "using a service" - they're using the resultant products of a service.

So you may feel that, if you for example download music by a particular artist, you should feel morally inclined to voluntarily pay them for it. But that doesn't mean the artist should be allowed to spitefully deny someone the right to take a copy of their work from someone else - at no cost to the artist - possibly because they simply can't pay for it.

[slave]

I would write something here but I basically agree with everything flap says, so there's really nothing  left to say.  One thing that would be worth reading is Richard Stallman's essay "Can you trust your computer?"  It's all about DRM and how it would be very bad for society if computers used it.

[Doctor V]

What Stallman writes agains is TCPA, which is quite different from DRM.  Though there is one small paragraph about DRM, it should be noted that DRM and TCPA or whatever they're calling it now are completely different.  You can have DRM without TCPA technology or a fritz chip.  Turns out most PCs people have today already have DRM on them.  Windows comes with DRM support in their media player version 7.1 and up.  TCPA takes it a giant leap farther by addain a hardware component, and making the same DRM system appliable for just about information your PC has.  And it makes it so that your computer will chech to see if your breaking copyright whenever it wants and will possibly not even boot if it thinks you are.  Its truely evil.  I could go on about what it will do, but enough has already been written about that.  But the DRM available today is a far cry from that.  All it does is accepts media files that have been encrypted and unencrypts them according to certain rules set by the producer.  This is embedded into a couple of applications, and those applications will not have any affect on other pplications, unlike TCPA.  The DRM using application of today could care less about anything else anything is doing, it just deals with the encrypted files.  It will still allow file sharing in any way.  TCPA would shut you down if it dosn't like somthing your doing...kinda like M$ product activation.  DRM however is all about user choice.  If someone dosn't want to purchase a licenced media file, they can simply choose to not download it, or delete it if they already have it.  If they don't think they will ever want to use one, they can quickly and easily delete the DRM using application.  Nothing is being forced upon the user, and the user is not being deprived of anything.  Again, nothing is done to stop file sharing with current DRM.  There is the thing about the DRM application following a set of rules put out by the content provider, and not listening to the user.  But if this is kept to one application, and the user is fully aware of what is going on, I don't see it as an infringement on the user's rights.

[Doctor V]

Again, I'd like to say I'm not a complete intelecltual property advocate, I just want to make a good discussion.  Helps us see the issue from different points of view.  I came across a really good, but long, anti-intellectual property web site, here's the link, and all the ammunition you need to shoot my arguements down:

Against intellectual property

   V  

[flap]

One of the problems here is the use of the term "intellectual property". Besides the false comparison with physical property, the term is misleading, as Stallman says, because it lumps together different types of copyright law that don't have much to do with each other, like patents, copyright and trademarks.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#IntellectualProperty

DRM-enabled applications are a restriction on users' rights by their very definition, in that they make a decision to prevent users from accessing restricted media files. I'm assuming the DRM application uses some kind of proprietary, secret encryption method so the application itself will have to be proprietary. Another infringement on users' rights.

[Doctor V]

I don't see how it infringes on anybody's rights, if person X dosn't want DRM, they can just choose not to pick up the software or delete it.  However if person Y is OK with paying a couple bucks to watch a movie online, whats so bad about them using software to handle that?  They pay for it in the video store, or theatre, why not online?

[flap]

Well it's still infringing on their rights, regardless of whether or not they're voluntarily submitting to it. And there's nothing wrong with paying for content or software. The problem is the copyright restriction.

So, yes, it's not such a problem if DRM is only in certain applications and not built in to the OS. Like with all proprietary applications, users have the right to choose to use them. The goal should be to convince them why they should choose otherwise.