5 ms·

Unfortunately, it's peoples very nature to avoid paying for things if they don't have to. Whereas I don't support the wholesale DRMing of everything, I do suppo

by Jaruzel 10y ago

Unfortunately, it's peoples very nature to avoid paying for things if they don't have to. Whereas I don't support the wholesale DRMing of everything, I do support the Content Creators right to be remunerated for their work. Without DRM, people will steal stuff without regard for the creators survival. This was seen most visible in the Pop Music industry. Piracy was so rife, that indie musicians were considered too big a risk for the labels, who turned to low-risk-low-cost 'music factory' style churning out of the same low quality pap that the popular charts is now peppered with. If we don't protect artists (by this I mean, musicians, game designers, visual artists, program makers etc.) from the people trying to steal from them, there will be no quality content going forward, and the only form of entertainment will come from the mega-corps trying to peddle their wares in the guise of ad-laden media. So, in my view, a standard cross-platform secure DRM model for the web is required. If you want to consume it, you should be prepared to pay for it.

thomasahle 10y ago
Why does it matter if Netflix or others lock their content, when it is already available pirated elsewhere? People still pay for Netflix even though they could watch everything for free.
pedrocr 10y ago
> So, in my view, a standard cross-platform secure DRM model for the web is required. If you want to consume it, you should be prepared to pay for it. These are completely orthogonal to one another. People pay for content when they can get a good service at a fair price. For the longest time it was much easier to torrent movies and shows than to try and navigate through the cesspool of TV scheduling, ads, etc. Netflix fixed that and now people pay for content. The same happened with music. DRM solves nothing as it only takes one determined person to break it and then everyone else gets a great experience. Meanwhile all your paying customers have to suffer through a poor experience thanks to DRM. It's self-defeating.
- Jaruzel 10y ago
  > Meanwhile all your paying customers have to suffer through a poor experience thanks to DRM. No, that's all thanks to rubbish DRM. You are confusing the concept of DRM with the implementation. Good DRM should be seamless and no-different (to the end user) to non-DRM content - it's this area that is failing, and why the current failure to settle on a good DRM standard is resulting in so many badly implemented proprietary systems.
  - unimpressive 10y ago
    Can you point to a secure, non-intrusive DRM scheme?
    - Jaruzel 10y ago
      Nope. That's the whole point. There isn't a good implementation of DRM (yet). I think people are reading what I wrote and saw me championing the current DRM implementations we have (hence the down-votes). I wasn't. I was simply pointing out that DRM is necessary if we want people to continue to create quality work. Not every is an Open-Source/FOSS advocate, and also starving artists need to eat.
      - unimpressive 10y ago
        Can you point to any theoretical approaches that might yield a non-intrusive secure implementation of DRM?
        Jaruzel 10y ago
        What, and continue to get down-voted on this thread? :)
  - gcp 10y ago
    You are confusing the concept of DRM with the implementation He's not confusing it. Due to its nature, it's not possible for DRM to be un-intruisive. The concept is broken, and consequently, the implementations too. It's not like smart people haven't looked at this problem!
- edem 10y ago
  I can second this. For example one of my favourite artists' work was so rare at some point in the past that it was only possible to get my hands on his work is to torrent it. Now we have Spotify and bandcamp so I can listen to whatever I want wherever I want whenever I want and I'm willing to pay a nominal monthly fee for the service.
  - gcp 10y ago
    Conversely, bands that aren't on Spotify no longer exist to me.
    - edem 10y ago
      True. Spotify is also a leaky abstraction. For example there were all albums of Atrium Carceri on Spotify and 6 of them were removed more than a year ago. I asked AC what happened and he told me that they are "reprinting" the old albums. I don't know what does that have to do with Spotify but now I'm in the limbo of sometimes navigating to bandcamp to listen to an older album and then navigating back to Spofity...I won't buy his albums because of the promise that he will put them back sometime but it haven't happened yet.
mixedCase 10y ago
> Without DRM, people will steal stuff without regard for the creators survival. Good thing we live in a world with DRM, where this doesn't happen.
gcp 10y ago
Ha, but the thing is, DRM makes it harder to pay for content, because it adds inconvenience and hence makes the content less attractive. This is especially true if there are free alternatives (pirating, ad-supported services) that don't have the downsides of DRM. And all DRM is defeatable, so pirating is always an alternative. The point is to make the acquisition and paying for content as smooth and buttery as possible, so it's easier to stream or buy from a legal service than it is to find a torrent with the right language and subtitles. This is understood by a large part of the industry (you don't see "anti rip" CDs any more), and many game publishers are only doing perfunctory DRM. But not by the movie studios, it seems.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  The most pleasant experience I've had paying for and consuming video in the past 15 years was Horace and Pete. Heard about it through an email subscription I voluntarily signed up for, bought the first episode for a few dollars (I used Amazon but there were several options including bitcoin), downloaded the DRM free MP4, watched it, liked it, bought the rest of the episodes, downloaded, watched, downloaded, watched... No previews, no ads, no proprietary viewer, no searching through huge lists of things I will never want to see. Even when there was an option to sign up for the newsletter, which I already had, it defaulted to something like "No, don't bother me ever again you fat looser". I have all the episodes on my main computer, backed up on an external drive and in Amazon Glacier (just in case of extreme loss). When my kids are older, I'm going to show it to them and I'll know right where to find it and what the experience will be like instead of wondering if it will still be available, ad free, through my mid-tier Disney Huflix subscription. Edit: Forgot to mention, I say past 15 years, because there was a brief moment in history where DVDs had a similar experience, the worst thing was maybe having to hit "Play". That was before "Disney FastPlay" which just gets to the ads faster, right after the 30 second explanation of "FastPlay".
ska 10y ago
It is disingenuous to pretend DRM is about funding content creators, it's really about corporate revenue, which is not at all the same thing. Content creators are and will continue to be treated as a cost to be minimized by these distributors. It is also disingenuous to suggest that DRM is equivalent to paying for content. They are related, but separate issues.
- 794CD01 10y ago
  They are not separate in any meaningful way. From the perspective of content owners, they want DRM because they want to ensure people who consume their content have paid for it. From the perspective of consumers, those who want to circumvent DRM in order to avoid paying for content overwhelmingly outnumber those who oppose DRM on principle to the point that the voices, and more importantly, the money, of the latter are completely drowned out.
  - ska 10y ago
    They absolutely are completely separable. DRM is one technological approach to enforcing a model on payment for content. There are other models, and other mechanisms to encourage payment or reduce non-payment. To pretend that DRM is unique, or in some way the natural approach is folly.
    - 794CD01 10y ago
      DRM is not the implementation or the technology, necessarily. Those who own copyright want to deny the ability to copy to others, because they fear it devalues what they have. That doesn't make it right, or natural, as if any of that even matters. It just means that a group of people exist who want to be able to enforce copyright. And the opposition to that is, by definition, those who want to be able to make copies of things without the blessing of copyright owners. If DRM were perfect, there wouldn't even be a technology- or freedom- based argument against it.
- Noos 10y ago
  You fund creators from corporate revenue, though. They aren't going to make any money if there is no DRM either. There also have been plenty of independent publishers and small studios that have been hurt by piracy and the lack of DRM, too.

by Jaruzel 10y ago

thomasahle 10y ago

Why does it matter if Netflix or others lock their content, when it is already available pirated elsewhere? People still pay for Netflix even though they could watch everything for free.

pedrocr 10y ago

> So, in my view, a standard cross-platform secure DRM model for the web is required. If you want to consume it, you should be prepared to pay for it. These are completely orthogonal to one another. People pay for content when they can get a good service at a fair price. For the longest time it was much easier to torrent movies and shows than to try and navigate through the cesspool of TV scheduling, ads, etc. Netflix fixed that and now people pay for content. The same happened with music. DRM solves nothing as it only takes one determined person to break it and then everyone else gets a great experience. Meanwhile all your paying customers have to suffer through a poor experience thanks to DRM. It's self-defeating.

Jaruzel 10y ago
> Meanwhile all your paying customers have to suffer through a poor experience thanks to DRM. No, that's all thanks to rubbish DRM. You are confusing the concept of DRM with the implementation. Good DRM should be seamless and no-different (to the end user) to non-DRM content - it's this area that is failing, and why the current failure to settle on a good DRM standard is resulting in so many badly implemented proprietary systems.
- unimpressive 10y ago
  Can you point to a secure, non-intrusive DRM scheme?
  - Jaruzel 10y ago
    Nope. That's the whole point. There isn't a good implementation of DRM (yet). I think people are reading what I wrote and saw me championing the current DRM implementations we have (hence the down-votes). I wasn't. I was simply pointing out that DRM is necessary if we want people to continue to create quality work. Not every is an Open-Source/FOSS advocate, and also starving artists need to eat.
    - unimpressive 10y ago
      Can you point to any theoretical approaches that might yield a non-intrusive secure implementation of DRM?
      - Jaruzel 10y ago
        What, and continue to get down-voted on this thread? :)
- gcp 10y ago
  You are confusing the concept of DRM with the implementation He's not confusing it. Due to its nature, it's not possible for DRM to be un-intruisive. The concept is broken, and consequently, the implementations too. It's not like smart people haven't looked at this problem!
edem 10y ago
I can second this. For example one of my favourite artists' work was so rare at some point in the past that it was only possible to get my hands on his work is to torrent it. Now we have Spotify and bandcamp so I can listen to whatever I want wherever I want whenever I want and I'm willing to pay a nominal monthly fee for the service.
- gcp 10y ago
  Conversely, bands that aren't on Spotify no longer exist to me.
  - edem 10y ago
    True. Spotify is also a leaky abstraction. For example there were all albums of Atrium Carceri on Spotify and 6 of them were removed more than a year ago. I asked AC what happened and he told me that they are "reprinting" the old albums. I don't know what does that have to do with Spotify but now I'm in the limbo of sometimes navigating to bandcamp to listen to an older album and then navigating back to Spofity...I won't buy his albums because of the promise that he will put them back sometime but it haven't happened yet.

mixedCase 10y ago

> Without DRM, people will steal stuff without regard for the creators survival. Good thing we live in a world with DRM, where this doesn't happen.

gcp 10y ago

Ha, but the thing is, DRM makes it harder to pay for content, because it adds inconvenience and hence makes the content less attractive. This is especially true if there are free alternatives (pirating, ad-supported services) that don't have the downsides of DRM. And all DRM is defeatable, so pirating is always an alternative. The point is to make the acquisition and paying for content as smooth and buttery as possible, so it's easier to stream or buy from a legal service than it is to find a torrent with the right language and subtitles. This is understood by a large part of the industry (you don't see "anti rip" CDs any more), and many game publishers are only doing perfunctory DRM. But not by the movie studios, it seems.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jasonkostempski 10y ago
The most pleasant experience I've had paying for and consuming video in the past 15 years was Horace and Pete. Heard about it through an email subscription I voluntarily signed up for, bought the first episode for a few dollars (I used Amazon but there were several options including bitcoin), downloaded the DRM free MP4, watched it, liked it, bought the rest of the episodes, downloaded, watched, downloaded, watched... No previews, no ads, no proprietary viewer, no searching through huge lists of things I will never want to see. Even when there was an option to sign up for the newsletter, which I already had, it defaulted to something like "No, don't bother me ever again you fat looser". I have all the episodes on my main computer, backed up on an external drive and in Amazon Glacier (just in case of extreme loss). When my kids are older, I'm going to show it to them and I'll know right where to find it and what the experience will be like instead of wondering if it will still be available, ad free, through my mid-tier Disney Huflix subscription. Edit: Forgot to mention, I say past 15 years, because there was a brief moment in history where DVDs had a similar experience, the worst thing was maybe having to hit "Play". That was before "Disney FastPlay" which just gets to the ads faster, right after the 30 second explanation of "FastPlay".

ska 10y ago

It is disingenuous to pretend DRM is about funding content creators, it's really about corporate revenue, which is not at all the same thing. Content creators are and will continue to be treated as a cost to be minimized by these distributors. It is also disingenuous to suggest that DRM is equivalent to paying for content. They are related, but separate issues.

794CD01 10y ago
They are not separate in any meaningful way. From the perspective of content owners, they want DRM because they want to ensure people who consume their content have paid for it. From the perspective of consumers, those who want to circumvent DRM in order to avoid paying for content overwhelmingly outnumber those who oppose DRM on principle to the point that the voices, and more importantly, the money, of the latter are completely drowned out.
- ska 10y ago
  They absolutely are completely separable. DRM is one technological approach to enforcing a model on payment for content. There are other models, and other mechanisms to encourage payment or reduce non-payment. To pretend that DRM is unique, or in some way the natural approach is folly.
  - 794CD01 10y ago
    DRM is not the implementation or the technology, necessarily. Those who own copyright want to deny the ability to copy to others, because they fear it devalues what they have. That doesn't make it right, or natural, as if any of that even matters. It just means that a group of people exist who want to be able to enforce copyright. And the opposition to that is, by definition, those who want to be able to make copies of things without the blessing of copyright owners. If DRM were perfect, there wouldn't even be a technology- or freedom- based argument against it.
Noos 10y ago
You fund creators from corporate revenue, though. They aren't going to make any money if there is no DRM either. There also have been plenty of independent publishers and small studios that have been hurt by piracy and the lack of DRM, too.