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> Who said anything about draconian measures? DRM is a draconian measure, by necessity. > Most modern DRM is almost completely transparent to legitimate users

> Who said anything about draconian measures? DRM is a draconian measure, by necessity. > Most modern DRM is almost completely transparent to legitimate users What do you mean by that and how is it relevant? > Do you believe that financial models other than a complete, permanent purchase of a copy of a work are useful? Maybe. > And if so, how would you propose to set up a realistic rental/library/PPV scheme for digital content without relying on anything that could be called DRM? By just leaving out the DRM?

Silhouette 9y ago
By just leaving out the DRM? I once thought as you do. Then I ran a business that invested significant money, some of it my own, in making original content. We really tried to avoid going down the DRM path, because I didn't like the idea of risking inconveniencing any legitimate customers. Today, in light of the experience doing that, I am much, much less sympathetic to claims that DRM doesn't do anything or should be abolished or whatever. The degree to which some people will just blatantly rip you off and even lie to your face about it afterwards is staggering. The arguments that if people are going to copy your stuff then they're going to get it somewhere else anyway so taking steps to make it harder have no benefits are simply wrong. There is nothing hypothetical about this. It is not conjecture or thought experiment. It is based on cold, hard data and experience with real money at risk. Incidentally, in the entire history of that business, as far as I'm aware we've never received a single complaint from a legitimate user that any of our safeguards was interfering with their normal enjoyment of the content. There have been one or two cases we couldn't absolutely prove but were pretty sure about, and otherwise basically 100% of people who complained about not being able to do something turned out to be trying to violate our terms and getting upset when our safeguards stopped them. BTW, in case you think we're just being paranoid, we have literally had people asking us why they couldn't access our material with well-known ripping software, to give one example of how blatant the abuse can be.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
  Well, as for your business I obviously can't tell whether it was a deserved market failure, but in the end, it mostly doesn't matter, because DRM is just such a fundamentally broken idea with so many negative externalities that it would be hard to find anything that I couldn't live without if it depended on DRM to exist. However, I wonder about this: > BTW, in case you think we're just being paranoid, we have literally had people asking us why they couldn't access our material with well-known ripping software, to give one example of how blatant the abuse can be. What exactly is abuse about this? I mean, I get from what you are saying that you don't like it, but how is it abusive to use some tool to convert some content that you paid for into a format/transfer it into an environment of your own choice that you want to use it in? If your terms said that you couldn't do that, I would rather consider your terms abusive.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    The business I mentioned didn't fail. We were just forced to become more aggressive about protecting our IP, and contrary to everyone telling me otherwise, that strategy was very obviously effective even with still a relatively light touch. Like A/B testing a web site and hitting on a simple change that bumps your conversions by 20%, even making something a little less convenient to rip and share can make quite a big difference. The objection to rippers is that we were effectively operating on a form of rental model. If someone is paying a lower price to rent your stuff, you can't let them rip all of it and keep it permanently anyway, and this was explicitly contrary to our terms. Obviously so was sharing it on major hosting services and even trying to monetize it, which sadly wasn't unheard of either.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      > The objection to rippers is that we were effectively operating on a form of rental model. If someone is paying a lower price to rent your stuff, you can't let them rip all of it and keep it permanently anyway, and this was explicitly contrary to our terms. Now, did they ask for help with how to keep it permanently or with ripping it to their own device? You are constantly confusing those. If I paid for some content rental, I sure as hell would expect that I can put a copy of it on my laptop to watch/listen/read while offline on the train, and I would expect support for that.

Silhouette 9y ago

By just leaving out the DRM? I once thought as you do. Then I ran a business that invested significant money, some of it my own, in making original content. We really tried to avoid going down the DRM path, because I didn't like the idea of risking inconveniencing any legitimate customers. Today, in light of the experience doing that, I am much, much less sympathetic to claims that DRM doesn't do anything or should be abolished or whatever. The degree to which some people will just blatantly rip you off and even lie to your face about it afterwards is staggering. The arguments that if people are going to copy your stuff then they're going to get it somewhere else anyway so taking steps to make it harder have no benefits are simply wrong. There is nothing hypothetical about this. It is not conjecture or thought experiment. It is based on cold, hard data and experience with real money at risk. Incidentally, in the entire history of that business, as far as I'm aware we've never received a single complaint from a legitimate user that any of our safeguards was interfering with their normal enjoyment of the content. There have been one or two cases we couldn't absolutely prove but were pretty sure about, and otherwise basically 100% of people who complained about not being able to do something turned out to be trying to violate our terms and getting upset when our safeguards stopped them. BTW, in case you think we're just being paranoid, we have literally had people asking us why they couldn't access our material with well-known ripping software, to give one example of how blatant the abuse can be.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
Well, as for your business I obviously can't tell whether it was a deserved market failure, but in the end, it mostly doesn't matter, because DRM is just such a fundamentally broken idea with so many negative externalities that it would be hard to find anything that I couldn't live without if it depended on DRM to exist. However, I wonder about this: > BTW, in case you think we're just being paranoid, we have literally had people asking us why they couldn't access our material with well-known ripping software, to give one example of how blatant the abuse can be. What exactly is abuse about this? I mean, I get from what you are saying that you don't like it, but how is it abusive to use some tool to convert some content that you paid for into a format/transfer it into an environment of your own choice that you want to use it in? If your terms said that you couldn't do that, I would rather consider your terms abusive.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  The business I mentioned didn't fail. We were just forced to become more aggressive about protecting our IP, and contrary to everyone telling me otherwise, that strategy was very obviously effective even with still a relatively light touch. Like A/B testing a web site and hitting on a simple change that bumps your conversions by 20%, even making something a little less convenient to rip and share can make quite a big difference. The objection to rippers is that we were effectively operating on a form of rental model. If someone is paying a lower price to rent your stuff, you can't let them rip all of it and keep it permanently anyway, and this was explicitly contrary to our terms. Obviously so was sharing it on major hosting services and even trying to monetize it, which sadly wasn't unheard of either.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    > The objection to rippers is that we were effectively operating on a form of rental model. If someone is paying a lower price to rent your stuff, you can't let them rip all of it and keep it permanently anyway, and this was explicitly contrary to our terms. Now, did they ask for help with how to keep it permanently or with ripping it to their own device? You are constantly confusing those. If I paid for some content rental, I sure as hell would expect that I can put a copy of it on my laptop to watch/listen/read while offline on the train, and I would expect support for that.