4 ms·
The really horrible truth is, DRM was probably never intended to prevent piracy. I used to think this - then you realise what DRM is actually intended to do. So
by hlandau 8y ago
The really horrible truth is, DRM was probably never intended to prevent piracy. I used to think this - then you realise what DRM is actually intended to do. So long as we argue like this, we're not confronting the real motives.
There seem to be two arguments for DRM which could be considered logical from an executive's perspective (even if in my view unethical):
- Firstly, it delays the initial piracy of new releases. This is very variable and since new DRM systems aren't created as often as new films, this only seems to be successfully pulled off every now and then... but there have demonstrably been cases of it delaying piracy by a few weeks (hell, there's at least one video game which wasn't cracked for over a year). This probably feels valuable to executives who expect the bulk of returns on a film or video game to come immediately after release (especially if they have unrealistic expectations about correlations between piracy and lost sales).
- Secondly, and more significantly, it ensures that media companies can control how content is consumed, and control the devices available to consume content. If you want to make a Blu-ray player, you have to sign contracts, and those contracts can tell you what functionality to add and what not to add. "Unauthorized" players, circumvention technology will always exist for the fringes, but that's too minor to care about. What it does mean - in tandem with the anticircumvention technology ban legislation, 17 USC 1202 - is that you can't walk into a retail chain store and buy a Blu-ray player that'll happily make copies, or so on. Most likely this is what these companies really care about - ensuring they have a say on what Homer Simpson has to choose from in Best Buy.
To be clear, I unequivocally oppose DRM; but I suspect the above points are a closer approximation of the motives of the media industry in pushing it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Angostura 8y agoRegardless of how effective DRM is, don't forget it was an absolute requirement that Apple had to agree to implement in order to get the iTunes Store open, that Netflix et al had to follow in order to get up and running with agreement from the studios. DRM enabled a huge number of online businesses by providing content makers with the minimal assurances that they needed that those channels wouldn't be a simple, easy way for their content to be pirated.
- bscphil 8y agoThe irony, of course, is that both of them (and Amazon as well) are simple, easy ways for content to be pirated. Pirates have broken the DRM of all three sufficiently that the original bitstream from each source can be muxed into a mkv and shared - it doesn't even need to be reencoded.
- vesinisa 8y agoMoreover, DRM enables content industry to control where content can be played, known as geoblocking. For example, I live in North Europe, and the titles that are available in 'official', DRM-controlled sources, such as Netflix, are noticeably different than in North America. Maybe Netflix only has distribution rights for some title in the US market, so when I try to look it up the search comes back empty. What DRM allows Netflix is to still sell one and the same subscription globally. The content you can view is not tied to your account's registered post address or such, but which physical region of the Internet you are actually accessing the service from currently. When we were visiting the US, my spouse was able to play titles with her Netflix subscription that are not available at home, because she was connecting to the US DRM servers from the WiFi of our Airbnb in California. For our flight home, she put her phone in flight mode and was able to watch cached titles during the flight. But as soon as she turned on her data in Europe, the titles magically disappeared in thin air, as the EU DRM server realized the geoblocking violation and revoked her license to those titles.
- bubblethink 8y agoGeoblocking is entirely different from DRM. The former is a simple transaction of "Show me your IP" -> "You can't have this". DRM is a far more complicated thing that needs cooperation from all levels of the stack to enable, "Your computer can see this, but you, the user, can't".
- seba_dos1 8y agoWell, in some cases DRM allows you to geoblock stuff that couldn't be easily geoblocked otherwise.
- vesinisa 8y agoYes, but combining DRM and geoblocking allows the content distributor to retroactively revoke access to content when you change the geoblocking region, such as traveling to another continent. Even content that you have downloaded to an offline cache can be rendered unavailable. From the distributor's point of view combining the two offers an enhanced form of geoblocking that transcends time.
- Qub3d 8y agoAs Always, a Relevant XKCD about DHCP: https://xkcd.com/129/ https://xkcd.com/129/ (Free Culture, as Randall notes in the mouseover text, warned us about this over 10 years ago)