5 ms·

>DRM punishes paying customers and does nothing to stop piracy. Media companies aren't stupid. They know exactly how much DRM and piracy impact their bottom li

>DRM punishes paying customers and does nothing to stop piracy. Media companies aren't stupid. They know exactly how much DRM and piracy impact their bottom line. That's why DRM-free distribution is a non-starter for virtually every media company, because it saves them money. Like all things dealing with bad actors, DRM isn't about stopping behavior. It's about slowing it down and making it more cumbersome

everyone 7y ago
"Media companies aren't stupid. They know exactly how much DRM and piracy impact their bottom line." Citation needed.
catalogia 7y ago
They may not be stupid, but that doesn't mean they're totally rational either (that would be inhuman and I can assure you they're just as human as the rest of us.) Most of these media companies have never even tried no-DRM so a fully rational appraisal of the value of DRM simply isn't possible for them. The music industry largely went no-DRM (and streaming) and they were totally unscathed. A good quality mp3 or flac file is what, tens of megabytes at most? Really easy to pirate. A good quality 4k rip is going to be tens of gigabytes. Pirating something that large is a hassle for me but inconceivable for some of my friends or family members. Pirating movies and TV shows has always been more niche than pirating music. And the formats easiest to pirate (720p, low bitrate, etc) are the formats being given the lightest DRM. I wager there are some very human emotions involved in the decision making, namely pride and possessiveness. "We made this so we get to control it." The effectiveness of the DRM takes a backseat.
- jowsie 7y ago
  A good quality (for your average media consumer) 4k rip can be as low as 8gb. Sure it's not blu-ray quality but neither is Netflix, and no one cares. At least where I live, you're looking at 5-15 minutes to download a 4k rip on the average home connection. This is also completely ignoring pirate streaming sites, that while not as popular as they used to be, still exist and are lower friction than Netflix half the time. I'd wager I know more people pirating films/tv than I do music.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    Those pirate streaming sites are such a nightmare of ads and malware, I find it hard to believe many consumers prefer it to legal streaming. The reason somebody would use that is because they can't afford the legal streaming service, or legal streaming isn't an option at all. This has nothing to do with DRM. And why do they use those shady pirate streaming sites, instead of pirate torrents of higher quality? It's because many of them struggle to find even 8GB of free space. I know some users who view deleting files to free up space to save new files as part of their daily routine. It doesn't need to be this way, but that's the way it currently seems to be.
xzel 7y ago
Early streaming services didn't own their own content but DRM is/was a requirement for most content contracts. I don't totally buy this argument and I think everyone knows its doesn't do much to stop piracy but its just a part of the process now.
SifJar 7y ago
> That's why DRM-free distribution is a non-starter for virtually every media company, because it saves them money. Why is it saving them money a bad thing?

everyone 7y ago

"Media companies aren't stupid. They know exactly how much DRM and piracy impact their bottom line." Citation needed.

catalogia 7y ago

They may not be stupid, but that doesn't mean they're totally rational either (that would be inhuman and I can assure you they're just as human as the rest of us.) Most of these media companies have never even tried no-DRM so a fully rational appraisal of the value of DRM simply isn't possible for them. The music industry largely went no-DRM (and streaming) and they were totally unscathed. A good quality mp3 or flac file is what, tens of megabytes at most? Really easy to pirate. A good quality 4k rip is going to be tens of gigabytes. Pirating something that large is a hassle for me but inconceivable for some of my friends or family members. Pirating movies and TV shows has always been more niche than pirating music. And the formats easiest to pirate (720p, low bitrate, etc) are the formats being given the lightest DRM. I wager there are some very human emotions involved in the decision making, namely pride and possessiveness. "We made this so we get to control it." The effectiveness of the DRM takes a backseat.

jowsie 7y ago
A good quality (for your average media consumer) 4k rip can be as low as 8gb. Sure it's not blu-ray quality but neither is Netflix, and no one cares. At least where I live, you're looking at 5-15 minutes to download a 4k rip on the average home connection. This is also completely ignoring pirate streaming sites, that while not as popular as they used to be, still exist and are lower friction than Netflix half the time. I'd wager I know more people pirating films/tv than I do music.
- catalogia 7y ago
  Those pirate streaming sites are such a nightmare of ads and malware, I find it hard to believe many consumers prefer it to legal streaming. The reason somebody would use that is because they can't afford the legal streaming service, or legal streaming isn't an option at all. This has nothing to do with DRM. And why do they use those shady pirate streaming sites, instead of pirate torrents of higher quality? It's because many of them struggle to find even 8GB of free space. I know some users who view deleting files to free up space to save new files as part of their daily routine. It doesn't need to be this way, but that's the way it currently seems to be.

xzel 7y ago

Early streaming services didn't own their own content but DRM is/was a requirement for most content contracts. I don't totally buy this argument and I think everyone knows its doesn't do much to stop piracy but its just a part of the process now.

SifJar 7y ago

> That's why DRM-free distribution is a non-starter for virtually every media company, because it saves them money. Why is it saving them money a bad thing?