21 ms·

The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013)

307 points by marcodiego 5y ago

zrm 5y ago
> The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices. That was what they thought it was for. Turns out it gives the creators of playback devices leverage against content providers, e.g. iOS App Store.
shmerl 5y ago
Indeed it's not. Its purpose is control and extending copyright law way beyond its indented use by making breaking DRM itself illegal and then slapping DRM on anything that requires that control.
anothernewdude 5y ago
It's actually a scheme by pirates to increase the relative worth of their offerings.
cute_boi 5y ago
Yea looks like DRM is way to make legit consumer life hard by not showing high quality video. But alas if they go to pirate site they can get 4k easily.
canistel 5y ago
Isn't the reason for widely used messaging/chat platforms not using open protocols also (roughly) the same?
kube-system 5y ago
I also don’t think it’s even necessary to prevent copyright infringement to achieve a goal of effectively steering people towards paid sources. I often hear arguments that its “easier to pirate movies than use DRM’d software”. But I don’t think this is actually the case for the average non-tech-savvy person. If you can operate a torrent client or even know what one is, you are much savvier than the average Netflix/Roku/etc user. DRM means that there isn’t a point-and-click app for my mom to send her sister a movie. This is the average person who buys movies. Not some geek on a tech forum.
- jayd16 5y ago
  If pirate sites were allowed to flourish, they'd surely end up feeling as good as Netflix or better.
  - consp 5y ago
    Popcorn time was/is pretty much the pinnacle of it so I'd say they got pretty close to being better than the streaming services.
    - zo1 5y ago
      I never actually used Popcorn Time. What made it so great?
      - juliendorra 5y ago
        It was as easy to use as an official streaming service is, with integrated subtitles downloads in the background (from open subtitles), links to trailers and critics sites (it also pulled a lot of metadata from different sources). Popular movies were always on top of the list because the default sorting was by seeders and these movies would load instantly At the time it was the best streaming experience existing, paid or free combined. [edit] oh and install was just dropping an all-in-one app somewhere on your computer and launch it.
        BlueTemplar 5y ago
        Why "was" ?
      - aspenmayer 5y ago
        Mostly the GUI, which is reminiscent of Netflix, and also the torrent client config. You hit play button on a video poster image, client sequentially downloads blocks of videos until the buffer outruns the download rate (this is the main difference from other clients which can’t/don’t download blocks sequentially), then it autoplays, pausing for more buffering if needed, with one click.
kingcharles 5y ago
All of that article is wrong. I used to work in DRM. I implemented, I believe, the first DRM for practically every major and minor record label in Europe and North America. The only reason any of them stated to me that they required DRM was to prevent copyright infringement. Yes, I pointed out the insanity of their solution. The firm I worked for didn't have the muscle of the one that came on our heels (Apple) and managed to temporarily remove DRM from music.
- shmerl 5y ago
  Stated intent ≠ real intent. I doubt they'll openly admit real crooked reasons behind it. That's besides simple stupidity of some possibly indeed thinking that DRM increases their sales.
  - DeWilde 5y ago
    Especially in large corporations where each level of the hierarchy lives in a bubble of sort, meaning that the people OP interacted might have actually believed it was to prevent piracy while the people in that corp some level above them had a different motive to getting DRM pushed.
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      We, as a company, interacted with people at every level of these labels. We had regular meetings all the way to the top. For the most part though, the staff were universally non-technical. They loved music, knew music, but their technical infrastructure was fairly limited. We had to rip CDs (250,000 of them) like everyone else because they didn't have any of their data in any easily accessible form. There was never any hint of any conspiracy or any other motivation than to limit piracy. They saw that DRM files could not be traded on Napster or any other file-sharing system du jour and that was all they wanted. Sales be damned.
      - shmerl 5y ago
        I guess sometimes lack of common sense is indeed the reason. But I suspect that's not the most widespread case. Here is an interesting related story: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree_movies/post499 https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree...
Uehreka 5y ago
So tonight I watched a 1080p pirated copy of Spiderman: Far From Home. And I gotta say, it was kinda crap. The sound would randomly cut out, and the compression was absolute ass (it was the perfect artifact to show people when explaining “not all 1080p’s are created equal”, especially when they’re fighting the water elemental) I really do think that DRM has won folks. We have seen the 4K HDR future, and what we find on torrent sites is the same aXXo “encoded to be burned to a CD-R” bullshit I used to download as a college student. We aren’t getting 4K, we’re not even really getting 1080p. Whatever the DRM people are doing, they have succeeded in creating a gulf in quality between what you get on a streaming service, and what you get via torrents.
- bobsmooth 5y ago
  There's a 4K bluray rip of that movie on TPB. Granted it's 10GB but maybe you're just downloading crappy torrents.
- jacksonkmarley 5y ago
  Sometimes I think it's the copyright holding companies spamming downloaders with these crappy versions to gaslight them into thinking the official versions are always better.
- ch17z 5y ago
  We?
- 14 5y ago
  Maybe for a high visual movie like spiderman but there are many movies that are fine watching in a lower quality. Also it just depends on the torrent that is available. I have seen screeners that were of high quality, mind you a couple scenes were missing the special effects but hardly took away from the video imo.
- NavinF 5y ago
  I’ve had the opposite experience: If you have a decent connection (1gbps), you can torrent the 50GB Blu-ray in 7 minutes instead of watching the 0.5GB stream on Netflix. The difference in bitrate/quality is massive during fast action sequences where the Netflix version splits into 100 puzzle pieces made of DCT blocks that don’t quite fit together. Oh and Netflix is one of the better sites when it comes to bitrate. Other streams are full of artifacts even when the camera is panning over a static scene.
phendrenad2 5y ago
Why the conspiracy theory? It works very well to stop piracy (since it's a hassle to have to pick a bottorrent program, install it, deal with it's annoying popups and ads (because you're a normal user and chose a popular bittorrent client), avoid the popups on the pirate bay, know what a magnet link it, find a player for .mkv files. It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. Anyone who disagrees hasn't tried to help their friends pirate things, or shut their eyes to the reality.
- danuker 5y ago
  > It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. Depends on the value of your time. If you get paid less in the amount it takes you to learn all that (like living in a 3rd world country), then it's not worth the $15.
  - tdsamardzhiev 5y ago
    The amount of time it takes to learn all that is like 15 minutes. And it's one-time investment.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. My local currency is currently exchanged for USD at a factor of nearly 6 to 1, making that $15 nearly 10% of minimum wage where I live. And that's before taxes.
- ddtaylor 5y ago
  There are all-in-one solutions like Popcorn Time that do everything for you automatically and simply provide a Netflix like browsing experience.
- DeWilde 5y ago
  Not really, the issue with pirated content isn't getting the content from the DRM protected sources, it is distributing it. What prevents distribution is taking down the sites that host content, leaving old-school torrenting as the most viable option, which is a hassle to most people.
jessaustin 5y ago
ISTM Hixie's own blog [0] would be a better link than a wayback reference to a G-funct service. [0] http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1363672582&count=1 http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1363672582&count=1
darawk 5y ago
This article is clickbait. The headline makes a bold claim, and then the article goes on to say: The purpose of DRM isn't to prevent copying, it's to prevent unlicensed reproduction. That is, it says 'copying' in different words, by trying to talk about things adjacent to copying, like forcing ads to play. Yes, content owners want to enforce all kinds of other things with DRM, but the fundamental thing is control of playback and distribution (aka copying).
- gbanfalvi 5y ago
  > then the article goes on to say: The purpose of DRM isn't to prevent copying, it's to prevent unlicensed reproduction. That is, it says 'copying' in different words, by trying to talk about things adjacent to copying, I don't see that at all in the article. Anywhere. What I read in the article is that it says that the purpose of DRM isn't to prevent _unlawful behaviour_, it's to enforce _lawful behaviour_ to be performed in a specific way. The actual _act_ of copying (or distribution, or playback, which are all a form of "copying", sure) is not as relevant to the author as the way that it is being done.
- jimmyearlcarter 5y ago
- NikolaNovak 5y ago
  I don't feel we ready the article the same way, interesting. Early in it makes a strong and specific claim : "The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices." This is explicitly stated and I believe a meaningful hypothesis to explore and base an article around. It frames the argument instead of just "creator vs pirates" as "one industry vs another" which is a sufficiently different ballgame. I found it quite in line with title.
  - darawk 5y ago
    > "The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices." What does this actually mean, though? What is it that the playback devices are doing that they don't want other than playing unauthorized material? Framing the problem as "it's not about copying, it's about unauthorized playback" is meaningless. That's just another word for copying in this context. They want control over when and how their IP is played. The word 'copying' has always been shorthand for this.
r_hoods_ghost 5y ago
There's a couple of problems with this analysis. 1) it only considers two of the three main actors in the DRM sphere - content "providers", by which the author seems to mean content distributors, and manufacturers of playback devices. It completely ignores why content creators, the people who actually make stuff, might want to use DRM. Yes sometimes these are the same entities as the content distributors. But not always. 2) it ascribes intent(purpose) to actors without examining what those actors say about their intent. The closest it gets is criticising the arguments of fellow opponents of DRM. This isn't even strawmanning. If you want to understand the purpose behind your opponent's acts its generally a good idea to look at the arguments of said opponents rather than the arguments of your allies. Ignoring 2, let's look at why content creators might want to use DRM, knowing that it can eventually be circumvented. If you're a content creator then delaying pirates by just a week or two can have a massive effect on your revenue. For example on steam roughly 1/4 to 1/2 of a games revenue for the first year will be earned in the first week[1]. The movie business and book publishing is similarly skewed to opening weekends. While sleeper hits and cult classics do exist they are the exception, not the rule. So from a content creator's (mine) point of view, the purpose of DRM is to delay pirates long enough to earn that crucial opening weekend or weeks revenue, and this continue eating. Creators know that pirates will likely crack the DRM at some point, and its not unusual to remove it after a time, since by that point it no longer matters. I frankly don't care a jot about some imagined power struggle between distributors and manufacturers. What I care about is being able to make a living. I know there will always be parasites who want everything for free despite being able to pay, and people who genuinely can't afford to pay for content (fair enough, but do you actually need a copy of generic superhero movie pt. XII to live a fulfilling life. No), and I accept that. But I don't have to make life easy for them. [1]https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/steam-the-state-of-long-tail-revenue https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/steam-the-state-of-long...
- Beldin 5y ago
  Your argument (the purpose of DRM is to delay pirates long enough to earn that crucial opening weekend or weeks revenue) is based on a few assumptions. A big one is that unlicensed downloading of creative works will meaningfully affect opening weekend revenue. I could go along with that argument for movies that have been available for weeks on download sites. But I don't see how DRM would prevent a film from leaking way before its release date. If that happens, I'd venture you have a different problem. For creative works with a longer "main revenue" window that are consumed on a computer (i.e. games), I can go along with this reasoning for top-priced titles. For games that are $15 on steam, dunno. Doesn't seem worth the effort to deprive the creator of some revenue, just to save 15 bucks. But what do I know, I don't make & sell games. E-books seem different yet again - but again, I don't write and sell ebooks. Except for a handful of well-known titles or titles receiving universal praise and prize considerations, I'd guess you'd be lucky to be noticed in the book market. I have no clue whether more popularity will drive sales more than downloads will cut into sales.
netcan 5y ago
>> The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices. This is a good spot to place the pin. The "theological" view is that (1) copyright is a moral right. (2) The Law just protects right against wrong, and(3) economic side effects of laws are incidental. Real life is a lot less naive, so to speak. The commercial intellectual property concerns at stake are are record labels, apps, stores/distributors, large music & film portfolios and such. These exist, don't exist, have huge potential or not depending largely on the IP/DRM legislation and enforcement environment. DRM is, IMO, an industrial policy. It gives shape and dimension to the music & film industry. Negotiating the leverage party type X has over Y is always a key feature of such policies.
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  My take: "The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices and their own consumers." How have I regretted purchasing Blu-Rays in the past. They require an update to the drive firmware, they require their own GPU driver version, they require an update to the player software, and they try to sneak spyware onto my PC anyway. It is almost impossible to legally watch an authentic blu-ray on a Windows PC. Similarly, how have I regretted allowing my TV to connect to the internet. The first thing that happened was that it started shoving ads into my face. So I did a factory reset and disconnected it. Now, Netflix and Prime TV are unusable. Plus the YouTube app never managed to play back 4K videos on a 4K TV without crashing. I don't quite know why they hate me so much, but whenever I try to be nice to movie companies and purchase their stuff, they treat me like shit. And DRM is their legal whip to fuck me over. Blu-Ray? doesn't work. DRM. Offline iTunes? doesn't work in 4K. DRM. Prime TV? mandatory internet for DRM. Then ads. Netflix? mandatory internet for DRM. Then ads. On the other hand, an mkv file on a USB stick "just works", has exceptional audio and video quality, doesn't buffer, and I can skip all the ads.
  - krylon 5y ago
    It has been like that for a long time. The non-skippable intro screen warning viewers of the evils of unlicensed copying was only ever seen by people not watching an unlicensed copy. FWIW, I think movies need to take the same route music did. Ever since I found out I could just buy DRM-free high-quality audio at a reasonable price, I have happily paid for the music I like, because it was so very convenient. If it was as convenient to legally buy copies of movies / TV shows, I'd be happy to spend some money for that.
kebos 5y ago
DRM is a requirement of the insurance providers who insure distributors and pay out if the distributor leads to the content being leaked. In reality the DRM technology isn't that important its more akin to the questionnaire you get for car insurance that says do you have a thatcham alarm. Too much analysis looks at this from technical angle when it's really an insurers tool to lower their risk (only to lower it!). It's not a big deal when a device/content is compromised merely a policy pays out in the background to the provider to the effect of % lost revenue. All normal insurance ruled apply, payout decided by expert witness, higher premiums for less secure devices etc.
- zucker42 5y ago
  > DRM is a requirement of the insurance providers who insure distributors and pay out if the distributor leads to the content being leaked. Do you have any evidence of such insurance policies existing? I've never heard of them before. It seems strange considering that most pieces of content are leaked fairly quickly.
  - kebos 5y ago
    The contracts and indemnity policies drawn up against the contract aren't public things so there is no example I can show. The leaking of content doesn't matter that much unless it really affects revenues in the scale of the revenues. It's ironic really. The absolute prevention of leaking content isn't expected. DRM is more like making sure the front door isn't wide open.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  But why does insurance require it?
johnebgd 5y ago
DRM manages rights like jail manages freedom.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
fleddr 5y ago
"The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices." Yes...and? The problem with this discussion is that it looks at this issue from one side only. It is kind of implied that content providers and creators are bad guys whilst us consumers are clearly the good guys, needlessly oppressed and restricted in our supposed "right" to consume all of the content in the world in the way we see fit. Maybe, just maybe, this leverage is a necessary evil to actually keep the lights on. If you look at Netflix, they deliver a tremendous amount of value whilst only recently becoming profitable. We're talking single digit billions, which sounds like a lot, but really isn't. Content costs a fortune to produce and is risky. As Netflix tries to monetize, yes they will experiment with arbitrary business models that can appear consumer-hostile. It may not make sense to you to pay more for using multiple screens. It is wrong to assume though that this "harm" is because Netflix enjoys harming you. It may simply be a model because other models fail. A very "fair" model would be entirely usage-based. You pay for how much you match as well as taking account the value of the content you watch (the production cost). This model would completely fail. It's a morally pure and fair concept, yet would be rejected by consumers. It just shows how neither party is interested in fairness or morality. Likewise, consumers normalize account sharing, VPN into low cost countries, and buy accounts from Alibaba. All to undermine the business model. Let's not kid ourselves as if we're doing this as part of some human rights struggle. We're just trying to get access to commercial entertainment in the cheapest way possible. We're in absolutely no position to preach or lecture.
- Skyy93 5y ago
  I think the problem is also the loss of control. I talked to someone today about this issue (for me its an issue) and this person did not even know what DRM is. If you do not know about something you can not build an opinion for or against it. Also you do not know if there is an alternative or another way. Therefore the dictation of hard- and software without the user really knowing whats going on is an actual issue. Content provider also do not want to inform their customer because perhapts they are no customers in the future if they know about their actual business process and monetizing.
  - fleddr 5y ago
progbits 5y ago
Off-topic but the archive.org page is unusable for me on mobile due to the donation banner: the close button is obscured by the timeline and can't be clicked, "maybe later" replaces it with a different banner asking for contact info which I also can't close. I love IA and have donated to them before but this is slowly sliding into the dark UX patterns making web unusable.
- hybrid1999 5y ago
  It works for me. I am using chrome on android
- alvarlagerlof 5y ago
  Same.
- grishka 5y ago
  That banner was annoying enough for me on desktop that I removed it with my ad blocker a while ago.
- IceWreck 5y ago
  > I love IA and have donated to them before but this is slowly sliding into the dark UX patterns making web unusable. This is ironic because the internet archive made this just last year https://wayforward.archive.org/ https://wayforward.archive.org/
- pmontra 5y ago
  No banner on Firefox Android. Maybe it's uBlock Origin. But I had to use reader mode to read the tiny non reflowing text.
- ziml77 5y ago
  It broke reader mode too. I got the text of the donation banner and nothing else. Had to zoom into the corner so I could tap the microscopic close button on the timeline so I could then close the donation banner.
- opan 5y ago
  Your description immediately reminded me of Wikipedia. It's a shame these good projects fall to these levels.
nathias 5y ago
DRM is a way to harvest the userbase for ekstra profit.
bni 5y ago
DRM currently works very well to prevent copying of PC games during initial sales window. There is a long list of not cracked Denuvo games. Some have been on the list for years. I think it is interesting that this is the case now since 5+ years ago games were cracked within days, always.
- cloogshicer 5y ago
  I think part of this change is just that there is such a high number of new games coming out every day. Also, with sales going on all the time, there is much less incentive for many people to torrent. It's also more convenient to own the game on Steam due to automatic updates, mods, etc. As Gabe Newell said, piracy is a service problem. Provide a better service and it'll go away. I think this is largely what has happened here. Same with streaming services like Netflix.
  - gruez 5y ago
    > I think part of this change is just that there is such a high number of new games coming out every day. The "high number of new games coming out every day" are overwhelmingly indie titles that don't use denuvo. It's not like crackers are being overwhelmed with hundreds of indie titles per year.
    - cloogshicer 5y ago
      That's a good counter point. Hadn't considered it. Thanks!
- bserge 5y ago
spankalee 5y ago
This is a post about NFTs right? NFTs are DRM 2.0, but without any current leverage against the "players". If there ever is such leverage (which in the article should be copyright as much as DRM), then it will be the players that enforce DRM, not the blockchain. Just like copyright doesn't enforce itself.
fallingknife 5y ago
I don't get how the DRM prevents a DVD player manufacturer from making a player that skips the "unskippable" ads. How does the content provider enforce that legally?
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otrahuevada 5y ago
The purpose of DRM is ultimately asserting the will of a couple corporate ghouls over your use of the thing they basically cheated you into renting. Which wouldn't even be a thing if intellectual property rights, which are at the core of the whole debate, were untransferable and only endured for the lifetime of the creator. If anyone were able to lobby those simple, clear changes into law, the effects of that would probably be Earth-altering.
- xhkkffbf 5y ago
  Sorry to be a bummer, but I make my living creating copyright protected material. DRM protects me and my livelihood. Yes, I often cut deals with the people you refer to as "corporate ghouls". While I often lament the terms, they aren't horrible. In the end, I make enough money to avoid searching for a job with other corporations trading in material goods. I would feel differently about the system if it weren't performing relatively well for most people. You say these ghouls "cheated" you into "renting" things. I'm not disputing the various philosophical sophistries that people use to complain about artificial scarcity etc. I just know that this evening, I"ll be able to get a nice movie that cost millions of dollars to make and spend only a few dollars to watch it in my living room. That only works when piracy doesn't.
  - qwytw 5y ago
    DRM for software or games (which is what I assume you're talking about) is hardly comparable with DRM for movies/tv shows, they serve a very different purpose. It's basically impossible to prevent users from copying video files so it has basically no effect on piracy rates or rather it can only increase due to the horrible UX.
  - otrahuevada 5y ago
    Your use of scare quotes on plain self-evident terms kinda makes me think this is going to be entirely pointless, but here goes nothing. Do you understand that your being more or less content with the results of a deal does not have a bearing on how good, or decent, or moral, the system overarching that deal is? Tons of people seem more or less into Nestlé products despite their long track record of profiting from slavery, do you believe that being the case makes agricultural slavery a good thing? On your last statement, how exactly do you think not paying for a thing you wouldn't pay for anyway prevents that thing from existing? Like, if I torrent "Superheroes in Body Gloves 27" instead of, you know, ignoring it, then a time travelling ghost will materialize in the set and kidnap the directors? Or how would that work
joshlemer 5y ago
This may be a good place to ask, where do you buy DRM-free ebooks? Amazon only sells "Kindle Edition" books which are DRM or a proprietary format. Same with Google Books and the Kobo store. There are independent publishers who publish content DRM-free like * https://www.manning.com/ https://www.manning.com/ * https://pragprog.com/ https://pragprog.com/ But is there something like Amazon which has a huge library of DRM-free ebooks for sale?
- whatch 5y ago
  This year I purchased a couple of amazing quality books directly from authors via gumroad.
kuharich 5y ago
Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751110 (May 15, 2014, 234 comments)
dbrueck 5y ago
I worked in the online media space for a long time, and the fact of the matter is that DRM enabled the era of networks putting their content online, it enabled Netflix, etc. - DRM was the only way to get past the liability gridlock between content owners and distributors. Also, in practice DRM is bad for users only when its presence causes friction in the legitimate viewing process. It has a bad rap because, historically, it has almost always caused a lot of friction for legitimate users. More fundamentally, DRM is a bandaid whose need arises from trying to apply traditional economic models (of buying and selling physical, tangible things) to digital assets that never wear out and cost /essentially/ nothing to duplicate and distribute. Even basic concepts of ownership and having possession of something don't really apply in the traditional way. If we could start from scratch, what might work is a purely use-based model, where e.g. every time you listen to a song, you pay a tiny, tiny fee for it. This creates a much stronger correlation between creators providing value and consumers deriving value from what they created, which in the long term makes more sense anyway. There are a lot of hurdles to getting there, though. On the consumer side, the concept of paying-means-owning is pretty ingrained, so we balk at the idea of continuing to pay for something after we already bought it. On the creator/provider side, the price for each use is going to seem far lower than what they think is fair, again for largely the same reason.
- viscountchocula 5y ago
  That wouldn't obviate the need for DRM, though, as there would still need to be a way for the content owner to be confident that players register each use. And we sort of have this use-based system now, but with unlimited uses per month of active subscription.
  - dbrueck 5y ago
    > That wouldn't obviate the need for DRM Yes and no. In order for the scheme to work, yes, you'd always need something that encourages people to play by the rules, but it would look very, very different from many of the DRM systems of today, whose focus is on shoring up the ill-fitting concepts of ownership and possession. For example, in today's DRM, it's typical to have mechanisms for granting a license to allow playing the media N times, or being able to play the media from startDate thru endDate. Most (all?) of that would go away. Ideally the new system would not have any noticeable friction for end-users, but as a practical matter, things can still work if we at least get to the point where the friction is significantly lower than just stealing it (much like today - if it's easy enough to just consume the media legitimately, for many people piracy just isn't worth the effort). > And we sort of have this use-based system now, but with unlimited uses per month of active subscription. It's definitely a partial step in that direction, yes, and I'm encouraged by the fact that I don't buy DVDs or music anymore because it shows consumers are being weaned off the concept of digital media ownership (and I hope the NFT fad dies out, because it runs counter to this). A couple of big hurdles that remain are (a) content distributors are still way too bent on gatekeeping and content control - for this to really work they are going to have to dial that back quite a bit, and (b) too little of the compensation is making it back to the content creators and/or the compensation is still often one or a few transactions (Bruce Springsteen recently sold the rights to all his music for half a billion dollars) instead of an ongoing compensation for as long as people are using it.
swagasaurus-rex 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole If your monitor displays it and your speakers play it, it can be recorded.

307 points by marcodiego 5y ago

zrm 5y ago

> The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices. That was what they thought it was for. Turns out it gives the creators of playback devices leverage against content providers, e.g. iOS App Store.

shmerl 5y ago

Indeed it's not. Its purpose is control and extending copyright law way beyond its indented use by making breaking DRM itself illegal and then slapping DRM on anything that requires that control.

anothernewdude 5y ago

It's actually a scheme by pirates to increase the relative worth of their offerings.

cute_boi 5y ago

Yea looks like DRM is way to make legit consumer life hard by not showing high quality video. But alas if they go to pirate site they can get 4k easily.

canistel 5y ago

Isn't the reason for widely used messaging/chat platforms not using open protocols also (roughly) the same?

kube-system 5y ago

I also don’t think it’s even necessary to prevent copyright infringement to achieve a goal of effectively steering people towards paid sources. I often hear arguments that its “easier to pirate movies than use DRM’d software”. But I don’t think this is actually the case for the average non-tech-savvy person. If you can operate a torrent client or even know what one is, you are much savvier than the average Netflix/Roku/etc user. DRM means that there isn’t a point-and-click app for my mom to send her sister a movie. This is the average person who buys movies. Not some geek on a tech forum.

jayd16 5y ago
If pirate sites were allowed to flourish, they'd surely end up feeling as good as Netflix or better.
- consp 5y ago
  Popcorn time was/is pretty much the pinnacle of it so I'd say they got pretty close to being better than the streaming services.
  - zo1 5y ago
    I never actually used Popcorn Time. What made it so great?
    - juliendorra 5y ago
      It was as easy to use as an official streaming service is, with integrated subtitles downloads in the background (from open subtitles), links to trailers and critics sites (it also pulled a lot of metadata from different sources). Popular movies were always on top of the list because the default sorting was by seeders and these movies would load instantly At the time it was the best streaming experience existing, paid or free combined. [edit] oh and install was just dropping an all-in-one app somewhere on your computer and launch it.
      - BlueTemplar 5y ago
        Why "was" ?
    - aspenmayer 5y ago
      Mostly the GUI, which is reminiscent of Netflix, and also the torrent client config. You hit play button on a video poster image, client sequentially downloads blocks of videos until the buffer outruns the download rate (this is the main difference from other clients which can’t/don’t download blocks sequentially), then it autoplays, pausing for more buffering if needed, with one click.

kingcharles 5y ago

All of that article is wrong. I used to work in DRM. I implemented, I believe, the first DRM for practically every major and minor record label in Europe and North America. The only reason any of them stated to me that they required DRM was to prevent copyright infringement. Yes, I pointed out the insanity of their solution. The firm I worked for didn't have the muscle of the one that came on our heels (Apple) and managed to temporarily remove DRM from music.

shmerl 5y ago
Stated intent ≠ real intent. I doubt they'll openly admit real crooked reasons behind it. That's besides simple stupidity of some possibly indeed thinking that DRM increases their sales.
- DeWilde 5y ago
  Especially in large corporations where each level of the hierarchy lives in a bubble of sort, meaning that the people OP interacted might have actually believed it was to prevent piracy while the people in that corp some level above them had a different motive to getting DRM pushed.
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    We, as a company, interacted with people at every level of these labels. We had regular meetings all the way to the top. For the most part though, the staff were universally non-technical. They loved music, knew music, but their technical infrastructure was fairly limited. We had to rip CDs (250,000 of them) like everyone else because they didn't have any of their data in any easily accessible form. There was never any hint of any conspiracy or any other motivation than to limit piracy. They saw that DRM files could not be traded on Napster or any other file-sharing system du jour and that was all they wanted. Sales be damned.
    - shmerl 5y ago
      I guess sometimes lack of common sense is indeed the reason. But I suspect that's not the most widespread case. Here is an interesting related story: https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree_movies/post499 https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree...

Uehreka 5y ago

So tonight I watched a 1080p pirated copy of Spiderman: Far From Home. And I gotta say, it was kinda crap. The sound would randomly cut out, and the compression was absolute ass (it was the perfect artifact to show people when explaining “not all 1080p’s are created equal”, especially when they’re fighting the water elemental) I really do think that DRM has won folks. We have seen the 4K HDR future, and what we find on torrent sites is the same aXXo “encoded to be burned to a CD-R” bullshit I used to download as a college student. We aren’t getting 4K, we’re not even really getting 1080p. Whatever the DRM people are doing, they have succeeded in creating a gulf in quality between what you get on a streaming service, and what you get via torrents.

bobsmooth 5y ago
There's a 4K bluray rip of that movie on TPB. Granted it's 10GB but maybe you're just downloading crappy torrents.
jacksonkmarley 5y ago
Sometimes I think it's the copyright holding companies spamming downloaders with these crappy versions to gaslight them into thinking the official versions are always better.
ch17z 5y ago
We?
14 5y ago
Maybe for a high visual movie like spiderman but there are many movies that are fine watching in a lower quality. Also it just depends on the torrent that is available. I have seen screeners that were of high quality, mind you a couple scenes were missing the special effects but hardly took away from the video imo.
NavinF 5y ago
I’ve had the opposite experience: If you have a decent connection (1gbps), you can torrent the 50GB Blu-ray in 7 minutes instead of watching the 0.5GB stream on Netflix. The difference in bitrate/quality is massive during fast action sequences where the Netflix version splits into 100 puzzle pieces made of DCT blocks that don’t quite fit together. Oh and Netflix is one of the better sites when it comes to bitrate. Other streams are full of artifacts even when the camera is panning over a static scene.

phendrenad2 5y ago

Why the conspiracy theory? It works very well to stop piracy (since it's a hassle to have to pick a bottorrent program, install it, deal with it's annoying popups and ads (because you're a normal user and chose a popular bittorrent client), avoid the popups on the pirate bay, know what a magnet link it, find a player for .mkv files. It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. Anyone who disagrees hasn't tried to help their friends pirate things, or shut their eyes to the reality.

danuker 5y ago
> It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. Depends on the value of your time. If you get paid less in the amount it takes you to learn all that (like living in a 3rd world country), then it's not worth the $15.
- tdsamardzhiev 5y ago
  The amount of time it takes to learn all that is like 15 minutes. And it's one-time investment.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. My local currency is currently exchanged for USD at a factor of nearly 6 to 1, making that $15 nearly 10% of minimum wage where I live. And that's before taxes.
ddtaylor 5y ago
There are all-in-one solutions like Popcorn Time that do everything for you automatically and simply provide a Netflix like browsing experience.
DeWilde 5y ago
Not really, the issue with pirated content isn't getting the content from the DRM protected sources, it is distributing it. What prevents distribution is taking down the sites that host content, leaving old-school torrenting as the most viable option, which is a hassle to most people.

jessaustin 5y ago

ISTM Hixie's own blog [0] would be a better link than a wayback reference to a G-funct service. [0] http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1363672582&count=1 http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1363672582&count=1

darawk 5y ago

This article is clickbait. The headline makes a bold claim, and then the article goes on to say: The purpose of DRM isn't to prevent copying, it's to prevent unlicensed reproduction. That is, it says 'copying' in different words, by trying to talk about things adjacent to copying, like forcing ads to play. Yes, content owners want to enforce all kinds of other things with DRM, but the fundamental thing is control of playback and distribution (aka copying).

gbanfalvi 5y ago
> then the article goes on to say: The purpose of DRM isn't to prevent copying, it's to prevent unlicensed reproduction. That is, it says 'copying' in different words, by trying to talk about things adjacent to copying, I don't see that at all in the article. Anywhere. What I read in the article is that it says that the purpose of DRM isn't to prevent _unlawful behaviour_, it's to enforce _lawful behaviour_ to be performed in a specific way. The actual _act_ of copying (or distribution, or playback, which are all a form of "copying", sure) is not as relevant to the author as the way that it is being done.
jimmyearlcarter 5y ago
NikolaNovak 5y ago
I don't feel we ready the article the same way, interesting. Early in it makes a strong and specific claim : "The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices." This is explicitly stated and I believe a meaningful hypothesis to explore and base an article around. It frames the argument instead of just "creator vs pirates" as "one industry vs another" which is a sufficiently different ballgame. I found it quite in line with title.
- darawk 5y ago
  > "The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices." What does this actually mean, though? What is it that the playback devices are doing that they don't want other than playing unauthorized material? Framing the problem as "it's not about copying, it's about unauthorized playback" is meaningless. That's just another word for copying in this context. They want control over when and how their IP is played. The word 'copying' has always been shorthand for this.

r_hoods_ghost 5y ago

There's a couple of problems with this analysis. 1) it only considers two of the three main actors in the DRM sphere - content "providers", by which the author seems to mean content distributors, and manufacturers of playback devices. It completely ignores why content creators, the people who actually make stuff, might want to use DRM. Yes sometimes these are the same entities as the content distributors. But not always. 2) it ascribes intent(purpose) to actors without examining what those actors say about their intent. The closest it gets is criticising the arguments of fellow opponents of DRM. This isn't even strawmanning. If you want to understand the purpose behind your opponent's acts its generally a good idea to look at the arguments of said opponents rather than the arguments of your allies. Ignoring 2, let's look at why content creators might want to use DRM, knowing that it can eventually be circumvented. If you're a content creator then delaying pirates by just a week or two can have a massive effect on your revenue. For example on steam roughly 1/4 to 1/2 of a games revenue for the first year will be earned in the first week[1]. The movie business and book publishing is similarly skewed to opening weekends. While sleeper hits and cult classics do exist they are the exception, not the rule. So from a content creator's (mine) point of view, the purpose of DRM is to delay pirates long enough to earn that crucial opening weekend or weeks revenue, and this continue eating. Creators know that pirates will likely crack the DRM at some point, and its not unusual to remove it after a time, since by that point it no longer matters. I frankly don't care a jot about some imagined power struggle between distributors and manufacturers. What I care about is being able to make a living. I know there will always be parasites who want everything for free despite being able to pay, and people who genuinely can't afford to pay for content (fair enough, but do you actually need a copy of generic superhero movie pt. XII to live a fulfilling life. No), and I accept that. But I don't have to make life easy for them. [1]https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/steam-the-state-of-long-tail-revenue https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/steam-the-state-of-long...

Beldin 5y ago
Your argument (the purpose of DRM is to delay pirates long enough to earn that crucial opening weekend or weeks revenue) is based on a few assumptions. A big one is that unlicensed downloading of creative works will meaningfully affect opening weekend revenue. I could go along with that argument for movies that have been available for weeks on download sites. But I don't see how DRM would prevent a film from leaking way before its release date. If that happens, I'd venture you have a different problem. For creative works with a longer "main revenue" window that are consumed on a computer (i.e. games), I can go along with this reasoning for top-priced titles. For games that are $15 on steam, dunno. Doesn't seem worth the effort to deprive the creator of some revenue, just to save 15 bucks. But what do I know, I don't make & sell games. E-books seem different yet again - but again, I don't write and sell ebooks. Except for a handful of well-known titles or titles receiving universal praise and prize considerations, I'd guess you'd be lucky to be noticed in the book market. I have no clue whether more popularity will drive sales more than downloads will cut into sales.

netcan 5y ago

>> The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices. This is a good spot to place the pin. The "theological" view is that (1) copyright is a moral right. (2) The Law just protects right against wrong, and(3) economic side effects of laws are incidental. Real life is a lot less naive, so to speak. The commercial intellectual property concerns at stake are are record labels, apps, stores/distributors, large music & film portfolios and such. These exist, don't exist, have huge potential or not depending largely on the IP/DRM legislation and enforcement environment. DRM is, IMO, an industrial policy. It gives shape and dimension to the music & film industry. Negotiating the leverage party type X has over Y is always a key feature of such policies.

fxtentacle 5y ago
My take: "The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices and their own consumers." How have I regretted purchasing Blu-Rays in the past. They require an update to the drive firmware, they require their own GPU driver version, they require an update to the player software, and they try to sneak spyware onto my PC anyway. It is almost impossible to legally watch an authentic blu-ray on a Windows PC. Similarly, how have I regretted allowing my TV to connect to the internet. The first thing that happened was that it started shoving ads into my face. So I did a factory reset and disconnected it. Now, Netflix and Prime TV are unusable. Plus the YouTube app never managed to play back 4K videos on a 4K TV without crashing. I don't quite know why they hate me so much, but whenever I try to be nice to movie companies and purchase their stuff, they treat me like shit. And DRM is their legal whip to fuck me over. Blu-Ray? doesn't work. DRM. Offline iTunes? doesn't work in 4K. DRM. Prime TV? mandatory internet for DRM. Then ads. Netflix? mandatory internet for DRM. Then ads. On the other hand, an mkv file on a USB stick "just works", has exceptional audio and video quality, doesn't buffer, and I can skip all the ads.
- krylon 5y ago
  It has been like that for a long time. The non-skippable intro screen warning viewers of the evils of unlicensed copying was only ever seen by people not watching an unlicensed copy. FWIW, I think movies need to take the same route music did. Ever since I found out I could just buy DRM-free high-quality audio at a reasonable price, I have happily paid for the music I like, because it was so very convenient. If it was as convenient to legally buy copies of movies / TV shows, I'd be happy to spend some money for that.

kebos 5y ago

DRM is a requirement of the insurance providers who insure distributors and pay out if the distributor leads to the content being leaked. In reality the DRM technology isn't that important its more akin to the questionnaire you get for car insurance that says do you have a thatcham alarm. Too much analysis looks at this from technical angle when it's really an insurers tool to lower their risk (only to lower it!). It's not a big deal when a device/content is compromised merely a policy pays out in the background to the provider to the effect of % lost revenue. All normal insurance ruled apply, payout decided by expert witness, higher premiums for less secure devices etc.

zucker42 5y ago
> DRM is a requirement of the insurance providers who insure distributors and pay out if the distributor leads to the content being leaked. Do you have any evidence of such insurance policies existing? I've never heard of them before. It seems strange considering that most pieces of content are leaked fairly quickly.
- kebos 5y ago
  The contracts and indemnity policies drawn up against the contract aren't public things so there is no example I can show. The leaking of content doesn't matter that much unless it really affects revenues in the scale of the revenues. It's ironic really. The absolute prevention of leaking content isn't expected. DRM is more like making sure the front door isn't wide open.
alisonkisk 5y ago
But why does insurance require it?

johnebgd 5y ago

DRM manages rights like jail manages freedom.

alisonkisk 5y ago

fleddr 5y ago

"The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices." Yes...and? The problem with this discussion is that it looks at this issue from one side only. It is kind of implied that content providers and creators are bad guys whilst us consumers are clearly the good guys, needlessly oppressed and restricted in our supposed "right" to consume all of the content in the world in the way we see fit. Maybe, just maybe, this leverage is a necessary evil to actually keep the lights on. If you look at Netflix, they deliver a tremendous amount of value whilst only recently becoming profitable. We're talking single digit billions, which sounds like a lot, but really isn't. Content costs a fortune to produce and is risky. As Netflix tries to monetize, yes they will experiment with arbitrary business models that can appear consumer-hostile. It may not make sense to you to pay more for using multiple screens. It is wrong to assume though that this "harm" is because Netflix enjoys harming you. It may simply be a model because other models fail. A very "fair" model would be entirely usage-based. You pay for how much you match as well as taking account the value of the content you watch (the production cost). This model would completely fail. It's a morally pure and fair concept, yet would be rejected by consumers. It just shows how neither party is interested in fairness or morality. Likewise, consumers normalize account sharing, VPN into low cost countries, and buy accounts from Alibaba. All to undermine the business model. Let's not kid ourselves as if we're doing this as part of some human rights struggle. We're just trying to get access to commercial entertainment in the cheapest way possible. We're in absolutely no position to preach or lecture.

Skyy93 5y ago
I think the problem is also the loss of control. I talked to someone today about this issue (for me its an issue) and this person did not even know what DRM is. If you do not know about something you can not build an opinion for or against it. Also you do not know if there is an alternative or another way. Therefore the dictation of hard- and software without the user really knowing whats going on is an actual issue. Content provider also do not want to inform their customer because perhapts they are no customers in the future if they know about their actual business process and monetizing.
- fleddr 5y ago

progbits 5y ago

Off-topic but the archive.org page is unusable for me on mobile due to the donation banner: the close button is obscured by the timeline and can't be clicked, "maybe later" replaces it with a different banner asking for contact info which I also can't close. I love IA and have donated to them before but this is slowly sliding into the dark UX patterns making web unusable.

hybrid1999 5y ago
It works for me. I am using chrome on android
alvarlagerlof 5y ago
Same.
grishka 5y ago
That banner was annoying enough for me on desktop that I removed it with my ad blocker a while ago.
IceWreck 5y ago
> I love IA and have donated to them before but this is slowly sliding into the dark UX patterns making web unusable. This is ironic because the internet archive made this just last year https://wayforward.archive.org/ https://wayforward.archive.org/
pmontra 5y ago
No banner on Firefox Android. Maybe it's uBlock Origin. But I had to use reader mode to read the tiny non reflowing text.
ziml77 5y ago
It broke reader mode too. I got the text of the donation banner and nothing else. Had to zoom into the corner so I could tap the microscopic close button on the timeline so I could then close the donation banner.
opan 5y ago
Your description immediately reminded me of Wikipedia. It's a shame these good projects fall to these levels.

nathias 5y ago

DRM is a way to harvest the userbase for ekstra profit.

bni 5y ago

DRM currently works very well to prevent copying of PC games during initial sales window. There is a long list of not cracked Denuvo games. Some have been on the list for years. I think it is interesting that this is the case now since 5+ years ago games were cracked within days, always.

cloogshicer 5y ago
I think part of this change is just that there is such a high number of new games coming out every day. Also, with sales going on all the time, there is much less incentive for many people to torrent. It's also more convenient to own the game on Steam due to automatic updates, mods, etc. As Gabe Newell said, piracy is a service problem. Provide a better service and it'll go away. I think this is largely what has happened here. Same with streaming services like Netflix.
- gruez 5y ago
  > I think part of this change is just that there is such a high number of new games coming out every day. The "high number of new games coming out every day" are overwhelmingly indie titles that don't use denuvo. It's not like crackers are being overwhelmed with hundreds of indie titles per year.
  - cloogshicer 5y ago
    That's a good counter point. Hadn't considered it. Thanks!
bserge 5y ago

spankalee 5y ago

This is a post about NFTs right? NFTs are DRM 2.0, but without any current leverage against the "players". If there ever is such leverage (which in the article should be copyright as much as DRM), then it will be the players that enforce DRM, not the blockchain. Just like copyright doesn't enforce itself.

fallingknife 5y ago

I don't get how the DRM prevents a DVD player manufacturer from making a player that skips the "unskippable" ads. How does the content provider enforce that legally?

deleted 5y ago

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otrahuevada 5y ago

The purpose of DRM is ultimately asserting the will of a couple corporate ghouls over your use of the thing they basically cheated you into renting. Which wouldn't even be a thing if intellectual property rights, which are at the core of the whole debate, were untransferable and only endured for the lifetime of the creator. If anyone were able to lobby those simple, clear changes into law, the effects of that would probably be Earth-altering.

xhkkffbf 5y ago
Sorry to be a bummer, but I make my living creating copyright protected material. DRM protects me and my livelihood. Yes, I often cut deals with the people you refer to as "corporate ghouls". While I often lament the terms, they aren't horrible. In the end, I make enough money to avoid searching for a job with other corporations trading in material goods. I would feel differently about the system if it weren't performing relatively well for most people. You say these ghouls "cheated" you into "renting" things. I'm not disputing the various philosophical sophistries that people use to complain about artificial scarcity etc. I just know that this evening, I"ll be able to get a nice movie that cost millions of dollars to make and spend only a few dollars to watch it in my living room. That only works when piracy doesn't.
- qwytw 5y ago
  DRM for software or games (which is what I assume you're talking about) is hardly comparable with DRM for movies/tv shows, they serve a very different purpose. It's basically impossible to prevent users from copying video files so it has basically no effect on piracy rates or rather it can only increase due to the horrible UX.
- otrahuevada 5y ago
  Your use of scare quotes on plain self-evident terms kinda makes me think this is going to be entirely pointless, but here goes nothing. Do you understand that your being more or less content with the results of a deal does not have a bearing on how good, or decent, or moral, the system overarching that deal is? Tons of people seem more or less into Nestlé products despite their long track record of profiting from slavery, do you believe that being the case makes agricultural slavery a good thing? On your last statement, how exactly do you think not paying for a thing you wouldn't pay for anyway prevents that thing from existing? Like, if I torrent "Superheroes in Body Gloves 27" instead of, you know, ignoring it, then a time travelling ghost will materialize in the set and kidnap the directors? Or how would that work

joshlemer 5y ago

This may be a good place to ask, where do you buy DRM-free ebooks? Amazon only sells "Kindle Edition" books which are DRM or a proprietary format. Same with Google Books and the Kobo store. There are independent publishers who publish content DRM-free like * https://www.manning.com/ https://www.manning.com/ * https://pragprog.com/ https://pragprog.com/ But is there something like Amazon which has a huge library of DRM-free ebooks for sale?

whatch 5y ago
This year I purchased a couple of amazing quality books directly from authors via gumroad.

kuharich 5y ago

Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7751110 (May 15, 2014, 234 comments)

dbrueck 5y ago

I worked in the online media space for a long time, and the fact of the matter is that DRM enabled the era of networks putting their content online, it enabled Netflix, etc. - DRM was the only way to get past the liability gridlock between content owners and distributors. Also, in practice DRM is bad for users only when its presence causes friction in the legitimate viewing process. It has a bad rap because, historically, it has almost always caused a lot of friction for legitimate users. More fundamentally, DRM is a bandaid whose need arises from trying to apply traditional economic models (of buying and selling physical, tangible things) to digital assets that never wear out and cost /essentially/ nothing to duplicate and distribute. Even basic concepts of ownership and having possession of something don't really apply in the traditional way. If we could start from scratch, what might work is a purely use-based model, where e.g. every time you listen to a song, you pay a tiny, tiny fee for it. This creates a much stronger correlation between creators providing value and consumers deriving value from what they created, which in the long term makes more sense anyway. There are a lot of hurdles to getting there, though. On the consumer side, the concept of paying-means-owning is pretty ingrained, so we balk at the idea of continuing to pay for something after we already bought it. On the creator/provider side, the price for each use is going to seem far lower than what they think is fair, again for largely the same reason.

viscountchocula 5y ago
That wouldn't obviate the need for DRM, though, as there would still need to be a way for the content owner to be confident that players register each use. And we sort of have this use-based system now, but with unlimited uses per month of active subscription.
- dbrueck 5y ago
  > That wouldn't obviate the need for DRM Yes and no. In order for the scheme to work, yes, you'd always need something that encourages people to play by the rules, but it would look very, very different from many of the DRM systems of today, whose focus is on shoring up the ill-fitting concepts of ownership and possession. For example, in today's DRM, it's typical to have mechanisms for granting a license to allow playing the media N times, or being able to play the media from startDate thru endDate. Most (all?) of that would go away. Ideally the new system would not have any noticeable friction for end-users, but as a practical matter, things can still work if we at least get to the point where the friction is significantly lower than just stealing it (much like today - if it's easy enough to just consume the media legitimately, for many people piracy just isn't worth the effort). > And we sort of have this use-based system now, but with unlimited uses per month of active subscription. It's definitely a partial step in that direction, yes, and I'm encouraged by the fact that I don't buy DVDs or music anymore because it shows consumers are being weaned off the concept of digital media ownership (and I hope the NFT fad dies out, because it runs counter to this). A couple of big hurdles that remain are (a) content distributors are still way too bent on gatekeeping and content control - for this to really work they are going to have to dial that back quite a bit, and (b) too little of the compensation is making it back to the content creators and/or the compensation is still often one or a few transactions (Bruce Springsteen recently sold the rights to all his music for half a billion dollars) instead of an ongoing compensation for as long as people are using it.

swagasaurus-rex 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole If your monitor displays it and your speakers play it, it can be recorded.