6 ms·

> ...by their support for DRM I'm going to be Devil's advocate here and say that DRM ostensibly protects the IP of content originators who I think we'd agree s

> ...by their support for DRM I'm going to be Devil's advocate here and say that DRM ostensibly protects the IP of content originators who I think we'd agree should be rewarded for investing in or creating that content. Perhaps you have some other scheme or perspective on how content originators/creators can/could/should monetize their IP without DRM? Genuinely curious what alternative schemes are viable for protecting and rewarding content creators. (Yes; let's all acknowledge that even with DRM, pirating still exists)

IgorPartola 4y ago
As far as I can tell, piracy exists for exactly two reasons: 1. Content is priced way the fuck higher than market value. 2. Content is so encumbered that it is difficult to even get it or use it. The way I see it is that #1 is not a problem for content creators. It is relatively rare compared to people buying content and the person who would rather download an episode of The Office rather than paying Apple $1.99 for it was unlikely to pay if that was the only option in the first place. Their alternative to piracy isn’t to spend the money. It’s to watch something else. As for #2, it is a self-inflicted wound. There was a time when the 6th Harry Potter movie was about to come out in theaters. I wanted to do a marathon watch of the first 5 movies with my family. I had the first 4 on DVD and wanted to buy the 5th. I checked all streaming services and none had it. In fact it appeared that some removed it a month prior. I then called several nearby stores and all were sold out. A store 20 miles away had a copy for $40. After spending nearly an hour to find this out, I spent 5 minutes downloading it off a torrent site. Maybe indestructible your content will net you more money even if you have some of your content pirated.
- CharlieDigital 4y ago
  Are either of these true? For $17/mo, I can access an endless stream of content on Netflix. This is way cheaper than I remember my cable subscriptions used to be (if we consider the cost of Internet access as fixed in either case). Verizon is even offering to throw in Hulu, Disney+, and a bunch of other streaming services "free" if I switch to FIOS + mobile. I can watch Netflix on my phone, tablet, PC, TV, Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV. I can watch any show, any time I want, as many seasons and episodes as I want. 24x7x365. Is it really encumbered? Aside from IP owners walling off their services, content -- as long as you pay for it -- flows more freely now than ever, IMO. If I go to an Airbnb, I can log into my Netflix account and watch all of my shows. I can log into my Amazon account and watch all of my purchased movies. (Just don't forget to log out!) Yes; I can't watch it offline or if I'm in a location with poor Internet speeds. But that is such a small fraction of my time that it hardly registers. Yes; my right to view content I've paid for can be revoked in some circumstance I'm sure, but it's never once happened to me.
  - ChuckMcM 4y ago
    Yes, and NetFlix is a great example. Prior to the existence of NetFlix video piracy was extensive and widespread, once NetFlix appeared that piracy was greatly reduced as the "value" was there (it was more convenient to pay NetFlix than to figure out how to pirate stuff). It won't be "zero" of course but it was effective enough that content companies have emphasized that model over encrypted optical media.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    > For $17/mo, I can access an endless stream of content on Netflix. $17/month for netflix is great when you have an income. As a poor student, that’s $17 I can save.
    - Shaanie 4y ago
      Then pay $9.99 for Netflix Basic or $6.99 and deal with ads. If you can't afford that then there's basically no price point that makes sense because you're simply not willing or able to pay for entertainment.
      - Aeolun 4y ago
        Exactly, or I can have it for free on my university T3 connection, and still keep up with popular culture. Part of the problem is that it’s not ‘content’ that you want to subscribe to, but ‘specific content’, which might be spread around 3-4 different services that all want that sweet sweet monthly fee.
  - IgorPartola 4y ago
    Dollars to donuts, I bet content available on Netflix is pirated a lot less than content that is not. Gel restrictions, content contractors expiring, not being able to watch it on a plane, etc. all do contribute, but Netflix is fairly priced for what it has (which is far from everything) and fairly easily available.
  - stonogo 4y ago
    Yes, it's encumbered. You are beholden, across all of your examples, to binary compatibility of a .so file Google refuses to distribute for any platform except x86_64 and 32-bit ARM. The fact that you have a lot of such devices does nothing for the people who want to either consume the content on other devices or develop new devices for the purpose. Much like DVD region locking, the majority of the population doesn't care, and those who do are capable of overcoming the DRM anyway, but the latter is illegal, and leaves no room at all for people who want to comply with the law but not with Google's device mandates.
- ChuckMcM 4y ago
  Both of these points have been repeatedly proven in the marketplace.
- mehh 4y ago
  So in no part is piracy also because some people like to get things without paying … come on let’s be honest!
  - IgorPartola 4y ago
    Sure, but I believe it is a very small percentage of people who pirate content (which is a small fraction of people who consume content). Most people are happy to pay and not think about it. Majority of those who aren’t, pirate for the above reasons. A small percentage pirate because of other reasons. I know someone who just wants to have copies of all movies and TV shows. He spends way more effort on keeping up his storage array and downloading things then he does enjoying the movies. But for every one of him there are 10,000 regular paying consumers. Is he worth worrying about?
bobajeff 4y ago
DRM, especially the kind used in browsers, is cracked all the time. So the claim that it 'protects IP' is false. It mainly just adds a barrier to creating compatible competing browsers/players. Edit: Here's a worthy read for the topic: https://web.archive.org/web/20140906214521/https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2 https://web.archive.org/web/20140906214521/https://plus.goog...
- CharlieDigital 4y ago
  I already acknowledged this; there's no such thing as perfect DRM and there can never be. There are a million and one ways to copy content, DRM be damned. But for the majority of users, there is a balance between inconvenience, quality, and cost that DRM tips the balance just enough for a part of the market.
  - EMIRELADERO 4y ago
    The problem is that DRM only has to fail/be cracked once for every piece of media. If users who wanted to pirate something had to crack the DRM every single time, I'd be with you. But that doesn't happen. Instead, scene groups crack them and upload the media on torrent sites and the like, then it's just like any other pirated piece of content. In terms of convenience DRM doesn't change a thing, because from the consumer's perspective it's all there on a torrent site, there's no way to even know if something had DRM unless you look it up specifically.
    - CharlieDigital 4y ago
      Online games include anti-cheat software. I'd argue that this is also "anti-consumer" because it forces me -- a non-cheater -- to install monitoring software. Not only that, despite this anti-cheat software, there are still cheaters in every online game! Do you take the same view that game developers should just abandon anti-cheat because it can be cracked? Should online games just abandon anti-cheat schemes? Would that be a better experience for the gamers and the developers/publishers if we just abandoned anti-cheat because it's not perfect and there are always cheaters?
mort96 4y ago
I do not care. Even if DRM was magic and perfectly prevented piracy, it's not appropriate in the web. We're in a situation where it's intentionally impossible to write an open-source browser which can render any standard web page. That's not an acceptable state of affairs. EDIT: Wow, I didn't expect "it should be legal to make an open source web browser which can render any standard web page" to be so controversial. I'm disappointed.
- charcircuit 4y ago
  DRM is only unable on audio and video tags. You can still render the rest of the page. Often sites will gracefully fallback onto a lower quality version of the content if you don't support DRM. You could also just use widevine from your open source browser to play it.
  - mort96 4y ago
    I'm not sure why you are telling me this. It is correct (aside from typos), but doesn't affect what I said. FYI, widevine is not open source.
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      Widevine isn't a browser. Similarly running GNU bash on Windows doesn't suddenly make GNU bash no longer open source even though it is calling out to closed source code.
      - mort96 4y ago
        An open source browser can not render standard web pages. A browser can either be open source and unable to render DRM content, or it can contain closed-source components and be able to render DRM content. Firefox + Widevine is the second kind, Firefox without Widevine is the first kind. It is illegal to make a fully open source browser which can render any standard web page.
  - nerdbert 4y ago
throw10920 4y ago
FWIW, you can make a reasonable argument that DRM as it currently exists is not about protecting IP of content creators, but instead "giving content providers leverage against the creators of playback devices"[1]. To be sure, both reasons contribute, but the latter isn't a good one, and you can argue that W3C indirectly supported it (although, I don't understand why it's preferable for DRM to be implemented through entirely non-standard protocol as opposed to having the W3C make something of a standard for it). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709939
LarryMullins 4y ago
> DRM ostensibly protects the IP Ostensibly is doing a lot of work here because it literally does not. I can torrent any show or movie that is otherwise being streamed with DRM. DRM is a complete farce that serves no actual purpose but to make idiotic media executives happy.
- conradev 4y ago
  It's a little strong to say it "literally does not" when I cannot break L1 Widevine, which uses the W3C's APIs You might be able to torrent any show or movie in high quality with a private tracker, but it's hard to come by 4K HDR content just hanging out for free these days.
  - TheNorthman 4y ago
    > You might be able to torrent any show or movie in high quality with a private tracker, but it's hard to come by 4K HDR content just hanging out for free these days. Even if that's the case, that's not an issue of DRM, that's an issue of distribution. It's also just flat out not true. Sure, some of the 4k HDR content might originate from PTP/BTN/scene/w.e., but it's readily available on e.g. RARBG.

IgorPartola 4y ago

As far as I can tell, piracy exists for exactly two reasons: 1. Content is priced way the fuck higher than market value. 2. Content is so encumbered that it is difficult to even get it or use it. The way I see it is that #1 is not a problem for content creators. It is relatively rare compared to people buying content and the person who would rather download an episode of The Office rather than paying Apple $1.99 for it was unlikely to pay if that was the only option in the first place. Their alternative to piracy isn’t to spend the money. It’s to watch something else. As for #2, it is a self-inflicted wound. There was a time when the 6th Harry Potter movie was about to come out in theaters. I wanted to do a marathon watch of the first 5 movies with my family. I had the first 4 on DVD and wanted to buy the 5th. I checked all streaming services and none had it. In fact it appeared that some removed it a month prior. I then called several nearby stores and all were sold out. A store 20 miles away had a copy for $40. After spending nearly an hour to find this out, I spent 5 minutes downloading it off a torrent site. Maybe indestructible your content will net you more money even if you have some of your content pirated.

CharlieDigital 4y ago
Are either of these true? For $17/mo, I can access an endless stream of content on Netflix. This is way cheaper than I remember my cable subscriptions used to be (if we consider the cost of Internet access as fixed in either case). Verizon is even offering to throw in Hulu, Disney+, and a bunch of other streaming services "free" if I switch to FIOS + mobile. I can watch Netflix on my phone, tablet, PC, TV, Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV. I can watch any show, any time I want, as many seasons and episodes as I want. 24x7x365. Is it really encumbered? Aside from IP owners walling off their services, content -- as long as you pay for it -- flows more freely now than ever, IMO. If I go to an Airbnb, I can log into my Netflix account and watch all of my shows. I can log into my Amazon account and watch all of my purchased movies. (Just don't forget to log out!) Yes; I can't watch it offline or if I'm in a location with poor Internet speeds. But that is such a small fraction of my time that it hardly registers. Yes; my right to view content I've paid for can be revoked in some circumstance I'm sure, but it's never once happened to me.
- ChuckMcM 4y ago
  Yes, and NetFlix is a great example. Prior to the existence of NetFlix video piracy was extensive and widespread, once NetFlix appeared that piracy was greatly reduced as the "value" was there (it was more convenient to pay NetFlix than to figure out how to pirate stuff). It won't be "zero" of course but it was effective enough that content companies have emphasized that model over encrypted optical media.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > For $17/mo, I can access an endless stream of content on Netflix. $17/month for netflix is great when you have an income. As a poor student, that’s $17 I can save.
  - Shaanie 4y ago
    Then pay $9.99 for Netflix Basic or $6.99 and deal with ads. If you can't afford that then there's basically no price point that makes sense because you're simply not willing or able to pay for entertainment.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      Exactly, or I can have it for free on my university T3 connection, and still keep up with popular culture. Part of the problem is that it’s not ‘content’ that you want to subscribe to, but ‘specific content’, which might be spread around 3-4 different services that all want that sweet sweet monthly fee.
- IgorPartola 4y ago
  Dollars to donuts, I bet content available on Netflix is pirated a lot less than content that is not. Gel restrictions, content contractors expiring, not being able to watch it on a plane, etc. all do contribute, but Netflix is fairly priced for what it has (which is far from everything) and fairly easily available.
- stonogo 4y ago
  Yes, it's encumbered. You are beholden, across all of your examples, to binary compatibility of a .so file Google refuses to distribute for any platform except x86_64 and 32-bit ARM. The fact that you have a lot of such devices does nothing for the people who want to either consume the content on other devices or develop new devices for the purpose. Much like DVD region locking, the majority of the population doesn't care, and those who do are capable of overcoming the DRM anyway, but the latter is illegal, and leaves no room at all for people who want to comply with the law but not with Google's device mandates.
ChuckMcM 4y ago
Both of these points have been repeatedly proven in the marketplace.
mehh 4y ago
So in no part is piracy also because some people like to get things without paying … come on let’s be honest!
- IgorPartola 4y ago
  Sure, but I believe it is a very small percentage of people who pirate content (which is a small fraction of people who consume content). Most people are happy to pay and not think about it. Majority of those who aren’t, pirate for the above reasons. A small percentage pirate because of other reasons. I know someone who just wants to have copies of all movies and TV shows. He spends way more effort on keeping up his storage array and downloading things then he does enjoying the movies. But for every one of him there are 10,000 regular paying consumers. Is he worth worrying about?

bobajeff 4y ago

DRM, especially the kind used in browsers, is cracked all the time. So the claim that it 'protects IP' is false. It mainly just adds a barrier to creating compatible competing browsers/players. Edit: Here's a worthy read for the topic: https://web.archive.org/web/20140906214521/https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2 https://web.archive.org/web/20140906214521/https://plus.goog...

CharlieDigital 4y ago
I already acknowledged this; there's no such thing as perfect DRM and there can never be. There are a million and one ways to copy content, DRM be damned. But for the majority of users, there is a balance between inconvenience, quality, and cost that DRM tips the balance just enough for a part of the market.
- EMIRELADERO 4y ago
  The problem is that DRM only has to fail/be cracked once for every piece of media. If users who wanted to pirate something had to crack the DRM every single time, I'd be with you. But that doesn't happen. Instead, scene groups crack them and upload the media on torrent sites and the like, then it's just like any other pirated piece of content. In terms of convenience DRM doesn't change a thing, because from the consumer's perspective it's all there on a torrent site, there's no way to even know if something had DRM unless you look it up specifically.
  - CharlieDigital 4y ago
    Online games include anti-cheat software. I'd argue that this is also "anti-consumer" because it forces me -- a non-cheater -- to install monitoring software. Not only that, despite this anti-cheat software, there are still cheaters in every online game! Do you take the same view that game developers should just abandon anti-cheat because it can be cracked? Should online games just abandon anti-cheat schemes? Would that be a better experience for the gamers and the developers/publishers if we just abandoned anti-cheat because it's not perfect and there are always cheaters?

mort96 4y ago

I do not care. Even if DRM was magic and perfectly prevented piracy, it's not appropriate in the web. We're in a situation where it's intentionally impossible to write an open-source browser which can render any standard web page. That's not an acceptable state of affairs. EDIT: Wow, I didn't expect "it should be legal to make an open source web browser which can render any standard web page" to be so controversial. I'm disappointed.

charcircuit 4y ago
DRM is only unable on audio and video tags. You can still render the rest of the page. Often sites will gracefully fallback onto a lower quality version of the content if you don't support DRM. You could also just use widevine from your open source browser to play it.
- mort96 4y ago
  I'm not sure why you are telling me this. It is correct (aside from typos), but doesn't affect what I said. FYI, widevine is not open source.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    Widevine isn't a browser. Similarly running GNU bash on Windows doesn't suddenly make GNU bash no longer open source even though it is calling out to closed source code.
    - mort96 4y ago
      An open source browser can not render standard web pages. A browser can either be open source and unable to render DRM content, or it can contain closed-source components and be able to render DRM content. Firefox + Widevine is the second kind, Firefox without Widevine is the first kind. It is illegal to make a fully open source browser which can render any standard web page.
- nerdbert 4y ago

throw10920 4y ago

FWIW, you can make a reasonable argument that DRM as it currently exists is not about protecting IP of content creators, but instead "giving content providers leverage against the creators of playback devices"[1]. To be sure, both reasons contribute, but the latter isn't a good one, and you can argue that W3C indirectly supported it (although, I don't understand why it's preferable for DRM to be implemented through entirely non-standard protocol as opposed to having the W3C make something of a standard for it). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29709939

LarryMullins 4y ago

> DRM ostensibly protects the IP Ostensibly is doing a lot of work here because it literally does not. I can torrent any show or movie that is otherwise being streamed with DRM. DRM is a complete farce that serves no actual purpose but to make idiotic media executives happy.

conradev 4y ago
It's a little strong to say it "literally does not" when I cannot break L1 Widevine, which uses the W3C's APIs You might be able to torrent any show or movie in high quality with a private tracker, but it's hard to come by 4K HDR content just hanging out for free these days.
- TheNorthman 4y ago
  > You might be able to torrent any show or movie in high quality with a private tracker, but it's hard to come by 4K HDR content just hanging out for free these days. Even if that's the case, that's not an issue of DRM, that's an issue of distribution. It's also just flat out not true. Sure, some of the 4k HDR content might originate from PTP/BTN/scene/w.e., but it's readily available on e.g. RARBG.