4 ms·

Why would you not bank on the fact that DRM doesn't work? Putting aside all questions of whether it's evil or not, isn't that a foregone conclusion and an answe

Why would you not bank on the fact that DRM doesn't work? Putting aside all questions of whether it's evil or not, isn't that a foregone conclusion and an answer to the question that is demonstrated writ large for anyone who cares to make the vaguest attempt at tracking down pirated content? What's the point of pretending it's other than it is?

Chris_Newton 15y ago
It's not a foregone conclusion at all. From a commercial point of view, DRM "works" if it ultimately prevents more lost sales than it causes. In a small niche market, where plenty of users are quite capable of right-click-saving a video but relatively few would know how to break more serious DRM, it is entirely plausible that such DRM would prevent a lot of casual copying. As I said, I don't personally like this idea (and in fact our test programme isn't using DRM right now) but there have been lively discussions about this issue and the truth is that no-one really knows what would happen either way. I'm more interested in empirical evidence than thought experiments, assumptions/generalisations that small media will work the same as Big Media, or the wishful thinking of people reading on-line forums who have the luxury of risking nothing when they downvote a situation they don't like. Edit: The other thing to keep in mind is which of these decisions are one-way. If we decide to launch with DRM and it turns out not to be effective for us, it costs us relatively little if we decide to back it out and serve everything unlocked later. On the other hand, if DRM is effective in our market but we serve everything unlocked initially and people take advantage, Pandora's box is open.
- etherael 15y ago
  That's an interesting perspective, I realise this may be selection bias but myself and everybody I know and associate with will not bother with DRM encumbered content, some will eschew it entirely, some will circumvent it, but none will actually purchase it on principle. So in my experience I see it as causing a huge amount of lost sales and not preventing any lost sales (because it is trivial to circumvent, one does not need to be intelligent to simply use the work of other people who have already figured it out).
  - Chris_Newton 15y ago
    For what it's worth, I'm actually in the same camp as you. I don't buy games with obnoxious copy protection/anti-cheating mechanisms, for example (and I don't pirate them either). I don't buy a huge amount of music/video either, but I actively favour unrestricted formats when I do. I think it's different when you're talking about permanent content someone is "buying" vs. temporary content someone is only paying to access as pay-per-view/rental/all-you-can-eat subscription, though. In the latter case, the pricing model is going to be set at a level commensurate with the usage model. That can be a good thing, if it means more people get to enjoy more content than they otherwise would. For example, maybe someone who only tends to watch films once would not want to pay full price to buy every DVD but would be happy to have a flat-rate monthly subscription to an on-line streaming service. They can only do that if someone manages to run a viable flat-rate monthly subscription service, and if there's no enforcement, it could become a one-sided deal where the consumer takes full access but only pays the restricted access price. This might not be a problem if the users in your market are basically honest, decent people and you can still make a reasonable profit while overlooking the occasional indiscretion. This is the outcome I'm kind of hoping for personally for our own business. On the other hand, it's a big risk to take in a world where right now piracy is rampant and much of it is casual copying. I suspect that over time, as the first generation who have had always-on everything for their entire lives grow up, we are going to see quite a few cultural changes in terms of how we use the Internet. I think one of the changes will be in our attitude to sharing and the business models we use to produce and distribute content: a lot of things are already moving to supply content as part of a flat-rate, all-you-can-eat service rather than a series of one-off purchased products. Again, that might be no bad thing for either the producers or the consumers in the long run, but until that becomes a social norm, assuming it does, I can certainly understand businesses that want to make sure both sides are keeping up their end of the deal.
    - etherael 15y ago
      For subscription based services, is there a reason not to just use html5 streaming video with something like http://www.wowza.com/media-server http://www.wowza.com/media-server ? This should work fine and circumvent all the flash / silverlight problems whilst still being DRM'd. I know of at least one spotify competitor using this exact setup to fit both the mandatory DRM'd streams from major labels and still allow streaming to flash / silverlight barren environments.

Chris_Newton 15y ago

It's not a foregone conclusion at all. From a commercial point of view, DRM "works" if it ultimately prevents more lost sales than it causes. In a small niche market, where plenty of users are quite capable of right-click-saving a video but relatively few would know how to break more serious DRM, it is entirely plausible that such DRM would prevent a lot of casual copying. As I said, I don't personally like this idea (and in fact our test programme isn't using DRM right now) but there have been lively discussions about this issue and the truth is that no-one really knows what would happen either way. I'm more interested in empirical evidence than thought experiments, assumptions/generalisations that small media will work the same as Big Media, or the wishful thinking of people reading on-line forums who have the luxury of risking nothing when they downvote a situation they don't like. Edit: The other thing to keep in mind is which of these decisions are one-way. If we decide to launch with DRM and it turns out not to be effective for us, it costs us relatively little if we decide to back it out and serve everything unlocked later. On the other hand, if DRM is effective in our market but we serve everything unlocked initially and people take advantage, Pandora's box is open.

etherael 15y ago
That's an interesting perspective, I realise this may be selection bias but myself and everybody I know and associate with will not bother with DRM encumbered content, some will eschew it entirely, some will circumvent it, but none will actually purchase it on principle. So in my experience I see it as causing a huge amount of lost sales and not preventing any lost sales (because it is trivial to circumvent, one does not need to be intelligent to simply use the work of other people who have already figured it out).
- Chris_Newton 15y ago
  For what it's worth, I'm actually in the same camp as you. I don't buy games with obnoxious copy protection/anti-cheating mechanisms, for example (and I don't pirate them either). I don't buy a huge amount of music/video either, but I actively favour unrestricted formats when I do. I think it's different when you're talking about permanent content someone is "buying" vs. temporary content someone is only paying to access as pay-per-view/rental/all-you-can-eat subscription, though. In the latter case, the pricing model is going to be set at a level commensurate with the usage model. That can be a good thing, if it means more people get to enjoy more content than they otherwise would. For example, maybe someone who only tends to watch films once would not want to pay full price to buy every DVD but would be happy to have a flat-rate monthly subscription to an on-line streaming service. They can only do that if someone manages to run a viable flat-rate monthly subscription service, and if there's no enforcement, it could become a one-sided deal where the consumer takes full access but only pays the restricted access price. This might not be a problem if the users in your market are basically honest, decent people and you can still make a reasonable profit while overlooking the occasional indiscretion. This is the outcome I'm kind of hoping for personally for our own business. On the other hand, it's a big risk to take in a world where right now piracy is rampant and much of it is casual copying. I suspect that over time, as the first generation who have had always-on everything for their entire lives grow up, we are going to see quite a few cultural changes in terms of how we use the Internet. I think one of the changes will be in our attitude to sharing and the business models we use to produce and distribute content: a lot of things are already moving to supply content as part of a flat-rate, all-you-can-eat service rather than a series of one-off purchased products. Again, that might be no bad thing for either the producers or the consumers in the long run, but until that becomes a social norm, assuming it does, I can certainly understand businesses that want to make sure both sides are keeping up their end of the deal.
  - etherael 15y ago
    For subscription based services, is there a reason not to just use html5 streaming video with something like http://www.wowza.com/media-server http://www.wowza.com/media-server ? This should work fine and circumvent all the flash / silverlight problems whilst still being DRM'd. I know of at least one spotify competitor using this exact setup to fit both the mandatory DRM'd streams from major labels and still allow streaming to flash / silverlight barren environments.