4 ms·

Yet another case that demonstrates that as long as DRM is involved (in this case, being restricted to online reading of titles only), you're never actually buyi

by Daiz 14y ago

Yet another case that demonstrates that as long as DRM is involved (in this case, being restricted to online reading of titles only), you're never actually buying anything, merely renting them indefinitely. http://xkcd.com/488/ http://xkcd.com/488/ keeps being sadly relevant. It's also such a damn shame that genuine digital purchasing (as in, something that involves DRM-free downloads) is such a rarity outside the music industry. I just can't understand why every other industry (especially the video industry) thinks that offering DRM-free downloads would somehow kill them or whatever when digital music sales have only got better since the wide-scale ditching of DRM, especially since huge video files are much harder to share casually than small music files. There is value in the catalog subscription model that the likes of Netflix offers, but it should really have actual buying options available next to it (ideally, a service could combine both models - pay a lump sum for catalog streaming rights, then actually buy individual titles, and as a bonus, not only do you get DRM-free downloads, but you could also offer extras, formats that aren't possible with streaming, unlimited streaming rights for actually purchased titles since they have the available infrastructure for it, and so on).

InclinedPlane 14y ago
I've been able to buy a lot of e-books without DRM (mostly tech books). But still, it is rather ridiculous, I can't help but think that the people of, say, 2050 will look back at the way we have gone about "managing" content in this era and think we were all mad.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Maybe. Or perhaps people just give up and the corps get their way and all content is rented; and can only be accessed by devices with DNA biometrics. There will be niche boutique artists creating dead tree books of obscure short stories and bad poetry, for phenomenal pricing.
  - TillE 14y ago
    Big corporations don't even have a monopoly on multimillion dollar videogames (thanks to Kickstarter), let alone novels or nonfiction books which are typically produced by a small handful of people in a year or two. A dystopian DRM future is not impossible, but generally I think people do want to "own" things, and eventually we'll see digital goods treated as such legally.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    Based solely on what seems to be a technological advantage to those who desire content to be un-DRMed, I'd say that scenario is very unlikely. At least not without an extensive world-wide police state enforcing it.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      For many years when I bought a console game I was able to sell that game when I'd finished with it. Japanese[1] companies were especially unhappy with the second-hand market, and took vigorous efforts to stop it. US companies are also keen to prevent this re-sale of games. Now many games are unable to be sold on. When I buy a DVD there is a clear benefit to me in being able to play that DVD in my player, no matter where I buy it. Yet DVDs are region locked. VHS tapes had Macrovision anti-copy signals; DVDs had region protections and CSS; BluRay has region protections and several layers of DRM; restrictions continue to get tighter, not more relaxed. Laws are also getting stricter. The 1996 WIPO treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty) led to the introduction of the DMCA and similar laws in other regions. (Circumventing technical protections is illegal under the DMCA but it's also illegal throughout Europe, with various difference in each country). I agree with "unlikely", but I'm not so sure about very unlikely. [1] Japanese companies have been doing this longest, since SNES times. I think, but I could be wrong, that they managed to make second hand sales of games illegal. Maybe they just wanted to do that?
- porsupah 14y ago
  Though, we might also wind up in the scenario depicted in the satirical three minute short, "Welcome to Life".. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E
- coldtea 14y ago
  >I can't help but think that the people of, say, 2050 will look back at the way we have gone about "managing" content in this era and think we were all mad. Only if those people have progressed beyond capitalism and big corporations having control over laws.
shmerl 14y ago
Why, you are buying it. You just need to be diligent and back stuff up. And if DRM is not easily breakable - avoid buying it altogether. Publishers who use DRM can't be trusted, so backups should be a norm.
- Fargren 14y ago
  DRM may be easy to break, but breaking it is illegal under the DMCA. And even if it's not a crime normally prosecuted, that's a very big problem.
  - shmerl 14y ago
    Even if it's illegal, society at large ignores it, and there is nothing practically wrong with ignoring it. Surely the right thing to do would be to nullify the 1201 section altogether, but currently it already makes unrealistic demands on reality and people simply don't consider this restriction valid.
    - Fargren 14y ago
      But the fact that it's illegal has wider implications than the prosecution of the infringing person. For example, it becomes hard to distribute tools to remove DRM, should someone build them. Thus, it is unfeasible that DRM removal could become commonplace, since everyone has to do it for himself, or make a big effort to get help. There can't be legal commercial incentives to help people solve this problem, and even if someone made a free good tool for that, it would be legally attacked if it became popular; that means it probably won't be solved.
      - shmerl 14y ago
        Who said those incentives should be commercial. They probably should make a point not to be. But practically this usually happens with placing the tools outside the jurisdiction of DMCA. For example repositories that host libdvdcss are located outside US, since the whole purpose of libdvdcss is to remove DRM from DVDs to enable playing them in open source players (which is naturally 100% fair use - i.e. to view the legally purchased content). And it is widely used - all Linux users basically use it to watch their DVDs. The level of "mainstream" penetration of such tools will depend on the level of DRM penetration. The more DRM will be pushed on people, the more commonplace the circumvention tools will become. In practice however the developing trend tends to be to use less DRM in various areas, so circumvention tools are kind of not very widespread either.
spc476 14y ago
Copy protection has been a recurring problem since the early 80s. That's over thirty years. You'd think by now we would have learned our lesson, but I fear it will take another thirty before the powers-that-be start to question the wisdom of copy protection, and another thirty for them to give up.

by Daiz 14y ago

InclinedPlane 14y ago

I've been able to buy a lot of e-books without DRM (mostly tech books). But still, it is rather ridiculous, I can't help but think that the people of, say, 2050 will look back at the way we have gone about "managing" content in this era and think we were all mad.

DanBC 14y ago
Maybe. Or perhaps people just give up and the corps get their way and all content is rented; and can only be accessed by devices with DNA biometrics. There will be niche boutique artists creating dead tree books of obscure short stories and bad poetry, for phenomenal pricing.
- TillE 14y ago
  Big corporations don't even have a monopoly on multimillion dollar videogames (thanks to Kickstarter), let alone novels or nonfiction books which are typically produced by a small handful of people in a year or two. A dystopian DRM future is not impossible, but generally I think people do want to "own" things, and eventually we'll see digital goods treated as such legally.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Based solely on what seems to be a technological advantage to those who desire content to be un-DRMed, I'd say that scenario is very unlikely. At least not without an extensive world-wide police state enforcing it.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    For many years when I bought a console game I was able to sell that game when I'd finished with it. Japanese[1] companies were especially unhappy with the second-hand market, and took vigorous efforts to stop it. US companies are also keen to prevent this re-sale of games. Now many games are unable to be sold on. When I buy a DVD there is a clear benefit to me in being able to play that DVD in my player, no matter where I buy it. Yet DVDs are region locked. VHS tapes had Macrovision anti-copy signals; DVDs had region protections and CSS; BluRay has region protections and several layers of DRM; restrictions continue to get tighter, not more relaxed. Laws are also getting stricter. The 1996 WIPO treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty) led to the introduction of the DMCA and similar laws in other regions. (Circumventing technical protections is illegal under the DMCA but it's also illegal throughout Europe, with various difference in each country). I agree with "unlikely", but I'm not so sure about very unlikely. [1] Japanese companies have been doing this longest, since SNES times. I think, but I could be wrong, that they managed to make second hand sales of games illegal. Maybe they just wanted to do that?
porsupah 14y ago
Though, we might also wind up in the scenario depicted in the satirical three minute short, "Welcome to Life".. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E
coldtea 14y ago
>I can't help but think that the people of, say, 2050 will look back at the way we have gone about "managing" content in this era and think we were all mad. Only if those people have progressed beyond capitalism and big corporations having control over laws.

shmerl 14y ago

Why, you are buying it. You just need to be diligent and back stuff up. And if DRM is not easily breakable - avoid buying it altogether. Publishers who use DRM can't be trusted, so backups should be a norm.

Fargren 14y ago
DRM may be easy to break, but breaking it is illegal under the DMCA. And even if it's not a crime normally prosecuted, that's a very big problem.
- shmerl 14y ago
  Even if it's illegal, society at large ignores it, and there is nothing practically wrong with ignoring it. Surely the right thing to do would be to nullify the 1201 section altogether, but currently it already makes unrealistic demands on reality and people simply don't consider this restriction valid.
  - Fargren 14y ago
    But the fact that it's illegal has wider implications than the prosecution of the infringing person. For example, it becomes hard to distribute tools to remove DRM, should someone build them. Thus, it is unfeasible that DRM removal could become commonplace, since everyone has to do it for himself, or make a big effort to get help. There can't be legal commercial incentives to help people solve this problem, and even if someone made a free good tool for that, it would be legally attacked if it became popular; that means it probably won't be solved.
    - shmerl 14y ago
      Who said those incentives should be commercial. They probably should make a point not to be. But practically this usually happens with placing the tools outside the jurisdiction of DMCA. For example repositories that host libdvdcss are located outside US, since the whole purpose of libdvdcss is to remove DRM from DVDs to enable playing them in open source players (which is naturally 100% fair use - i.e. to view the legally purchased content). And it is widely used - all Linux users basically use it to watch their DVDs. The level of "mainstream" penetration of such tools will depend on the level of DRM penetration. The more DRM will be pushed on people, the more commonplace the circumvention tools will become. In practice however the developing trend tends to be to use less DRM in various areas, so circumvention tools are kind of not very widespread either.

spc476 14y ago

Copy protection has been a recurring problem since the early 80s. That's over thirty years. You'd think by now we would have learned our lesson, but I fear it will take another thirty before the powers-that-be start to question the wisdom of copy protection, and another thirty for them to give up.