5 ms·

I'm astonished by how little DRM bothers people in general. The idea that I can buy something and not own it at the same time is ridiculous. It'd be like buying

by tdavis 17y ago

I'm astonished by how little DRM bothers people in general. The idea that I can buy something and not own it at the same time is ridiculous. It'd be like buying a car and having it taken back in 5 years. We make a distinction between "buying" and "leasing" for a reason. Except on the Internet, where everybody tries to get you to buy things and apply leasing rules to what you just bought. It's completely asinine.

andreyf 17y ago
It's not "leasing", either, though - unless they're indefinite-time leases for a fixed price, with the right to "withdraw" the lease for a full refund. Most leased cars are returned, I imagine. Most "DRM-bought" Kindle books are not. So while "buy" isn't the right word, neither is "lease". It's a whole different beast altogether.
- grandalf 17y ago
  Every purchase has terms of sale and a price. Whether those terms are dictated by the counterparty or by laws and social customs is irrelevant. You can buy a car but you can't drive it 100 miles per hour. You can buy 1000 smoke detectors, but you can't harvest the radioactive isotope and make a nuclear reactor. You can buy a book on paper, but you can't re-publish it as your own work, etc.
grandalf 17y ago
Interesting. I'm always astonished by how much DRM does bother people. If a song costs $0.99 with DRM then it would cost more without DRM. Very simple. In most cases the DRM terms of use are acceptable to me, which is why I don't hesitate to buy DRM'ed content. Of course, many DRM implementations are highly annoying, but that is a design issue not a core issue with DRM technology.
- tdavis 17y ago
  Why should the non-DRM version cost more? If anything, the DRM version should cost more, given all the time and work put into wrapping the item in some annoying "protection". In the vast majority of cases, DRM is only an annoyance. It doesn't stop anybody who really wants to share content from sharing it. The only things DRM does is give undue power to content sellers (like Amazon) and make content completely worthless when whatever technology is used to verify ownership stops working (or gets turned off like MSN Music, Yahoo Music...)
  - grandalf 17y ago
    As I mentioned, DRM implementations are very poor. Why shouldn't I be able to plug my iPod into someone else's computer, pick the songs I want, and confirm a popup for the amount I'll be billed? Or why shouldn't it let me listen to the songs for a few days free of charge? DRM should let comtent owners think of extremely creative ways to virally market digital goods, while still preserving ownership and the ability to make a profit. Sadly, there has not been a good DRM yet. Even Apple's DRM is so stupid that if you get a hard drive failure you can't re-download the songs free of charge (or for the price of bandwidth). I happen to have had two hard drive failures, and only the first one was covered. This is bad business, not bad technology.
  - andreyf 17y ago
    the DRM version should cost more, given all the time and work put into wrapping the item in some annoying "protection" Since when does price have to do with how much something cost to build? If I spend $10 building a shitty chair, it's still a shitty chair. DRM-protected music costs less because you're buying the right to listen to a song with restrictions not present in non-DRM-protected music.
- adharmad 17y ago
  DRM is designed to favor middle men (RIAA, MPAA) as opposed to actual creators and artists.
  - marchdown 17y ago
    Could you elaborate on that, please? It seems that RIAA and MPAA are the luckiest of these middle men and the most persistent, and that is why they came to make such a huge profit from what was relatively obscure nook of an intellectual property regulation. After all, the concept of an artist having the privileged right to his, already published, work comes first, and all the delegations and copyright issues come second. DRM is designed to keep power in the hands of rights holder, the creator, and, by necessity, away from the consumer, and only the monstrous bulk of MPAA allowed them to effectively pretend that they are not the simple middle men, but the focus and origin of all the rights that anybody can ever have on IP.
  - grandalf 17y ago
    Suppose I buy a copy of Acid Pro and create an awesome dance mix using some Jay Z and some Garth Brooks. In an ideal DRM'ed world, I could set a price for this song and sell it via bittorrent -- the original license holders of the songs would each get their cut but if I charged $3 then I'd get a dollar for each sale (for example). DRM is the sort of technology that could enable this kind of free, expressive creation. That we don't have it is a failure of businesses to come up with creative licensing terms, not a failure of DRM technology.
pieceofpeace 17y ago
Legally, it's like Amazon brokered sale of stolen goods and the owners demanded those goods be returned. People thought they had purchased limited rights to the book. Amazon _is_ responsible in some way.

by tdavis 17y ago

andreyf 17y ago

It's not "leasing", either, though - unless they're indefinite-time leases for a fixed price, with the right to "withdraw" the lease for a full refund. Most leased cars are returned, I imagine. Most "DRM-bought" Kindle books are not. So while "buy" isn't the right word, neither is "lease". It's a whole different beast altogether.

grandalf 17y ago
Every purchase has terms of sale and a price. Whether those terms are dictated by the counterparty or by laws and social customs is irrelevant. You can buy a car but you can't drive it 100 miles per hour. You can buy 1000 smoke detectors, but you can't harvest the radioactive isotope and make a nuclear reactor. You can buy a book on paper, but you can't re-publish it as your own work, etc.

grandalf 17y ago

Interesting. I'm always astonished by how much DRM does bother people. If a song costs $0.99 with DRM then it would cost more without DRM. Very simple. In most cases the DRM terms of use are acceptable to me, which is why I don't hesitate to buy DRM'ed content. Of course, many DRM implementations are highly annoying, but that is a design issue not a core issue with DRM technology.

tdavis 17y ago
Why should the non-DRM version cost more? If anything, the DRM version should cost more, given all the time and work put into wrapping the item in some annoying "protection". In the vast majority of cases, DRM is only an annoyance. It doesn't stop anybody who really wants to share content from sharing it. The only things DRM does is give undue power to content sellers (like Amazon) and make content completely worthless when whatever technology is used to verify ownership stops working (or gets turned off like MSN Music, Yahoo Music...)
- grandalf 17y ago
  As I mentioned, DRM implementations are very poor. Why shouldn't I be able to plug my iPod into someone else's computer, pick the songs I want, and confirm a popup for the amount I'll be billed? Or why shouldn't it let me listen to the songs for a few days free of charge? DRM should let comtent owners think of extremely creative ways to virally market digital goods, while still preserving ownership and the ability to make a profit. Sadly, there has not been a good DRM yet. Even Apple's DRM is so stupid that if you get a hard drive failure you can't re-download the songs free of charge (or for the price of bandwidth). I happen to have had two hard drive failures, and only the first one was covered. This is bad business, not bad technology.
- andreyf 17y ago
  the DRM version should cost more, given all the time and work put into wrapping the item in some annoying "protection" Since when does price have to do with how much something cost to build? If I spend $10 building a shitty chair, it's still a shitty chair. DRM-protected music costs less because you're buying the right to listen to a song with restrictions not present in non-DRM-protected music.
adharmad 17y ago
DRM is designed to favor middle men (RIAA, MPAA) as opposed to actual creators and artists.
- marchdown 17y ago
  Could you elaborate on that, please? It seems that RIAA and MPAA are the luckiest of these middle men and the most persistent, and that is why they came to make such a huge profit from what was relatively obscure nook of an intellectual property regulation. After all, the concept of an artist having the privileged right to his, already published, work comes first, and all the delegations and copyright issues come second. DRM is designed to keep power in the hands of rights holder, the creator, and, by necessity, away from the consumer, and only the monstrous bulk of MPAA allowed them to effectively pretend that they are not the simple middle men, but the focus and origin of all the rights that anybody can ever have on IP.
- grandalf 17y ago
  Suppose I buy a copy of Acid Pro and create an awesome dance mix using some Jay Z and some Garth Brooks. In an ideal DRM'ed world, I could set a price for this song and sell it via bittorrent -- the original license holders of the songs would each get their cut but if I charged $3 then I'd get a dollar for each sale (for example). DRM is the sort of technology that could enable this kind of free, expressive creation. That we don't have it is a failure of businesses to come up with creative licensing terms, not a failure of DRM technology.

pieceofpeace 17y ago

Legally, it's like Amazon brokered sale of stolen goods and the owners demanded those goods be returned. People thought they had purchased limited rights to the book. Amazon _is_ responsible in some way.