35 ms·

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

782 points by adrianmsmith 12y ago

wyager 12y ago
Interesting. I was unaware of this. But if this is the case, why is there such a push to put DRM in HTML? Browsers aren't DVD players. Users are free to use software like ABP to circumvent any features like "unskippable ads" mentioned in the post. Pressure on browser makers seems much less valuable than pressure on device makers.
- eurleif 12y ago
  I don't think ABP and other extensions will have access to the DRM player. Isn't the whole point for the browser to just blindly embed the code provided by the media bosses?
- couchand 12y ago
  For that exact reason -- browsers are the one "device" still open. They already have basically every other mainstream entertainment channel, if they can lock down browsers they'll have it all.
- cortesoft 12y ago
  If DRM is implemented in HTML, then you WON'T be free to use software like ABP, since it will be a 'circumvention' method. Now, it will be harder to prevent software circumvention rather than hardware circumvention, but it will still be in the same legal situation.
- eli 12y ago
  If AdBlock becomes a big enough problem, publishers will create "unskippable" ads with current technology. HTML doesn't really change that. It's always been a cat and mouse with ad blockers.
  - pkinsky 12y ago
    It's possible to build a website that renders itself unusable if an ad fails to load, to prevent browsers with AdBlock enabled from viewing your content. The problem with this approach is that if a single ad fails to load for any reason, the entire website goes down. Do you trust your ad network to have 100% uptime?
    - eli 12y ago
      There are ways to engineer around that, but it's always been a cat and mouse game. My point is that it's a side issue; ad blocking doesn't have much to do with having an "official" DRM spec. You can make ads harder to block without it, and you can probably still find a way to block ads with it.
    - wtracy 12y ago
      Do you think that the likes of Disney and Sony care? If the ad network is down, they're not getting paid for that view, anyway.
      - pkinsky 12y ago
        Even if we assume that each page only loads a single ad, which either succeeds or fails, the perception of a site being unreliable hurts the company running it. Household names like Disney and Sony might be able to live with that, but they'll still do everything possible to avoid downtime.
  - er35826 12y ago
    But right now, it's a legal cat and mouse game for both sides. With DRM, it becomes illegal for the mouse to do anything but get eaten.
    - eli 12y ago
      Maybe I'm just missing something, but I don't see why DRM being implemented in an HTML spec is any different from implementing it in Flash or Silverlight or Javascript. The DMCA doesn't care about specs. I could "protect" the copyright on my site's content with a trivial bit of a javascript, and you would arguably be circumventing it with your ad blocker. (To be clear: I think the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions are terrible policy.)
couchand 12y ago
Had CDs been encrypted, iPods would not have been able to read their content, because the content providers would have been able to use their DRM contracts as leverage to prevent it. Moreover, the iPod most likely would have never been invented. How about that for killing innovation?
- zachlipton 12y ago
  And, to engage in some historical guesswork, if the iPod never happened, what would have happened to the iPhone and iPad? It's not that smartphones and tablets in some form never would have happened without the iPod, but it's hard for me to see Apple having a role.
  - dsr_ 12y ago
    The smartphone market got into gear with Palm (and Handspring, then Palm bought Handspring...) merging their PDAs with a cellphone. If you don't recall PalmOS, the major user interface was a resistive touch screen (160x160 mono ranging up to 320x320 16K color) and a stylus, with no keyboard on most models. The keyboard lack was countered by a handwriting recognition system that took a very low-CPU power approach: Graffiti has its own gesture alphabet, which takes an hour or two to learn. By specifying the way every letter had to be drawn, and specifying where on the screen it would be recognized, a Motorola 68K was acceptable, and a 300MHz low-end ARM felt snappy. PalmOS had a database format which lives on to this day as part of the Mobi ebook file spec.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    It's likely that smartphones would have never escaped the enterprise (Blackberry, Palm, WinPho 6, etc.) if the iPhone hadn't been released. Apple always put music front and center in their presentation of the iPhone, for good reason.
    - Zak 12y ago
      I don't think so. I was starting to see Palm and Windows smartphones in the hands of consumers without especially advanced tech backgrounds a decade ago as well as the occasional Sidekick. Android was in development at the time as well, and while early prototypes don't seem nearly as consumer-friendly as iPhones, many early production models were similarly unimpressive. It may have taken a bit longer, but I think the mainstream popularity of smartphones was inevitable.
Karellen 12y ago
Previous discussion (421 days ago, 22 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5406733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5406733
programminggeek 12y ago
I was going to say, the purpose of DRM is to get you to pay for multiple licenses. It's the same reason why a lot of paid download software is now on a SAAS model. If you can buy 1 copy of something for $20 and use it on whatever devices you want, then the company has made $20. If you DRM that to be for just one device, and you have 5 devices, they make $100. If you are a SAAS operator, you are effectively doing the same thing. Somehow people are more okay with paying an ongoing fee for software or some perceived notion of services, but that same does't yet apply to content in a larger way. The closest equivalent is probably the cable companies and they are taking their huge sums of money and are buying the media companies, so maybe eventually there will be just a flat $100/month fee for experiencing a company's content on whatever device/experience it's available on. Maybe even movie theaters.
- lomnakkus 12y ago
  > Somehow people are more okay with paying an ongoing fee for software or some perceived notion of services, but that same does't yet apply to content in a larger way. I think it's pretty simple to see why this is: Once created (digital) content is inert and doesn't really require any ongoing maintenance as such. Software always requires some sort of ongoing maintenance.
  - JoshTriplett 12y ago
    Some of the most amazing digital content is transformative, and supported by an ongoing community of people producing and transforming it. Any one individual work is "inert", but the value is in the body of work as a whole. And none of that would be possible with DRM.
    - marvy 12y ago
      example?
      - dublinben 12y ago
        See any of the works by the artist Pogo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY&list=TLIfADM1J0RJOCLzaKkvK2tb17PWmD_4Fs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY&list=TLIfADM1J0R...
webmaven 12y ago
Needs a [2013] label in the title.
- dang 12y ago
  Good catch. Done.
gagege 12y ago
Why isn't screen capture software more widely used? It seems like a dead simple screen capture suite could make all these DRM worries go away.
- batmansbelt 12y ago
  For pirating DRMed material? Probably because every major DRM scheme has been compromised, so it's easier to just grab the original stream. If you're talking about in relation to the article, how would screen capture software let you skip ads? I could see it used for multiplexing, but playback on multiple devices would be tricky unless you ripped the content first.
- valarauca1 12y ago
  It's actually incredibly simple to do this. Open Boardcaster is free and does this well.
- guelo 12y ago
  That's why they want DRM control all the way down to the hardware.
- HackinOut 12y ago
  I think it's used widely enough: God is it ugly... You are screwing up with FPS and then you have to re-encode on top of your already encoded (i.e. not raw), captured thing , eww... Plenty of cleaner ways, like DVD or Blu-Rays which protections are cracked and with which you get the untampered original.
shmerl 12y ago
Of course not. Reasons for demanding DRM can be different, but none of them are valid or good. As discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7745009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7745009 common reasons are: 1. Monopolistic lock-in. DRM is more than often used to control the market. It happened with Apple in the past, and was one of the key reasons that music publishers realized that being DRM-free is actually better for them. This reason also includes DRM derivatives like DMCA-1201 and the like. It's all about control (over the markets, over users and etc.). 2. Covering one's incompetence. DRM is used to justify failing sales (i.e. when execs are questioned about why the product performs poorly, they say "Pirates! But worry not - we put more DRM in place"). 3. Ignorance and / or stupidity (many execs have no clue and might believe that DRM actually provides some benefit). This type can be called DRM Lysenkoism.
jbk 12y ago
This is one of the most important points about DRM. DRM are marketed to users (and the society, including politicians) and to artists as a way to prevent copies. Most engineers implementing DRMs think so too. And all the discussions we've seen on HTML5 are around this. People have little arguments against this because it "sounds morally good" to help artist "live of their creations". I am the de facto maintainer of libdvdcss, and have been involved on libbluray (and related projects) and a few other libraries of the same style; I've done several conferences on this precise subject and I've fought the French High-Authority-on-DRM in legal questioning about an unclear piece of law... Therefore, I've studied DRM quite closely... The truth is that if you consider the main goal of DRM to prevent copies, no DRM actually work. ALL of them got defeated in a way or another. Indeed, GoT-broadcast-to-top-of-TPB time is counted in a couple of hours; so why do they try to push those technologies still? The answer is probably because the main goal of DRM is to control distribution channels, not copy-prevention. Copy-prevention is a side goal. This post of Ian is excellent to explain this. PS: You can see me speaking of the same point, in French, in June 2013 here: http://www.acuraz.net/team-videolan-lors-de-pas-sage-en-seine-2013/ http://www.acuraz.net/team-videolan-lors-de-pas-sage-en-sein... NB: I'm not discussing here whether DRM are good or bad.
- shmerl 12y ago
  It doesn't sound morally good because it's overreaching and preemptive policing (even if we falsely assume that DRM is effective). The fact is, most people don't think this issue through and don't realize how crooked and unethical the whole idea of DRM is.
  - jbk 12y ago
    I'm sorry if I was not clear on this part. If you speak about DRM-for-copy-prevention to people in the street, a lot of them consider it as a 'necessary evil' because 'the artists need to live of their work'. When you know more about DRM, you usually have stronger arguments against, of course.
    - shmerl 12y ago
jiggy2011 12y ago
Pretty much this. The people who will pirate are going to pirate regardless, you could offer all your movies DRM free for $1 each and some people will still pirate them. So the purpose of DRM is to make maximum revenue from those who won't pirate, for example by charging more for group viewings of the movie or viewing on multiple devices.
- electromagnetic 12y ago
  It's important to identify that the price of a piece of media is not the only cost associated with it. If it takes me 30 minutes round trip to get to a store, 15 minutes in a store. Let's say an hour total. Blockbuster went bankrupt because that expense was too excessive for people. You could rent from Netflix for a monthly fee and the DVDs got delivered to you, then the movies got streamed to you instantly. When I can sit on my arse and take 30 seconds to put on a movie, there's a massive 'cost' difference between a $1 DVD rental and a $8 monthly subscription, and the monthly subscription is extremely cheap. Our world has entire industries worth billions of dollars around convenience and it's getting bigger every day. DRM is purposefully inconvenient, which means it's constantly on a losing battle. However the question we have to ask is, is this losing battle a necessary evil to ensure the production of content? I'm a writer in my free time. I do it for fun, and I might make money from it. A $100mil budget movie isn't going to be made for fun and the chance of making some money from it.
  - jiggy2011 12y ago
    Most of the inconvenience around DRM is because implementations can be buggy and it's often built into sub-par software but I don't think it's necessarily by design. Services like Steam and Netflix are doing well by providing more convenient implementations. The endgame for DRM could well be that it becomes totally transparent, you consume whatever media you want on whatever device you want whenever you want and you get a bill every month based on some complicated price matrix and people will just pay it the same way they do their phone bill.
    - dublinben 12y ago
jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
What DRM does is makes the 'pirate' goods, the 'hacked' players, the illegitimate rips, better, more usable, more flexible, and generally superior in every way to the officially released product. Which I'm sure is not the intention. Say I can't copy-and-paste a section from an eBook or run it through a speech reader? Tell me I can't skip the trailers before watching the DVD I have paid for? No. Fuck you. Bullshit like that is a red rag to a bull - you just created an army of people who'll bust off your "rights management" just to show you how wrong you are, and that YOU DO NOT GET TO DECIDE how people consume the things they own. Sorry and all. But that's how it is.
- jeremyjh 12y ago
  I own some DVDs, but I don't own any movies. If you want to own a movie, you pretty much have to make it yourself.
  - jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
    Truthfully, these days I actually find more value in most "self-made media" the anything that "the organised content industry" has to offer.
- userbinator 12y ago
  Summarised succinctly by this image: http://cdn.techpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/gxzev.jpg http://cdn.techpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/gxzev.jpg
- josho 12y ago
  Unfortunately, these companies are often quite subtle and make the initial product much better than predecessors. For example, my experience with the early DVDs was that they had no unskippable content. Then, years later after I had tossed my VCR every new DVD seemed to have all kinds of crap front loaded that I couldn't skip. So, DRM done right from the content owner's perspective makes the early experience quite better than what it displaces. Once everyone is locked into the format, then the DRM switches start to tighten and its too late for consumers to move on. Of course there are counter examples, like you mention, but what scares me about DRM is how if it's done right, nobody will mind DRM at first because it's better than the old way of doing things. Then one day, we all wake up and realize that we've been tricked because we are locked in and can't change. Today, we all love Netflix, but I wonder what the experience will be once disks have vanished and their growth slows. At that point will we experience FBI warnings, forced ads & trailers?
pje 12y ago
> Had CDs been encrypted, iPods would not have been able to read their content, because the content providers would have been able to use their DRM contracts as leverage to prevent it. What? Why? Nothing would have prevented people from recording the playback of an encrypted CD and putting that on their iPod.
- dublinben 12y ago
  How well did that work for minidisc players?
- zeidrich 12y ago
  Sure it would. Apple would have not been keen to develop a technology that relied on illegal copying to start with. Copying music CD's was a grey area, but it's a grey area that you can do in a semi-legal capacity. There was no reason legally that Apple couldn't create a CD ripping process in iTunes. It's the user's responsibility to not use it illegally. However, if CDs were encrypted, Apple would get in trouble if they broke that encryption to let you copy CDs to your iPad. You could find some more shady 3rd party tools that would work around it, but Apple's whole model is that it's easy to use and that it just works. Having to download an illegal 3rd party tool to rip your CDs and put them on your iPod isn't something they would do. Similarly, iPods have had video playback for ages now, but there is no method to copy DVD video to your iPod through Apple's tools. You can pop in a CD and it asks you if you want to import it into your library. You pop in a DVD and it just asks if you want to play, no option to import. If they let you import it, they would be breaking laws. The brand is established, and was established by the simple copying of music, so it's not important that it can't copy video as easily. But if it couldn't copy music easily, would it have even been a thing?
  - josho 12y ago
    Further to your point, it has historically been hard to find any commercial software that converts a DVD to a digital file (so it's not just Apple). The reason for this is that under US law (DMCA I believe) it is illegal to circumvent DRM, a DVD has a very basic DRM scheme. So, commercial companies avoided this area. While any programmers that saw a market opportunity and built something soon wound up removing the key DVD ripping feature of their software, likely a result from receiving a kind letter from a MPAA lawyer.
josephlord 12y ago
This rings quite true to me. I had protracted arguments about the limitations the BBC wanted to impose on TVs supporting Freeview HD in the UK (copy protection flags and only encrypted local streaming) despite the fact that the content itself was being broadcast at high power across the country completely unencrypted. What is it the CE companies need to license? The Huffman compression tables for the guide data which in the license agreement you have to warrant that they are trade secrets and that you won't reveal them. I did send the BBC a link to the MythTV source code which contains this trade secret. If you work out who I was working for during this discussion don't worry, the content arm of the company was (at least according to the BBC pressuring them the other way as a supplier). And the end result? We caved for the shiny Freeview HD sticker.
jljljl 12y ago
Speaking of controlling distribution channels, does anyone know how I can share this post outside of Google+, or add it to Pocket so that I can reread in more detail later?
- avn2109 12y ago
  Ye olde copy and paste, methinks.
- Hixie 12y ago
  There's no DRM on that page, it's just a Web page. Just copy and paste the content. "Save as HTML". Print to PDF. Whatever floats your boat. :-)
spacefight 12y ago
TL;DR "DRM's purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well."
10098 12y ago
I can still make "unauthorized" copies of DRM'ed media and play those back on non-drm devices. E.g. record sound from a locked-down music player using a microphone, convert that to MP3 and listen to it using a normal MP3 player. So it's not 100% bulletproof.
- dudus 12y ago
  I'm going to guess you didn't read the post
  - 10098 12y ago
    I'm going to guess you didn't understand my point. Being able to create drm-free copies weakens the power content producers hope to achieve. If I can create a drm-free copy of a movie, I can stream it to any device I want, at no extra charge. I'll be able to watch the movie on my tv, phone, tablet, whatever, and they won't make a dime from it.
noonespecial 12y ago
Drm is primarily used in practice to do market segmentation. The rest of this comment is not available in your region.
- hornetblack 12y ago
  I like our 10+ year old Pioneer DVD player that ignores the region. Unfortunately the the region-free devices have become a rarity these days.
- ojii 12y ago
  Anyone got a torrent to the full comment?
briantakita 12y ago
Good thing it's easier than ever DIY.
HackinOut 12y ago
"Sure, the DRM systems have all been broken [...]" I have worked with MS PlayReady DRM (which is the "latest" one from Microsoft, the one used by Netflix) for some time and never stumbled upon any cracks. Not because it's impossible or even difficult but probably just because nobody cares about cracking Netflix (which brings PlayReady it's main source of "users")... Once you pay, you can watch as much as you like, why bother. Netflix made it extremely simple and accessible. (Yes some features like multicasting might be missing but it's still way better than Plesk or PopcornTime. For now at least... The main problem is clearly that the Film industry make it too difficult to have all content in one place). There is plenty of other "easier" sources (alternative VOD offerings with already cracked/worse protections, Blu-rays) to get the copyrighted material from for underground channels. I am sure other DRM systems have a clear log for the same reason: No major incentive to crack them.
azakai 12y ago
This is very true, but also preaching to the choir. Probably most of an audience like HN already knows this. The real question is what we can do to fight DRM. The only real option is to push back against the companies that promote it. For EME, the current DRM in the news, the relevant companies are Google, Microsoft and Netflix. It's all well and good to talk about how DRM is pointless. Of course it is pointless. But unless we actually push back against those companies, DRM will continue to win.
- drchaos 12y ago
  > The real question is what we can do to fight DRM. The best way to hit them is to hit them in the wallet, which means pirating on principle. Don't buy DVDs or BluRays, cancel cable, Netflix etc., learn about alternatives like TPB and PopcornTime and teach others about them. Every cent you spend for Hollywood's products is used to sponsor DRM, and things like the DMCA on a political level, so make sure they don't get a single cent from you. While this may sound like a David-against-Goliath effort, keep in mind that pirating content has an intrinsic value proposition (maximum usability, zero cost, no censorship) which can never be exceeded by DRM offerings. So it isn't difficult to convince anyone to pirate instead of buying, you just have to show them how ;) What we must get rid of is the (content-industry sponsored) notion that piracy is somehow immoral. It isn't. Trying to take away the rights of users just because they don't go along well with a specific business model is. (note: of course all this only applies to DRM content, and companies advocating it. Non-DRM offerings like gog.com, independent artists etc. are fine and should be paid for if used).
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - rwl 12y ago
    > The real question is what we can do to fight DRM. > Of course all this only applies to DRM content, and companies advocating it. Non-DRM offerings like gog.com, independent artists etc. are fine and should be paid for if used What else? The root of the problem seems to be that major media companies are demanding DRM. For most of media that most people want to consume, there are no DRM-free alternatives, except pirating, which does carry some risks. It's hard to recommend pirating as a solution to the average media consumer, since the legal consequences can be bankrupting, and avoiding those risks ("just set up an anonymous VPN for your torrents!") requires technical know-how that most don't have. I think we need more thought about the following: 1. How can we convince the producers of popular media to release it without DRM? Many will say it can't happen without a serious change in the structure of the media business; but there might be some room for solutions here, like Mozilla's "watermarking" idea, that give these companies most of what they're looking for (more control over distribution and remedies for infringement) without making the copies of this media basically unusable from a consumer's perspective. Legal remedies were enough for these companies before the rise of digital media and the Internet; could publishers be convinced to abandon DRM if a better legal framework for distribution and infringement was available? 2. How can we get people to like, and pay for, media that is produced and released without DRM by independent publishers? As others have pointed out, these publishers generally already know that DRM is not in their interest. But they have two problems: it's hard for people to find their stuff, and they don't have the capital to compete with large media companies on production value. What can be done to lower the barriers here? New tools that make indexing and searching for DRM-free media easy for consumers? New tools that make producing and marketing high-quality media easy for publishers? What should those look like?
tn13 12y ago
I do not think there is any problem with DRM. It is pretty much right of the content providers to chose how they will distribute their content. What really gets my gears grinding is when I see an open source browser like Firefox is forced against their wishes to implement it because DRM has somehow reached a standard. The job of W3C standards is to protect the interests of ordinary web users and not content providers.
crystaln 12y ago
There is zero evidence of this claim in this article. DRM is, in fact, to prevent unauthorized usage and copies. In fact, even some of the examples in this article are exactly that. What is more important is that DRM doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to make unauthorized usage very inconvenient - enough that a few dollars is worth the cost for most people.
- TOMDM 12y ago
  The issue is, is that DRM fails abysmally at this, all it takes is a couple minutes and someone with the right software, and -poof- your DRM is gone, and next thing you know, it's on the pirate bay, easier to acquire than legitimate means, and more convenient to use.
- gkoz 12y ago
  The article makes a distinction between different kinds of unauthorized usage (not all kinds are malicious or illegal). You don't seem to.
- shmerl 12y ago
  What's more important, DRM should never be used. Because it never makes pirating inconvenient to the 99.99...9% of the pirates. The 0.00...1% which go through the trouble of breaking that DRM redistribute DRM-free copy to all other pirates, who never deal with that DRM altogether. What it makes inconvenient is the usage of that service / product for users who actually pay for it. It's a brain dead idea.
beloch 12y ago
Nothing makes me want to turn pirate quite like being forced to sit through unskippable anti-piracy ads preceding a movie I've paid for.
- ixwt 12y ago
  If you press stop a few times, then play. This normally skips directly to the menu (works for me).
  - walden42 12y ago
    Looks like you found a bug with your DVD player. Make sure NOT to report it.
    - ixwt 12y ago
      Actually I learned about this from an askreddit thread a while back. I tried it, and it worked. Skipped to the menu when the menu button wouldn't.
- rurounijones 12y ago
  Or "Coming soon" segments for movies release a decade ago.
mfisher87 12y ago
Steam would have been a great example for his article. Steam does nothing to prevent you from copying games. In fact, some games on steam can be bought without DRM from other sources. Steam just forces you to use Steam or buy your games again.
Kudos 12y ago
Can someone explain to me how businesses can provide a subscription model without DRM? I refuse to purchase anything with DRM, but I don't give a shit if it's a rental or subscription service.
briantakita 12y ago
Anyone who commits double speak is not worthy of trust.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
userbinator 12y ago
The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices. One thing that's always seemed odd to me is that the DRM use case is presented as a battle with "content providers" on one side and everyone else on the other, but aren't these content providers also users? Do they also consume DRM'd content, and if so, are they perfectly fine with the restrictions? Do those who devise DRM schemes not realise that they may also be the ones who will have these schemes imposed on them?
ingenter 12y ago
>Without DRM, you take the DVD and stick it into a DVD player that ignores "unskippable" labels, and jump straight to the movie. >With DRM, there is no licensed player that can do this So, enforcing some rules (via DRM) to the player manufacturing, content provider makes my experience worse as a consumer. Again, I am a consumer, what is the advantages of DRM for me? So manufacturer must enforce me watching ads?
- IanCal 12y ago
  The argument would be that it is necessary to keep people paying for legit copies (ones that pay the original producer). Same as having a branch of the tax office dedicated to finding fraud, it has absolutely no direct benefit to a good taxpayer and only downsides. It's there because it's argued to be necessary to keep tax revenue at the point it should be. The first part is what's being argued about, I don't think anyone is arguing it has a direct benefit to consumers.
nijiko 12y ago
Eh, at the end of the day, there are thousands of ways to go around it, so why implement it in the first place? People pay for things that are good, easy to pay for, are appropriately priced, and not a burden or expense more than they see it worth (has to deal with pricing and roadblocks). DRM, and poor delivery services are usually those roadblocks.
chacham15 12y ago
While everything that is said in the article is true, the end result is that the control that the distributers want to have is circumvented by pirating. Therefore, by continuing to try and control the content more, what is actually being done is increasing the demand for pirated content. I know of many people who buy content legally and then in addition acquire the pirated version to use as they please. Therefore, as that process becomes easier (lookup popcorn time to see how easy it can be), the purpose of the control becomes more meaningless.
mkempe 12y ago
If one wants a parallel to social-politial battles around the means of production in recent centuries, it's an attempt by licensing companies to abolish ownership of reproductions of works of art -- and to establish a monopoly on the means of distribution. My perception is that few people understand or care -- and the US political elite mostly acquiesces because it has been (or wants to be) bought by those aspiring monopolists.
chrisjlee84 12y ago
Yes and David Sterling is clearly not a racist.
gcb0 12y ago
dammit, reading G+ on a small 720p laptop screen is absolute hell.
QuantumChaos 12y ago
This argument is completely ridiculous. Control of how a person consumes content that they legally own is incidental. If a company can force you to buy content rather than pirating, they will make a lot more money. Controlling the exact manner in which you consume that content is the icing on the cake.
- josteink 12y ago
  Controlling the exact manner in which you consume that content is the icing on the cake. I'd rather put that as "attempting to control the exact manner in which you consume that content is how you lose valuable business". But that's just me.
tbronchain 12y ago
and that makes perfect sense!
RegW 12y ago
I have come to find the whole circular debate about DRM particularly boring. So much so, that I won't bother to read the whole article or comments here. Yes, DRM is always broken - eventually, but yes it does work - sort of. It is a technology and legal arms race in a constantly changing landscape. > DRM's purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well. No not really. DRM's purpose is to give content providers a return on their investment, everything else is just a consequence of trying to achieve this. DRM isn't going to go away as along as people want to be paid for creating content, and other people want to get that content without paying for it. Sadly it is probably true that it is always the biggest players that get the biggest slice of the pie. Irritatingly the open source community refuse to engage in this battle and support the small player. As a consequence the smaller content providers have no choice but to hook up with the big commercial channels who decide how big a cut they want.
torgoguys 12y ago
So I read the page, but find the argument VERY unconvincing. If that really was the goal of DRM, then you wouldn't need the really complicated schemes used. You just come up with a simple scheme that legally requires licensing and always use that. No need to keep switching schemes, adding more safeguards, and so forth. The content creators still get the same leverage over the legal distribution channels because they can still be forced to follow the rules outlined in the examples. That and it lowers your R&D costs on making complicated DRM. If the article is true, what have I missed?

782 points by adrianmsmith 12y ago

Interesting. I was unaware of this. But if this is the case, why is there such a push to put DRM in HTML? Browsers aren't DVD players. Users are free to use software like ABP to circumvent any features like "unskippable ads" mentioned in the post. Pressure on browser makers seems much less valuable than pressure on device makers.

eurleif 12y ago
I don't think ABP and other extensions will have access to the DRM player. Isn't the whole point for the browser to just blindly embed the code provided by the media bosses?
couchand 12y ago
For that exact reason -- browsers are the one "device" still open. They already have basically every other mainstream entertainment channel, if they can lock down browsers they'll have it all.
cortesoft 12y ago
If DRM is implemented in HTML, then you WON'T be free to use software like ABP, since it will be a 'circumvention' method. Now, it will be harder to prevent software circumvention rather than hardware circumvention, but it will still be in the same legal situation.
eli 12y ago
If AdBlock becomes a big enough problem, publishers will create "unskippable" ads with current technology. HTML doesn't really change that. It's always been a cat and mouse with ad blockers.
- pkinsky 12y ago
  It's possible to build a website that renders itself unusable if an ad fails to load, to prevent browsers with AdBlock enabled from viewing your content. The problem with this approach is that if a single ad fails to load for any reason, the entire website goes down. Do you trust your ad network to have 100% uptime?
  - eli 12y ago
    There are ways to engineer around that, but it's always been a cat and mouse game. My point is that it's a side issue; ad blocking doesn't have much to do with having an "official" DRM spec. You can make ads harder to block without it, and you can probably still find a way to block ads with it.
  - wtracy 12y ago
    Do you think that the likes of Disney and Sony care? If the ad network is down, they're not getting paid for that view, anyway.
    - pkinsky 12y ago
      Even if we assume that each page only loads a single ad, which either succeeds or fails, the perception of a site being unreliable hurts the company running it. Household names like Disney and Sony might be able to live with that, but they'll still do everything possible to avoid downtime.
- er35826 12y ago
  But right now, it's a legal cat and mouse game for both sides. With DRM, it becomes illegal for the mouse to do anything but get eaten.
  - eli 12y ago
    Maybe I'm just missing something, but I don't see why DRM being implemented in an HTML spec is any different from implementing it in Flash or Silverlight or Javascript. The DMCA doesn't care about specs. I could "protect" the copyright on my site's content with a trivial bit of a javascript, and you would arguably be circumventing it with your ad blocker. (To be clear: I think the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions are terrible policy.)

couchand 12y ago

Had CDs been encrypted, iPods would not have been able to read their content, because the content providers would have been able to use their DRM contracts as leverage to prevent it. Moreover, the iPod most likely would have never been invented. How about that for killing innovation?

zachlipton 12y ago
And, to engage in some historical guesswork, if the iPod never happened, what would have happened to the iPhone and iPad? It's not that smartphones and tablets in some form never would have happened without the iPod, but it's hard for me to see Apple having a role.
- dsr_ 12y ago
  The smartphone market got into gear with Palm (and Handspring, then Palm bought Handspring...) merging their PDAs with a cellphone. If you don't recall PalmOS, the major user interface was a resistive touch screen (160x160 mono ranging up to 320x320 16K color) and a stylus, with no keyboard on most models. The keyboard lack was countered by a handwriting recognition system that took a very low-CPU power approach: Graffiti has its own gesture alphabet, which takes an hour or two to learn. By specifying the way every letter had to be drawn, and specifying where on the screen it would be recognized, a Motorola 68K was acceptable, and a 300MHz low-end ARM felt snappy. PalmOS had a database format which lives on to this day as part of the Mobi ebook file spec.
- dublinben 12y ago
  It's likely that smartphones would have never escaped the enterprise (Blackberry, Palm, WinPho 6, etc.) if the iPhone hadn't been released. Apple always put music front and center in their presentation of the iPhone, for good reason.
  - Zak 12y ago
    I don't think so. I was starting to see Palm and Windows smartphones in the hands of consumers without especially advanced tech backgrounds a decade ago as well as the occasional Sidekick. Android was in development at the time as well, and while early prototypes don't seem nearly as consumer-friendly as iPhones, many early production models were similarly unimpressive. It may have taken a bit longer, but I think the mainstream popularity of smartphones was inevitable.

Karellen 12y ago

Previous discussion (421 days ago, 22 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5406733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5406733

programminggeek 12y ago

I was going to say, the purpose of DRM is to get you to pay for multiple licenses. It's the same reason why a lot of paid download software is now on a SAAS model. If you can buy 1 copy of something for $20 and use it on whatever devices you want, then the company has made $20. If you DRM that to be for just one device, and you have 5 devices, they make $100. If you are a SAAS operator, you are effectively doing the same thing. Somehow people are more okay with paying an ongoing fee for software or some perceived notion of services, but that same does't yet apply to content in a larger way. The closest equivalent is probably the cable companies and they are taking their huge sums of money and are buying the media companies, so maybe eventually there will be just a flat $100/month fee for experiencing a company's content on whatever device/experience it's available on. Maybe even movie theaters.

lomnakkus 12y ago
> Somehow people are more okay with paying an ongoing fee for software or some perceived notion of services, but that same does't yet apply to content in a larger way. I think it's pretty simple to see why this is: Once created (digital) content is inert and doesn't really require any ongoing maintenance as such. Software always requires some sort of ongoing maintenance.
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  Some of the most amazing digital content is transformative, and supported by an ongoing community of people producing and transforming it. Any one individual work is "inert", but the value is in the body of work as a whole. And none of that would be possible with DRM.
  - marvy 12y ago
    example?
    - dublinben 12y ago
      See any of the works by the artist Pogo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY&list=TLIfADM1J0RJOCLzaKkvK2tb17PWmD_4Fs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY&list=TLIfADM1J0R...

webmaven 12y ago

Needs a [2013] label in the title.

dang 12y ago
Good catch. Done.

gagege 12y ago

Why isn't screen capture software more widely used? It seems like a dead simple screen capture suite could make all these DRM worries go away.

batmansbelt 12y ago
For pirating DRMed material? Probably because every major DRM scheme has been compromised, so it's easier to just grab the original stream. If you're talking about in relation to the article, how would screen capture software let you skip ads? I could see it used for multiplexing, but playback on multiple devices would be tricky unless you ripped the content first.
valarauca1 12y ago
It's actually incredibly simple to do this. Open Boardcaster is free and does this well.
guelo 12y ago
That's why they want DRM control all the way down to the hardware.
HackinOut 12y ago
I think it's used widely enough: God is it ugly... You are screwing up with FPS and then you have to re-encode on top of your already encoded (i.e. not raw), captured thing , eww... Plenty of cleaner ways, like DVD or Blu-Rays which protections are cracked and with which you get the untampered original.

shmerl 12y ago

Of course not. Reasons for demanding DRM can be different, but none of them are valid or good. As discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7745009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7745009 common reasons are: 1. Monopolistic lock-in. DRM is more than often used to control the market. It happened with Apple in the past, and was one of the key reasons that music publishers realized that being DRM-free is actually better for them. This reason also includes DRM derivatives like DMCA-1201 and the like. It's all about control (over the markets, over users and etc.). 2. Covering one's incompetence. DRM is used to justify failing sales (i.e. when execs are questioned about why the product performs poorly, they say "Pirates! But worry not - we put more DRM in place"). 3. Ignorance and / or stupidity (many execs have no clue and might believe that DRM actually provides some benefit). This type can be called DRM Lysenkoism.

jbk 12y ago

This is one of the most important points about DRM. DRM are marketed to users (and the society, including politicians) and to artists as a way to prevent copies. Most engineers implementing DRMs think so too. And all the discussions we've seen on HTML5 are around this. People have little arguments against this because it "sounds morally good" to help artist "live of their creations". I am the de facto maintainer of libdvdcss, and have been involved on libbluray (and related projects) and a few other libraries of the same style; I've done several conferences on this precise subject and I've fought the French High-Authority-on-DRM in legal questioning about an unclear piece of law... Therefore, I've studied DRM quite closely... The truth is that if you consider the main goal of DRM to prevent copies, no DRM actually work. ALL of them got defeated in a way or another. Indeed, GoT-broadcast-to-top-of-TPB time is counted in a couple of hours; so why do they try to push those technologies still? The answer is probably because the main goal of DRM is to control distribution channels, not copy-prevention. Copy-prevention is a side goal. This post of Ian is excellent to explain this. PS: You can see me speaking of the same point, in French, in June 2013 here: http://www.acuraz.net/team-videolan-lors-de-pas-sage-en-seine-2013/ http://www.acuraz.net/team-videolan-lors-de-pas-sage-en-sein... NB: I'm not discussing here whether DRM are good or bad.

shmerl 12y ago
It doesn't sound morally good because it's overreaching and preemptive policing (even if we falsely assume that DRM is effective). The fact is, most people don't think this issue through and don't realize how crooked and unethical the whole idea of DRM is.
- jbk 12y ago
  I'm sorry if I was not clear on this part. If you speak about DRM-for-copy-prevention to people in the street, a lot of them consider it as a 'necessary evil' because 'the artists need to live of their work'. When you know more about DRM, you usually have stronger arguments against, of course.
  - shmerl 12y ago

jiggy2011 12y ago

Pretty much this. The people who will pirate are going to pirate regardless, you could offer all your movies DRM free for $1 each and some people will still pirate them. So the purpose of DRM is to make maximum revenue from those who won't pirate, for example by charging more for group viewings of the movie or viewing on multiple devices.

electromagnetic 12y ago
It's important to identify that the price of a piece of media is not the only cost associated with it. If it takes me 30 minutes round trip to get to a store, 15 minutes in a store. Let's say an hour total. Blockbuster went bankrupt because that expense was too excessive for people. You could rent from Netflix for a monthly fee and the DVDs got delivered to you, then the movies got streamed to you instantly. When I can sit on my arse and take 30 seconds to put on a movie, there's a massive 'cost' difference between a $1 DVD rental and a $8 monthly subscription, and the monthly subscription is extremely cheap. Our world has entire industries worth billions of dollars around convenience and it's getting bigger every day. DRM is purposefully inconvenient, which means it's constantly on a losing battle. However the question we have to ask is, is this losing battle a necessary evil to ensure the production of content? I'm a writer in my free time. I do it for fun, and I might make money from it. A $100mil budget movie isn't going to be made for fun and the chance of making some money from it.
- jiggy2011 12y ago
  Most of the inconvenience around DRM is because implementations can be buggy and it's often built into sub-par software but I don't think it's necessarily by design. Services like Steam and Netflix are doing well by providing more convenient implementations. The endgame for DRM could well be that it becomes totally transparent, you consume whatever media you want on whatever device you want whenever you want and you get a bill every month based on some complicated price matrix and people will just pay it the same way they do their phone bill.
  - dublinben 12y ago

jamesbrownuhh 12y ago

What DRM does is makes the 'pirate' goods, the 'hacked' players, the illegitimate rips, better, more usable, more flexible, and generally superior in every way to the officially released product. Which I'm sure is not the intention. Say I can't copy-and-paste a section from an eBook or run it through a speech reader? Tell me I can't skip the trailers before watching the DVD I have paid for? No. Fuck you. Bullshit like that is a red rag to a bull - you just created an army of people who'll bust off your "rights management" just to show you how wrong you are, and that YOU DO NOT GET TO DECIDE how people consume the things they own. Sorry and all. But that's how it is.

jeremyjh 12y ago
I own some DVDs, but I don't own any movies. If you want to own a movie, you pretty much have to make it yourself.
- jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
  Truthfully, these days I actually find more value in most "self-made media" the anything that "the organised content industry" has to offer.
userbinator 12y ago
Summarised succinctly by this image: http://cdn.techpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/gxzev.jpg http://cdn.techpp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/gxzev.jpg
josho 12y ago
Unfortunately, these companies are often quite subtle and make the initial product much better than predecessors. For example, my experience with the early DVDs was that they had no unskippable content. Then, years later after I had tossed my VCR every new DVD seemed to have all kinds of crap front loaded that I couldn't skip. So, DRM done right from the content owner's perspective makes the early experience quite better than what it displaces. Once everyone is locked into the format, then the DRM switches start to tighten and its too late for consumers to move on. Of course there are counter examples, like you mention, but what scares me about DRM is how if it's done right, nobody will mind DRM at first because it's better than the old way of doing things. Then one day, we all wake up and realize that we've been tricked because we are locked in and can't change. Today, we all love Netflix, but I wonder what the experience will be once disks have vanished and their growth slows. At that point will we experience FBI warnings, forced ads & trailers?

pje 12y ago

> Had CDs been encrypted, iPods would not have been able to read their content, because the content providers would have been able to use their DRM contracts as leverage to prevent it. What? Why? Nothing would have prevented people from recording the playback of an encrypted CD and putting that on their iPod.

dublinben 12y ago
How well did that work for minidisc players?
zeidrich 12y ago
Sure it would. Apple would have not been keen to develop a technology that relied on illegal copying to start with. Copying music CD's was a grey area, but it's a grey area that you can do in a semi-legal capacity. There was no reason legally that Apple couldn't create a CD ripping process in iTunes. It's the user's responsibility to not use it illegally. However, if CDs were encrypted, Apple would get in trouble if they broke that encryption to let you copy CDs to your iPad. You could find some more shady 3rd party tools that would work around it, but Apple's whole model is that it's easy to use and that it just works. Having to download an illegal 3rd party tool to rip your CDs and put them on your iPod isn't something they would do. Similarly, iPods have had video playback for ages now, but there is no method to copy DVD video to your iPod through Apple's tools. You can pop in a CD and it asks you if you want to import it into your library. You pop in a DVD and it just asks if you want to play, no option to import. If they let you import it, they would be breaking laws. The brand is established, and was established by the simple copying of music, so it's not important that it can't copy video as easily. But if it couldn't copy music easily, would it have even been a thing?
- josho 12y ago
  Further to your point, it has historically been hard to find any commercial software that converts a DVD to a digital file (so it's not just Apple). The reason for this is that under US law (DMCA I believe) it is illegal to circumvent DRM, a DVD has a very basic DRM scheme. So, commercial companies avoided this area. While any programmers that saw a market opportunity and built something soon wound up removing the key DVD ripping feature of their software, likely a result from receiving a kind letter from a MPAA lawyer.

josephlord 12y ago

This rings quite true to me. I had protracted arguments about the limitations the BBC wanted to impose on TVs supporting Freeview HD in the UK (copy protection flags and only encrypted local streaming) despite the fact that the content itself was being broadcast at high power across the country completely unencrypted. What is it the CE companies need to license? The Huffman compression tables for the guide data which in the license agreement you have to warrant that they are trade secrets and that you won't reveal them. I did send the BBC a link to the MythTV source code which contains this trade secret. If you work out who I was working for during this discussion don't worry, the content arm of the company was (at least according to the BBC pressuring them the other way as a supplier). And the end result? We caved for the shiny Freeview HD sticker.

jljljl 12y ago

Speaking of controlling distribution channels, does anyone know how I can share this post outside of Google+, or add it to Pocket so that I can reread in more detail later?

avn2109 12y ago
Ye olde copy and paste, methinks.
Hixie 12y ago
There's no DRM on that page, it's just a Web page. Just copy and paste the content. "Save as HTML". Print to PDF. Whatever floats your boat. :-)

spacefight 12y ago

TL;DR "DRM's purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well."

10098 12y ago

I can still make "unauthorized" copies of DRM'ed media and play those back on non-drm devices. E.g. record sound from a locked-down music player using a microphone, convert that to MP3 and listen to it using a normal MP3 player. So it's not 100% bulletproof.

dudus 12y ago
I'm going to guess you didn't read the post
- 10098 12y ago
  I'm going to guess you didn't understand my point. Being able to create drm-free copies weakens the power content producers hope to achieve. If I can create a drm-free copy of a movie, I can stream it to any device I want, at no extra charge. I'll be able to watch the movie on my tv, phone, tablet, whatever, and they won't make a dime from it.

noonespecial 12y ago

Drm is primarily used in practice to do market segmentation. The rest of this comment is not available in your region.

hornetblack 12y ago
I like our 10+ year old Pioneer DVD player that ignores the region. Unfortunately the the region-free devices have become a rarity these days.
ojii 12y ago
Anyone got a torrent to the full comment?

briantakita 12y ago

Good thing it's easier than ever DIY.

HackinOut 12y ago

"Sure, the DRM systems have all been broken [...]" I have worked with MS PlayReady DRM (which is the "latest" one from Microsoft, the one used by Netflix) for some time and never stumbled upon any cracks. Not because it's impossible or even difficult but probably just because nobody cares about cracking Netflix (which brings PlayReady it's main source of "users")... Once you pay, you can watch as much as you like, why bother. Netflix made it extremely simple and accessible. (Yes some features like multicasting might be missing but it's still way better than Plesk or PopcornTime. For now at least... The main problem is clearly that the Film industry make it too difficult to have all content in one place). There is plenty of other "easier" sources (alternative VOD offerings with already cracked/worse protections, Blu-rays) to get the copyrighted material from for underground channels. I am sure other DRM systems have a clear log for the same reason: No major incentive to crack them.

azakai 12y ago

This is very true, but also preaching to the choir. Probably most of an audience like HN already knows this. The real question is what we can do to fight DRM. The only real option is to push back against the companies that promote it. For EME, the current DRM in the news, the relevant companies are Google, Microsoft and Netflix. It's all well and good to talk about how DRM is pointless. Of course it is pointless. But unless we actually push back against those companies, DRM will continue to win.

drchaos 12y ago
> The real question is what we can do to fight DRM. The best way to hit them is to hit them in the wallet, which means pirating on principle. Don't buy DVDs or BluRays, cancel cable, Netflix etc., learn about alternatives like TPB and PopcornTime and teach others about them. Every cent you spend for Hollywood's products is used to sponsor DRM, and things like the DMCA on a political level, so make sure they don't get a single cent from you. While this may sound like a David-against-Goliath effort, keep in mind that pirating content has an intrinsic value proposition (maximum usability, zero cost, no censorship) which can never be exceeded by DRM offerings. So it isn't difficult to convince anyone to pirate instead of buying, you just have to show them how ;) What we must get rid of is the (content-industry sponsored) notion that piracy is somehow immoral. It isn't. Trying to take away the rights of users just because they don't go along well with a specific business model is. (note: of course all this only applies to DRM content, and companies advocating it. Non-DRM offerings like gog.com, independent artists etc. are fine and should be paid for if used).
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- rwl 12y ago
  > The real question is what we can do to fight DRM. > Of course all this only applies to DRM content, and companies advocating it. Non-DRM offerings like gog.com, independent artists etc. are fine and should be paid for if used What else? The root of the problem seems to be that major media companies are demanding DRM. For most of media that most people want to consume, there are no DRM-free alternatives, except pirating, which does carry some risks. It's hard to recommend pirating as a solution to the average media consumer, since the legal consequences can be bankrupting, and avoiding those risks ("just set up an anonymous VPN for your torrents!") requires technical know-how that most don't have. I think we need more thought about the following: 1. How can we convince the producers of popular media to release it without DRM? Many will say it can't happen without a serious change in the structure of the media business; but there might be some room for solutions here, like Mozilla's "watermarking" idea, that give these companies most of what they're looking for (more control over distribution and remedies for infringement) without making the copies of this media basically unusable from a consumer's perspective. Legal remedies were enough for these companies before the rise of digital media and the Internet; could publishers be convinced to abandon DRM if a better legal framework for distribution and infringement was available? 2. How can we get people to like, and pay for, media that is produced and released without DRM by independent publishers? As others have pointed out, these publishers generally already know that DRM is not in their interest. But they have two problems: it's hard for people to find their stuff, and they don't have the capital to compete with large media companies on production value. What can be done to lower the barriers here? New tools that make indexing and searching for DRM-free media easy for consumers? New tools that make producing and marketing high-quality media easy for publishers? What should those look like?

tn13 12y ago

I do not think there is any problem with DRM. It is pretty much right of the content providers to chose how they will distribute their content. What really gets my gears grinding is when I see an open source browser like Firefox is forced against their wishes to implement it because DRM has somehow reached a standard. The job of W3C standards is to protect the interests of ordinary web users and not content providers.

crystaln 12y ago

There is zero evidence of this claim in this article. DRM is, in fact, to prevent unauthorized usage and copies. In fact, even some of the examples in this article are exactly that. What is more important is that DRM doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to make unauthorized usage very inconvenient - enough that a few dollars is worth the cost for most people.

TOMDM 12y ago
The issue is, is that DRM fails abysmally at this, all it takes is a couple minutes and someone with the right software, and -poof- your DRM is gone, and next thing you know, it's on the pirate bay, easier to acquire than legitimate means, and more convenient to use.
gkoz 12y ago
The article makes a distinction between different kinds of unauthorized usage (not all kinds are malicious or illegal). You don't seem to.
shmerl 12y ago
What's more important, DRM should never be used. Because it never makes pirating inconvenient to the 99.99...9% of the pirates. The 0.00...1% which go through the trouble of breaking that DRM redistribute DRM-free copy to all other pirates, who never deal with that DRM altogether. What it makes inconvenient is the usage of that service / product for users who actually pay for it. It's a brain dead idea.

beloch 12y ago

Nothing makes me want to turn pirate quite like being forced to sit through unskippable anti-piracy ads preceding a movie I've paid for.

ixwt 12y ago
If you press stop a few times, then play. This normally skips directly to the menu (works for me).
- walden42 12y ago
  Looks like you found a bug with your DVD player. Make sure NOT to report it.
  - ixwt 12y ago
    Actually I learned about this from an askreddit thread a while back. I tried it, and it worked. Skipped to the menu when the menu button wouldn't.
rurounijones 12y ago
Or "Coming soon" segments for movies release a decade ago.

mfisher87 12y ago

Steam would have been a great example for his article. Steam does nothing to prevent you from copying games. In fact, some games on steam can be bought without DRM from other sources. Steam just forces you to use Steam or buy your games again.

Kudos 12y ago

Can someone explain to me how businesses can provide a subscription model without DRM? I refuse to purchase anything with DRM, but I don't give a shit if it's a rental or subscription service.

briantakita 12y ago

Anyone who commits double speak is not worthy of trust.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

userbinator 12y ago

The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices. One thing that's always seemed odd to me is that the DRM use case is presented as a battle with "content providers" on one side and everyone else on the other, but aren't these content providers also users? Do they also consume DRM'd content, and if so, are they perfectly fine with the restrictions? Do those who devise DRM schemes not realise that they may also be the ones who will have these schemes imposed on them?

ingenter 12y ago

>Without DRM, you take the DVD and stick it into a DVD player that ignores "unskippable" labels, and jump straight to the movie. >With DRM, there is no licensed player that can do this So, enforcing some rules (via DRM) to the player manufacturing, content provider makes my experience worse as a consumer. Again, I am a consumer, what is the advantages of DRM for me? So manufacturer must enforce me watching ads?

IanCal 12y ago
The argument would be that it is necessary to keep people paying for legit copies (ones that pay the original producer). Same as having a branch of the tax office dedicated to finding fraud, it has absolutely no direct benefit to a good taxpayer and only downsides. It's there because it's argued to be necessary to keep tax revenue at the point it should be. The first part is what's being argued about, I don't think anyone is arguing it has a direct benefit to consumers.

nijiko 12y ago

Eh, at the end of the day, there are thousands of ways to go around it, so why implement it in the first place? People pay for things that are good, easy to pay for, are appropriately priced, and not a burden or expense more than they see it worth (has to deal with pricing and roadblocks). DRM, and poor delivery services are usually those roadblocks.

chacham15 12y ago

While everything that is said in the article is true, the end result is that the control that the distributers want to have is circumvented by pirating. Therefore, by continuing to try and control the content more, what is actually being done is increasing the demand for pirated content. I know of many people who buy content legally and then in addition acquire the pirated version to use as they please. Therefore, as that process becomes easier (lookup popcorn time to see how easy it can be), the purpose of the control becomes more meaningless.

mkempe 12y ago

If one wants a parallel to social-politial battles around the means of production in recent centuries, it's an attempt by licensing companies to abolish ownership of reproductions of works of art -- and to establish a monopoly on the means of distribution. My perception is that few people understand or care -- and the US political elite mostly acquiesces because it has been (or wants to be) bought by those aspiring monopolists.

chrisjlee84 12y ago

Yes and David Sterling is clearly not a racist.

gcb0 12y ago

dammit, reading G+ on a small 720p laptop screen is absolute hell.

QuantumChaos 12y ago

This argument is completely ridiculous. Control of how a person consumes content that they legally own is incidental. If a company can force you to buy content rather than pirating, they will make a lot more money. Controlling the exact manner in which you consume that content is the icing on the cake.

josteink 12y ago
Controlling the exact manner in which you consume that content is the icing on the cake. I'd rather put that as "attempting to control the exact manner in which you consume that content is how you lose valuable business". But that's just me.

tbronchain 12y ago

and that makes perfect sense!

RegW 12y ago

I have come to find the whole circular debate about DRM particularly boring. So much so, that I won't bother to read the whole article or comments here. Yes, DRM is always broken - eventually, but yes it does work - sort of. It is a technology and legal arms race in a constantly changing landscape. > DRM's purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well. No not really. DRM's purpose is to give content providers a return on their investment, everything else is just a consequence of trying to achieve this. DRM isn't going to go away as along as people want to be paid for creating content, and other people want to get that content without paying for it. Sadly it is probably true that it is always the biggest players that get the biggest slice of the pie. Irritatingly the open source community refuse to engage in this battle and support the small player. As a consequence the smaller content providers have no choice but to hook up with the big commercial channels who decide how big a cut they want.

torgoguys 12y ago

So I read the page, but find the argument VERY unconvincing. If that really was the goal of DRM, then you wouldn't need the really complicated schemes used. You just come up with a simple scheme that legally requires licensing and always use that. No need to keep switching schemes, adding more safeguards, and so forth. The content creators still get the same leverage over the legal distribution channels because they can still be forced to follow the rules outlined in the examples. That and it lowers your R&D costs on making complicated DRM. If the article is true, what have I missed?