18 ms·

"The answer is probably because the main goal of DRM is to control distribution channels, not copy-prevention." How is this, in principle, inconsistent with "h

by hga 13y ago

"The answer is probably because the main goal of DRM is to control distribution channels, not copy-prevention." How is this, in principle, inconsistent with "helping artists live off their creations"? How IP products are sold, though what sort of channels at what prices, has to inherently be a part of that, if for no other reason than that these companies won't be sending rich royalties to artists for unsuccessful properties, they're not charities. Which is very different than reality, of course. Don't know about the French scene besides the movies I like, but as you've probably heard, Hollywood has its own very special kind of accounting, although I suppose its stars tend to get less screwed than US recording artists. To reify this, back in the '70s, thanks to a loophole in US law, my family (and many others) made a lot of money making unauthorized by record labels 8-track tapes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-track_tape https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-track_tape). This was legal as long as you sent the artists their royalties. BUT, the biggest relevant entity to do that through, ASCAP, absolutely refused to accept payments from my father, who on advice of his lawyer put the money in an escrow account....

jbk 13y ago
> How is this, in principle, inconsistent with "helping artists live off their creations"? In principle, it's not. The point was that I prefer when things are correctly labeled and explained to people, for them to choose.
- shmerl 13y ago
  The fact that the public is misled about intentions behind DRM only demonstrates the point that it should not be acceptable. But the public somehow needs to become aware about it first.
exelius 13y ago
It's not about artists; it's about distribution (which eventually makes it back to artists, but that's another story entirely). The distribution of media content is controlled through very complex business agreements where the content rights owners assign licenses and limited copy rights to other organizations based on a number of factors, including time windows, geographic restrictions, device restrictions, etc. The content owners generally do not trust the distributors to enforce these restrictions; nor should they (why have 500 implementations of something when you can support 2 or 3?) Enter DRM. When digital copies of content are given to a distributor for distribution, that content is encrypted. Usually this content must be played through a special player that contacts a DRM license server to get a decryption key. One of the things this player does is verify you have an account with rights to play the content. The company you have an account with has certain distribution rights (like the content is only licensed for playback in the UK before December 1, 2014), so the player then checks your location through some mechanism (GPS, geolocation, etc) and the date before decrypting and playing the content. If it's after December 1 or you're outside the UK, it won't play back. Because the player has to be trusted to enforce these restrictions, that rules out any sort of open source player. Even if the default distribution of the player enforced the rules, it would be trivial to modify it and remove this enforcement mechanism. Hence why DRM is so despised by the open source crowd. For better or for worse, these types of distribution agreements are fundamental to how the media industry works. Sometimes rights will get passed along two or three times before they actually make it into the hands of the consumer (e.g. a studio licenses their US movie distribution to Disney, who then licenses a subset of films to Epix, who then licenses a subset of those to Amazon, but only in a certain window). It's likely not changing any time soon because as you said, it makes the owners of this IP a lot of money. DRM can be broken relatively easily if piracy is your goal; but the real goal of DRM is to provide content owners control over legal distribution channels.
- shmerl 13y ago
  > For better or for worse, these types of distribution agreements are fundamental to how the media industry works. They are not fundamental at all. They are PRed as such. Yet, counter examples of DRM-free distribution disprove any need for them. > It's likely not changing any time soon because as you said, it makes the owners of this IP a lot of money. It can change depending on competition. Advance of crowdfunding helps artists and independent studios to release their works without involvement of thick-skulled publishers who drag this DRM insanity into the distribution. Most indie releases are DRM-free. One can ponder why that is. They also need to make money, so one can't claim they have less business sense than legacy publishers. For example, in computer games there are more and more DRM-free releases coming out each year. And this already includes funded by publishers, and not just indie games. With more competition releasing something DRM-free, there would be more reasons for publishers to change their attitude. With movie industry that doesn't happen yet because competition is still weak. Most publishers are a tight conglomerate of related companies which follow the same policies and agree on common terms. It can be enough for one strong disruptor to break that situation.
  - exelius 13y ago
    I'm not saying that another business model is impossible, but that's not how the industry works today. DRM for PC games has always been an iffy proposition anyway. It's just too hard to enforce and too easy to crack since you can just access the program on the stack and remove the DRM checks. This is harder to do on more secure platforms like mobile or consoles; which is where much of the media consumption has headed.
    - shmerl 13y ago
      Ability of breaking it applies all the same to DRM for video, or books and etc. So that doesn't differentiate them.
      - exelius 13y ago
        Right; but with streaming media it's less about piracy and more about ensuring that the default option for the intermediaries is to protect the media, not leave it unprotected.
marcosdumay 13y ago
Controlling distribution channels is equivalent to "screwing artist by having a monopoly to their audience", not to "helping artists live off their creations"
morsch 13y ago
To reify this, back in the '70s, thanks to a loophole in US law, my family (and many others) made a lot of money making unauthorized by record labels 8-track tapes. Eh? What loophole was that? The Wikipedia article doesn't mention it.
- hga 13y ago
  Copyright law was insufficiently specific about copied media, which I guess wasn't much of an issue when pressing discs way back the, and in retrospect it's clear the Congress hadn't been captured by the RIAA, heck, I suspect back then they weren't too popular, so it took quite some time to close. This was big enough to be covered in US News and World Report, the general weekly news magazine my parents subscribed to back then (competitor with Time and Newsweek). Time period would be in the early to mid-'70, or at least that's when my family started doing this for a few years.

by hga 13y ago

jbk 13y ago

> How is this, in principle, inconsistent with "helping artists live off their creations"? In principle, it's not. The point was that I prefer when things are correctly labeled and explained to people, for them to choose.

shmerl 13y ago
The fact that the public is misled about intentions behind DRM only demonstrates the point that it should not be acceptable. But the public somehow needs to become aware about it first.

exelius 13y ago

It's not about artists; it's about distribution (which eventually makes it back to artists, but that's another story entirely). The distribution of media content is controlled through very complex business agreements where the content rights owners assign licenses and limited copy rights to other organizations based on a number of factors, including time windows, geographic restrictions, device restrictions, etc. The content owners generally do not trust the distributors to enforce these restrictions; nor should they (why have 500 implementations of something when you can support 2 or 3?) Enter DRM. When digital copies of content are given to a distributor for distribution, that content is encrypted. Usually this content must be played through a special player that contacts a DRM license server to get a decryption key. One of the things this player does is verify you have an account with rights to play the content. The company you have an account with has certain distribution rights (like the content is only licensed for playback in the UK before December 1, 2014), so the player then checks your location through some mechanism (GPS, geolocation, etc) and the date before decrypting and playing the content. If it's after December 1 or you're outside the UK, it won't play back. Because the player has to be trusted to enforce these restrictions, that rules out any sort of open source player. Even if the default distribution of the player enforced the rules, it would be trivial to modify it and remove this enforcement mechanism. Hence why DRM is so despised by the open source crowd. For better or for worse, these types of distribution agreements are fundamental to how the media industry works. Sometimes rights will get passed along two or three times before they actually make it into the hands of the consumer (e.g. a studio licenses their US movie distribution to Disney, who then licenses a subset of films to Epix, who then licenses a subset of those to Amazon, but only in a certain window). It's likely not changing any time soon because as you said, it makes the owners of this IP a lot of money. DRM can be broken relatively easily if piracy is your goal; but the real goal of DRM is to provide content owners control over legal distribution channels.

shmerl 13y ago
> For better or for worse, these types of distribution agreements are fundamental to how the media industry works. They are not fundamental at all. They are PRed as such. Yet, counter examples of DRM-free distribution disprove any need for them. > It's likely not changing any time soon because as you said, it makes the owners of this IP a lot of money. It can change depending on competition. Advance of crowdfunding helps artists and independent studios to release their works without involvement of thick-skulled publishers who drag this DRM insanity into the distribution. Most indie releases are DRM-free. One can ponder why that is. They also need to make money, so one can't claim they have less business sense than legacy publishers. For example, in computer games there are more and more DRM-free releases coming out each year. And this already includes funded by publishers, and not just indie games. With more competition releasing something DRM-free, there would be more reasons for publishers to change their attitude. With movie industry that doesn't happen yet because competition is still weak. Most publishers are a tight conglomerate of related companies which follow the same policies and agree on common terms. It can be enough for one strong disruptor to break that situation.
- exelius 13y ago
  I'm not saying that another business model is impossible, but that's not how the industry works today. DRM for PC games has always been an iffy proposition anyway. It's just too hard to enforce and too easy to crack since you can just access the program on the stack and remove the DRM checks. This is harder to do on more secure platforms like mobile or consoles; which is where much of the media consumption has headed.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    Ability of breaking it applies all the same to DRM for video, or books and etc. So that doesn't differentiate them.
    - exelius 13y ago
      Right; but with streaming media it's less about piracy and more about ensuring that the default option for the intermediaries is to protect the media, not leave it unprotected.

marcosdumay 13y ago

Controlling distribution channels is equivalent to "screwing artist by having a monopoly to their audience", not to "helping artists live off their creations"

morsch 13y ago

To reify this, back in the '70s, thanks to a loophole in US law, my family (and many others) made a lot of money making unauthorized by record labels 8-track tapes. Eh? What loophole was that? The Wikipedia article doesn't mention it.

hga 13y ago
Copyright law was insufficiently specific about copied media, which I guess wasn't much of an issue when pressing discs way back the, and in retrospect it's clear the Congress hadn't been captured by the RIAA, heck, I suspect back then they weren't too popular, so it took quite some time to close. This was big enough to be covered in US News and World Report, the general weekly news magazine my parents subscribed to back then (competitor with Time and Newsweek). Time period would be in the early to mid-'70, or at least that's when my family started doing this for a few years.