7 ms·

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 conte

by exelius 12y 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 12y 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 12y 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 12y ago
    Ability of breaking it applies all the same to DRM for video, or books and etc. So that doesn't differentiate them.
    - exelius 12y 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.
      - shmerl 12y ago
        > 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. I didn't understand that. What does "protect the media" mean if it's not about piracy?
        exelius 12y ago
        Ensuring the media can only be played back according to the terms of the business agreement. Netflix pays a certain amount for US distribution rights to Disney movies. If a UK company didn't enforce the geographical restrictions in their contract, they are effectively distributing in the US without paying for it. Netflix would not be happy with that. It's less about people using VPNs or downloading torrents -- you can't stop that as easily. But the legal distribution methods have to make an honest attempt at ensuring the contractual restrictions are honored or else they become meaningless. I'm not arguing that these geographic or windowing restrictions are a good thing -- just that they're a thing and they have value in a contract that companies want to protect. The pirates aren't the issue here -- the competition is.
wpietri 12y ago
> It's not about artists; it's about distribution (which eventually makes it back to artists, but that's another story entirely). Does it make it back to artists? Stronger control of distribution channels would increase power of the distributors. Which I think would make it easier for them to minimize artist payouts. The monopsony equivalent of an oligopoly, whatever that's called. An example that springs to mind is music. In 1994, Steve Albini wrote a legendary breakdown of how much it sucked for artists [1]. He recently said that the Internet's open distribution has greatly reduced their power. [2] [1] http://www.thebaffler.com/past/problem_with_music http://www.thebaffler.com/past/problem_with_music [2] http://qz.com/202194/steve-albini-the-problem-with-music-has-been-solved-by-the-internet/ http://qz.com/202194/steve-albini-the-problem-with-music-has...
- b1daly 12y ago
  Do you get that without a distribution channel there is no hope of an artist getting paid. Running a distribution channel business is really hard, only the true fanatic would consider doing the grunt work for love and glory.

by exelius 12y ago

shmerl 12y 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 12y 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 12y ago
  Ability of breaking it applies all the same to DRM for video, or books and etc. So that doesn't differentiate them.
  - exelius 12y 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.
    - shmerl 12y ago
      > 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. I didn't understand that. What does "protect the media" mean if it's not about piracy?
      - exelius 12y ago
        Ensuring the media can only be played back according to the terms of the business agreement. Netflix pays a certain amount for US distribution rights to Disney movies. If a UK company didn't enforce the geographical restrictions in their contract, they are effectively distributing in the US without paying for it. Netflix would not be happy with that. It's less about people using VPNs or downloading torrents -- you can't stop that as easily. But the legal distribution methods have to make an honest attempt at ensuring the contractual restrictions are honored or else they become meaningless. I'm not arguing that these geographic or windowing restrictions are a good thing -- just that they're a thing and they have value in a contract that companies want to protect. The pirates aren't the issue here -- the competition is.

wpietri 12y ago

> It's not about artists; it's about distribution (which eventually makes it back to artists, but that's another story entirely). Does it make it back to artists? Stronger control of distribution channels would increase power of the distributors. Which I think would make it easier for them to minimize artist payouts. The monopsony equivalent of an oligopoly, whatever that's called. An example that springs to mind is music. In 1994, Steve Albini wrote a legendary breakdown of how much it sucked for artists [1]. He recently said that the Internet's open distribution has greatly reduced their power. [2] [1] http://www.thebaffler.com/past/problem_with_music http://www.thebaffler.com/past/problem_with_music [2] http://qz.com/202194/steve-albini-the-problem-with-music-has-been-solved-by-the-internet/ http://qz.com/202194/steve-albini-the-problem-with-music-has...

b1daly 12y ago
Do you get that without a distribution channel there is no hope of an artist getting paid. Running a distribution channel business is really hard, only the true fanatic would consider doing the grunt work for love and glory.