5 ms·

I'm quite curious what would happen if DRM got banned and everything had to be open. I know it's wishful thinking however ironically I predict that content cre

by Fuxy 12y ago

I'm quite curious what would happen if DRM got banned and everything had to be open. I know it's wishful thinking however ironically I predict that content creators would experience an increase in sales since giving up control means that companies are given freedom to integrate all entertainment devices together and make them work more elegantly possibly offering something piracy might not be able to offer or has offered for a long time and legitimate sources just couldn't match it. It's a interesting idea that companies are very uncomfortable in exploring even though a very similar idea lead to the creation of the internet.

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
> I'm quite curious what would happen if DRM got banned and everything had to be open. While I personally support many copyright reforms, chief among them is that any work that is DRMed should be exempt from copyright protection. They should be forced to choose which they want, and not be allowed both. When they DRM a work, they're stealing from the future public domain... this has already happened, and the problem will only grow bigger. Right now, there exists media that cannot be recovered because of DRM. It's the Divx optical disc format from about 1999. Everything released on that format was released on others as well, so thankfully all of it is recoverable. But if there were works that could only be found on that (which is very plausible, considering that many older works exist only on some surviving piece of a single format)... then the crypto keys to recover them are already gone. Since the entire point of copyright is that you only get this protection so that the work may eventually enter the public domain, and since DRM will someday serve to make that impossible, no work that employs it should enjoy copyright protection.
- eurleif 12y ago
  >Since the entire point of copyright is that you only get this protection so that the work may eventually enter the public domain I've never heard that described as the purpose of copyright law. Why would it be? In the absence of copyright law, all works would effectively be in the public domain. I believe you're thinking of patent law. To get a patent, you have to release the details of your invention, which you could keep private otherwise. There's nothing equivalent with copyright law.
  - forgottenpass 12y ago
    I've never heard that described as the purpose of copyright law. Why would it be? In the absence of copyright law, all works would effectively be in the public domain. It's funny, when they passed the Copyright Term Extension Act the opponents of the bill literally argued to congress that it was killing the American philosophy that the purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of works that eventually fall into the public domain. In the United States, Copyright and Patent law derive from the "Copyright Clause" of the Constitution: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. This enables patent and copyright law. Patents do demand disclosure of details, but if you weren't worried someone would reverse engineer your product and get it to market before your patent expired, you'd just keep the details a trade secret. So I don't see how the disclosure aspect factors into duration. If it wasn't already, the CTEA turned the length of copyright protection into a function of the American movie and music industries ability to lobby congress with sob stories. I'm not even trying to be snide towards congress with that remark, ask anyone in IP law what they think will happen next time Steamboat Willy is set to drop into the public domain.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
    > I've never heard that described as the purpose of copyright law. Why would it be? That's because those who benefit from it don't want you to know the original purpose. If that's not the purpose, why even have copyright at all? It's strictly a rent-seeking behavior. > I believe you're thinking of patent law. Copyrights were originally for a term of 14 years... the same as patents. I'm not confused about them. > There's nothing equivalent with copyright law. These are referenced in the US Constitution itself. And yet you're apparently ignorant of the purpose behind them. Why do you think copyright exists? So that random assholes can stake out some arbitrary permutation of ideaspace and collect tolls til the end of eternity? They included it so that creative people would be encouraged to create works that would eventually enter the public domain.
    - eurleif 12y ago
      >If that's not the purpose, why even have copyright at all? To encourage creative works. This may or may not lead to expanding the public domain, but those are not equivalent. >These are referenced in the US Constitution itself. The constitution references encouraging creativity. It does not reference expanding the public domain.
- Fuxy 12y ago
  Never heard of this do tell more how on earth can you loose the crypto key for an entire spec used by multiple companies to encode and distribute their content.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
    Losing the crypto is easy. You run a shitty company that partners with Circuit City (themselves a shitty company that just went out of business a few year ago), you go bankrupt, you tell everyone that their DRM-locked machines won't be able to play the discs past some cutoff date (despite them paying to have them unlocked forever)... Then you shut down the servers. Where does the crypto key end up? Who the hell knows. The servers get traded around by whatever company takes possession of the assets, and servers have a short useful life. Probably sent for recycling. The people who used to work for the company go on to other jobs. Whatever backups they made while working there get put in storage somewhere, to be forgotten, or to be thrown out and buried in a landfill. And boom! DivX discs (not to be confused with the codec of the same name) are unplayable. It's probably some half-ass design, and if anyone clever wanted to break it they probably could. But that is of course illegal according to the DMCA, and doesn't really rebut the argument that DRM locks up works that would eventually fall into the public domain otherwise.

by Fuxy 12y ago

NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago

> I'm quite curious what would happen if DRM got banned and everything had to be open. While I personally support many copyright reforms, chief among them is that any work that is DRMed should be exempt from copyright protection. They should be forced to choose which they want, and not be allowed both. When they DRM a work, they're stealing from the future public domain... this has already happened, and the problem will only grow bigger. Right now, there exists media that cannot be recovered because of DRM. It's the Divx optical disc format from about 1999. Everything released on that format was released on others as well, so thankfully all of it is recoverable. But if there were works that could only be found on that (which is very plausible, considering that many older works exist only on some surviving piece of a single format)... then the crypto keys to recover them are already gone. Since the entire point of copyright is that you only get this protection so that the work may eventually enter the public domain, and since DRM will someday serve to make that impossible, no work that employs it should enjoy copyright protection.

eurleif 12y ago
>Since the entire point of copyright is that you only get this protection so that the work may eventually enter the public domain I've never heard that described as the purpose of copyright law. Why would it be? In the absence of copyright law, all works would effectively be in the public domain. I believe you're thinking of patent law. To get a patent, you have to release the details of your invention, which you could keep private otherwise. There's nothing equivalent with copyright law.
- forgottenpass 12y ago
  I've never heard that described as the purpose of copyright law. Why would it be? In the absence of copyright law, all works would effectively be in the public domain. It's funny, when they passed the Copyright Term Extension Act the opponents of the bill literally argued to congress that it was killing the American philosophy that the purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of works that eventually fall into the public domain. In the United States, Copyright and Patent law derive from the "Copyright Clause" of the Constitution: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. This enables patent and copyright law. Patents do demand disclosure of details, but if you weren't worried someone would reverse engineer your product and get it to market before your patent expired, you'd just keep the details a trade secret. So I don't see how the disclosure aspect factors into duration. If it wasn't already, the CTEA turned the length of copyright protection into a function of the American movie and music industries ability to lobby congress with sob stories. I'm not even trying to be snide towards congress with that remark, ask anyone in IP law what they think will happen next time Steamboat Willy is set to drop into the public domain.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  > I've never heard that described as the purpose of copyright law. Why would it be? That's because those who benefit from it don't want you to know the original purpose. If that's not the purpose, why even have copyright at all? It's strictly a rent-seeking behavior. > I believe you're thinking of patent law. Copyrights were originally for a term of 14 years... the same as patents. I'm not confused about them. > There's nothing equivalent with copyright law. These are referenced in the US Constitution itself. And yet you're apparently ignorant of the purpose behind them. Why do you think copyright exists? So that random assholes can stake out some arbitrary permutation of ideaspace and collect tolls til the end of eternity? They included it so that creative people would be encouraged to create works that would eventually enter the public domain.
  - eurleif 12y ago
    >If that's not the purpose, why even have copyright at all? To encourage creative works. This may or may not lead to expanding the public domain, but those are not equivalent. >These are referenced in the US Constitution itself. The constitution references encouraging creativity. It does not reference expanding the public domain.
Fuxy 12y ago
Never heard of this do tell more how on earth can you loose the crypto key for an entire spec used by multiple companies to encode and distribute their content.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago
  Losing the crypto is easy. You run a shitty company that partners with Circuit City (themselves a shitty company that just went out of business a few year ago), you go bankrupt, you tell everyone that their DRM-locked machines won't be able to play the discs past some cutoff date (despite them paying to have them unlocked forever)... Then you shut down the servers. Where does the crypto key end up? Who the hell knows. The servers get traded around by whatever company takes possession of the assets, and servers have a short useful life. Probably sent for recycling. The people who used to work for the company go on to other jobs. Whatever backups they made while working there get put in storage somewhere, to be forgotten, or to be thrown out and buried in a landfill. And boom! DivX discs (not to be confused with the codec of the same name) are unplayable. It's probably some half-ass design, and if anyone clever wanted to break it they probably could. But that is of course illegal according to the DMCA, and doesn't really rebut the argument that DRM locks up works that would eventually fall into the public domain otherwise.