4 ms·

I think OP's point was that DRM pushes people to pirate content, regardless of whether this is morally acceptable or not.

rkangel 12y ago
Fundamentally, I don't think that DRM pushes people to piracy, I think poor user experience does. A lot of that has come out of poor DRM implementations, which is where the problem is. Spotify on the other hand, is based on a form of DRM but as they provide a good app for every platform I want to use (including Linux), and allow you to sync offline (for when I have no internet), I will quite happily give them my money and have no intention of pirating music ever again.
rakoo 12y ago
I think his point is rather that DRM asks more from the user (a specific browser, a specific plugin, a specific string to enter in a box) for essentially the same experience. Oh and you can do less things with a DRM'd media than with a non-DRM'd. Even though you technically have the same rights.
- josteink 12y ago
  Oh and you can do less things with a DRM'd media than with a non-DRM'd. Even though you technically have the same rights. None of the big streaming-services supports the HW I have in my home-stereo rig. All of them supports H264 video and HDMI. Not offering me H264 content uncrippled is leaving me, as a potential customer, no reason to sign up.
fafner 12y ago
I sadly don't think that's true any more. Not that I want to promote piracy or am sad about the decline. But I fear that the upcoming generation of DRM will be good enough not to annoy the users. And that was really the issue with most DRM in the past. E.g., music is more commonly shared and copied to different devices. DRM there really had an impact. Flash/Silverlight are horrible plugins and they impact the viewing pleasure. But now that Restriction is integrated on top of the regular HTML5 stack in the top three proprietary browsers it will be as flawless as watching a HTML5 video for most users. Sure they can't save the video. But most users don't know how to do that even if the video doesn't have DRM. And as long as the business model of the content hosts is decent enough they won't feel bothered by the DRM. And unlike music where sharing and copying to different devices is what users expected long before MP3s, for videos the renting model is widely accepted and common since before computer video. And that's one of the big issues with the EME proposal. It will ensure that DRM remains on video for a long time. It will make it impossible to view legal content in a complete free software stack. It will make the web depend on proprietary binary blobs from the three companies which are already controlling the majority web browser, operating system, and mobile device market share. Which means it will be hard to impossible to innovate in those areas if it's against the interests of those companies. This will have really damaging consequences.

rkangel 12y ago

Fundamentally, I don't think that DRM pushes people to piracy, I think poor user experience does. A lot of that has come out of poor DRM implementations, which is where the problem is. Spotify on the other hand, is based on a form of DRM but as they provide a good app for every platform I want to use (including Linux), and allow you to sync offline (for when I have no internet), I will quite happily give them my money and have no intention of pirating music ever again.

rakoo 12y ago

I think his point is rather that DRM asks more from the user (a specific browser, a specific plugin, a specific string to enter in a box) for essentially the same experience. Oh and you can do less things with a DRM'd media than with a non-DRM'd. Even though you technically have the same rights.

josteink 12y ago
Oh and you can do less things with a DRM'd media than with a non-DRM'd. Even though you technically have the same rights. None of the big streaming-services supports the HW I have in my home-stereo rig. All of them supports H264 video and HDMI. Not offering me H264 content uncrippled is leaving me, as a potential customer, no reason to sign up.

fafner 12y ago

I sadly don't think that's true any more. Not that I want to promote piracy or am sad about the decline. But I fear that the upcoming generation of DRM will be good enough not to annoy the users. And that was really the issue with most DRM in the past. E.g., music is more commonly shared and copied to different devices. DRM there really had an impact. Flash/Silverlight are horrible plugins and they impact the viewing pleasure. But now that Restriction is integrated on top of the regular HTML5 stack in the top three proprietary browsers it will be as flawless as watching a HTML5 video for most users. Sure they can't save the video. But most users don't know how to do that even if the video doesn't have DRM. And as long as the business model of the content hosts is decent enough they won't feel bothered by the DRM. And unlike music where sharing and copying to different devices is what users expected long before MP3s, for videos the renting model is widely accepted and common since before computer video. And that's one of the big issues with the EME proposal. It will ensure that DRM remains on video for a long time. It will make it impossible to view legal content in a complete free software stack. It will make the web depend on proprietary binary blobs from the three companies which are already controlling the majority web browser, operating system, and mobile device market share. Which means it will be hard to impossible to innovate in those areas if it's against the interests of those companies. This will have really damaging consequences.