Welcome to the Future of DRM Media 734
MrFancyPants writes "'DRM, digital rights management, is quite possibly the holy grail of the music and movie industry, allowing them to control exactly how DRM protected content is used, distributed and above all can be tracked right down to the individual end user.' Hardware Analysis reports on a horror story of someone picking up a DVD recently and having to go through an agonizing process of installing DRM-enabled applications to even get it to play on his computer. If this is what the future holds, you'd better think twice about buying DVDs and other media, as you're basically at the mercy of the producer."
my story. (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to buy a pile of music cd's. Even after mp3's appeared, even after napster and their ilk... I liked having the CD, and I liked having the highest possible quality recording I could get.
What has happened now, is that the last two "CDs" I've bought had DRM on them, and the only reason I bought them is because I love the two bands (radiohead and the tea party). I can't play them without putting special sfotware on my XP box. Which I refuse to do because it's stupid and I paid for the CD in the first place.
So now I never listen to those two CDs.
And then I realised, why buy something I never listen to?
So I dont buy anymore CD's. That was a year ago.
agony! (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What sort of DRM? (Score:2, Interesting)
One Solution.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Ironic (Score:5, Interesting)
When will these industries learn that you can't slow P2P by pissing off legitimate customers?
Re:think twice about buying DVDs (Score:1, Interesting)
The parent may have exaggerated, but the point is most people who read Slashdot are far more capable with installation/configuration than typical users.
Get off your moral soapbox.
Re:think twice about buying DVDs (Score:5, Interesting)
If/when I start getting calls from friends/family who have bought DRM'd DVD's and can't get them to play I'll suggest:
Only by doing the above are you likely to get your money back and/or start generating some noise about consumer problems with DRM. It's only by making a big stink about these problems with DRM that people will start to notice. If big companies like Best Buy start getting significant numbers of returns & complaints they're more likely to go to their distributers and tell them to stop using DRM. (Yeah, I know... I'm smoking crack) But think about it - the alternative is that the masses will quietly be the sheep that they are and accept that in order to watch a DVD they have to run a Microsoft Windows-based media player that requires a full-time net connection, has to download a different DRM utility for each DVD you own, tells the suits in Hollywood when you're watching Attack of the Killer Tomatos for the 42nd time, and won't let you watch the movie if it decides the moons of Jupiter aren't in the proper alignment.
unabombs from hollywood (Score:4, Interesting)
The reality is that Hollywood, Madison Av., and their ilk are focus-grouping themselves into oblivion. Mass-market values are a symptom of industrial production. There is no more mass. There is no more market, at least as understood by the behemoths.
Its a generational shift and its taking place now, before your eyes.
Re:Analog hole (Score:2, Interesting)
Or, since the output to the sound system is some interface standard, you can just capture the stream there still digital. Something like vsound w/ realplay.
This happend to me with a Sony CD at Borders (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:ah, fvck 'em (Score:3, Interesting)
Then again, there's the route of not buying the DVD, and applying something similar to the RIAA sticker [downhillbattle.org] to the cases in the store. Less punishement, more of a logical link, and it actually serves the useful cause of informing others through your civil disobedience.
Re:unabombs from hollywood (Score:3, Interesting)
What happens, in this indy game you want to play (the equivalent of an indy band mp3 right now) refuses to play, because Microsoft Windows 2009 claims that the binary is unsafe, and a digital signature would cost the indy company $50,000 that they can't afford?
Society may want there to be "no more mass", but we're talking about a group of industries with a strangehold on entertainment, billions of dollars to spend on lawyers, politicians, and propaganda, who may very well just make it so that there are no machines capable of breaking DRM.
Re:self-correcting problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:my story. (Score:2, Interesting)
MP3s of CDs I don't own. However, I had to copy
two CDs recently, using cdparanoia, because the
bloody things wouldn't play in my car thanks to
some half-assed non-red-book copy protection not
working in VW OEM CD players. There's an irony:
copy protection forcing someone who is law-abiding
to a fault to circumvent copy-protection...
ian
Re:Mercy mine. (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to say "vote with your wallet" on these very threads, but I've become disillusioned, and no longer even try.
You never clearly defined the "sheep factor", but I'm guessing that "putting up with crap without doing anything like everybody else" is the gist of it.
The scary thing about the "sheep factor" is that the few "in charge" are really becoming aware of this and are using this knowledge to kindly fuck people whenever they can.
Take for example one to two year contracts to talk on the phone. Why anybody in their right mind would do this more than once is beyond me. These contracts exclusively benefit the company and more often than not hurts the paying customer. I was in a one year contract once for my first cell phone. It was with verizon before they became the reliable company that they are today. I cannot vouch for this, I'm just going by their extensive advertising, which should be honest and accurate right? Anyway, I got this cell phone because I was between jobs and between homes. I didn't have a fixed land line to put on my resume for jobs, and I needed a phone to get a job, so I got one. Well, after the first $400 bill came when I was unemployed, I was unhappy to say the least, and I switched my minutes around and played all kinds of games guessing how much I was going to talk this month on my phone. Not to mention that the phone dropped calls _all the time_. As soon as I got the phone call on my cellphone that I was going to have a job, I considered the cell phone as something that had served its purpose, I immediately went to the verizon office, and I paid them how ever much money I needed to pay them to stop using my phone, and I threw the phone in the trash while leaving the store.
Since everyone seems to be OK paying extra for their cellphone and entering contracts with people, it is not common for other companies to do the same like DSL and satellite, and as long as you dumbasses keep doing this, more and more companies will do this. Yes, you are a dumbass if you sign an annual contract for a monthly service, and you are only fucking yourself and myself when you do this.
Baaaaaaa Baaaaaa
Re:self-correcting problem (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:self-correcting problem (Score:4, Interesting)
"Um, I tried to do what they asked, I don't have enough computer for what they are asking for. What is an XP anyways?"
"I went through a whole bunch of screens asking for something, or telling me to do this. This is crap. I think something is wrong with your product."
"I couldn't get it to work and called the dvd company. They said that there was a problem with the disk and I should ask for a refund."
The same thing happened with DRM and music CDs. Its easier for the manager to accept the return rather than handle a dumb user who is wasting everyone's time on what is complex task for anyone.
Re:self-correcting problem (Score:4, Interesting)
That doesn't accomplish anything. You don't think enough people have been complaining already about DRM on software, music or DVD's?
Ah, but bitching and complaining does work at removing DRM in some cases.
Specifically, I'm referring to Intuit's TurboTax DRM fiasco of 2002. That year, they included Macrovision's DiscSafe which installed an NT service called C-Dilla. While not a lot of facts were known at the time, C-Dilla was supposed to be some kind of licensing manager that would either stop you from running a copy from a burned CD of ANY DiscSafe protected software. It was rumored that once you installed C-Dilla it would check for OTHER licensed products, such as audio CDs, and somehow prevent burning copies of it. One easily discovered fact was that even after you uninstalled TurboTax, C-Dilla remained on your computer. C-Dilla was installed in a protected hidden folder and given a random executable name, and in general it looked and acted more like "spy"ware than any product I'd ever seen before.
Thousands of people wrote them complaining about the software. I sent them the most vitriolic flames I could conjure, and vowed to never purchase an Intuit product ever again because they had already convicted me as a criminal and not treated me as a paying customer. To their credit, Intuit responded quickly; first by providing links to a C-Dilla uninstaller on their web site, and then the next year they did not include SafeDisc on their TurboTax consumer product.
As for me, I'm trying to get used to TaxCut, but I've discovered it's a vastly inferior product to TurboTax in terms of ease-of-use. It's a similar problem that equates to "don't go out to see movies produced by Sony."
So, kids, the lesson learned is: bitching can help. Bitch to the record labels, bitch to the store managers, bitch to your congressional representatives, bitch to your state's Attorney General that you're the victim of a bait-and-switch.
Yelling at Sally Salesdrone over at Best Buy won't do anything except get you deservedly kicked out of their store. Calmly talking to Mollie Manager might have more of an effect, but keep your arguments short and to the point. The most you can expect any large organization will do with your complaint is add it to a list. Then, when some magic threshhold like 0.1% of their customers have complained, they'll carry it up the chain to someone who actually has the power to alter their practices.
Re:self-correcting problem (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the point of the article is that IF you read it, YOU won't buy the product.
In other words, eventually the product will fail as it becomes obvious to people who haven't bought it yet that it's a dud. Not to mention that the people who bought one won't buy another.
Now, if the company can make a profit before that point is reached, it will continue to issue duds.
Sort of like Microsoft...
"Secure" Digital (Score:3, Interesting)
How long before they do to us what Compuserve tried to do to us with GIF: a submarine technology we gladly accept, until we depend on it, and only then do they activate their claims on it, which we would have rejected had we known, before it was too late? When will they flip the switch on SD DRM, locking up our content with handcuffs we've been happily buying all along, while letting them keep the keys?
Re:More About DRM (Score:1, Interesting)
Even funnier is that I recently saw a torrent for the rip of the HD feature, so it looks like I'll just be downloading that instead. And watching it on my hacked xbox and HDTV.
Ironically I just sent a letter to the MPAA... (Score:4, Interesting)
Because of your contributions to Digital Rights Management, you have deprived me of the ability to edit my own home videos. Thanks to your lobbying and cooperation with Microsoft, I am not able to take still screen captures from mpeg videos from family gatherings which I took with my own digital camera, due to the constraints that have been added to software at your behest. Thank you very much for protecting me from being able to preserve my own family history and memories. I so very much needed to be protected from myself.
In reality, by the end of the hour, because I am very technically adept, I will have accomplished what I wanted to do tonight using video editing software on one of my home linux machines. I feel absolutely sickened for the people who are not as computer savvy as myself who have effectively had their rights taken away because of you since they do not know how to perform work-arounds or use open source software that is not cripped by "digital rights management".
I will be spreading the word to my family, friends, and coworkers. By the end of the hour as well, I will be ebaying all of my movie DVDs, except those which are independent foreign films and anime series not produced or distirbuted in the U.S. I will no longer be supporting your films, whether in movie theatres or through DVD purchases, and I will encourage everyone I know to do the same.
You think you can push the average person around with your influence and money. And you are indeed correct to a certain degree. Where you are wrong is in forgetting that the source of your money ultimately comes from us, the consumer. There comes a breaking point where people will realize that their rights are being treaded on, and they will take action. This person has already arrived at that point, and I will be taking others with me. And once you have killed the roots (the consumer), the tree will die too (you).
Since this has been a tight year for me due to medical bills, I was considering letting my membership in the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) lapse, but after this incident tonight, I certainly will not be doing that now. The money I would have spent on movies and DVDs will be spent on renewing my EFF membership and my Free Software Foundation (FSF) memberships to prevent you from deciding what I can and cannot do on my own computer and with my own data."
"Own it on DVD today!" (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem isn't so much DRM, but rather that the consumer is being utterly defrauded about what they are getting for their money.
I have no problems with DRM that would enforce existing rights I may have as a user of copyright material: time shifting, media shifting, lending out media, selling media, etc. - though such a system does not currently exist (it would require communicaton and refutation of keys to authorized playback devices - say 10 simultaneously).
However, such a system must also recognize new rights I may be deemed to have by the courts. If timeshifting, archiving, and media transfer are deemed to not violate copyright, then all existing equipment I have that enforces DRM must be retrofited, at the DRM users' expense, to recognise those rights. Same goes for all other people encumbred by a particular DRM system.
In the past, one would build the device, and then defend that it offers fair use (MPAA v. Sony - Betamax decision). However, today that may be legally impossible (DMCA, and relatively uncrackable DRM). But, on balance, one should be able to petition the court for a preemptive decision on whether a particular use would be fair, and if the existing DRM mechanisms do not support it, they would have to be modified at the DRM users' expense. The idea is that the DRM mechanism is a proxy for the DRM user's rights and so must change as those rights do.
I am not suggesting that this would be an inexpensive undertaking for a DRM user faced with supporting a newly recognized fair use. But, it is a reasonable requirement, in the face of the control they exert.
Re:Legitimate CDs and Philips (Score:3, Interesting)
Worked for me - I read on the box "won't play on PCs" so I slapped it in my machine, fired up GRIP and a few minutes later the MP3s were sitting on my hard drive.
(I should clarify - I don't distribute MP3s, I simply find it a lot easier to have all my music sat on my hard drive so I can listen to it without going and finding the CD).
but I'm reliably informed that it doesn't work in some car CD players
It plays on my car CD player, but it plays past the end of the disk by about 10 minutes, which my home stereo and my cdrom drive do not.
The concept of corrupt CDs really annoy me, but I have yet to find one that actually causes me real problems (i.e. I haven't found one where the "copy protection" actually does it's job). As soon as I find one that I can't rip or can't play in the car it'll go straight back to the shop. I should point out that the _only_ OS I use is Linux, so any "copy protection" systems which are designed specifically for windows won't affect me in the slightest.
I imagine that if all record shops were suddenly required to separate out normal CDs and copy-protected not-quite-CDs in an obvious way, sales of the latter would probably drop PDQ
I think it would be too much effort for the shops, they would simply stop labelling all the CDs as "compact discs" - you'd go into the music shop and just see "Music Discs" or something and once they do that the trademark is worth even less and noone's any better off.
In any case, the people producing the "copy protection" systems can't win - the CD drive manufacturers will just start designing their drives to deal with the corrupt discs in the same way audio CD players do.