Empirical Study Shows DRM Encourages Infringement 375
Hucko writes "Ars Technica has a story about a study by Cambridge law professor Patricia Akester that suggests (declares?) that DRM and its ilk does persuade citizens to infringe copyright and circumvent authors' protections. The name of the study is 'Technological accommodation of conflicts between freedom of expression and DRM: the first empirical assessment.'" The study itself is available for download (PDF); there's also a distillation here.
and the pirates win again (Score:5, Insightful)
ARRRRR!
seriously who didn't know this was the case?
someone has to crack that DRM just for the sake of cracking it.
At last (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, it's funny how DRM has become automatically negative. The reasons are obvious, but as I've said before many times, DRM can be a positive thing. I'll cite the much debated Steam argument again. Once I buy a game, DRM (positive DRM) allows me to redownload whenever I want, and to play it on any computer whenever and wherever I want. There are some advantages to DRM but of course they're over-shadowed by the many drawbacks and disadvantages from DRM's restrictive aspects.
And can we please not turn this into a "Steam sucks!" - "No YOU suck!" debate again? It was just an example.
Hurry... (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA better discredit Dr. Akester before this gets pickup by a major news source.
Actually I take that back. Everybody knows that there is now room for science and research when it comes to lobbying!
What was I thinking?
The conclusions of the study (Score:5, Insightful)
Here are the conclusions of the study:
1) Although DRM has not impacted on many acts permitted by law,
certain permitted acts are being adversely affected by the use of
DRM;
2) This is in spite of the existence of technological solutions
(enabling partitioning and authentication of users) to
accommodate those permitted acts (privileged exceptions);
3) Beneficiaries of privileged exceptions who have been prevented
from carrying out those permitted acts (because of the
employment of DRM) have not used the complaints mechanism
set out in UK law;
4) Article 6(4) of the Information Society Directive put an onus on
content owners to accommodate privileged exceptions
voluntarily. Voluntary measures have emerged in the publishing
field, but not all content owners are ready to act unless they are
told to do so by regulatory authorities.
My commentary:
1) As far as I can tell, DRM for the most part also hasn't had a noticeable impact on the uses not permitted by law. In other words: DRM only harms the customers, not the pirates.
2) As the record has shown in various court cases, the media companies are a bunch of assholes. Of course they're not going to care if little Ms. Teacher wants to (fairly!) use some copyrighted piece of work in hear lessons. They have "Power!! Unlimited POWAH!!!!"
3) What, there's a complaints mechanism? That would have been pretty good if people knew about it and used it.
4) Wait, what??? The DRM control freaks are supposed to voluntarily give up control? That sounds like a misunderstanding of human psychology. Also, quote The Matrix 2 (too bad they never made any sequels): "[Oracle] What do all men with power want? [Neo] ... [Oracle] More power".
How much did this guy get paid to do this study? (Score:5, Insightful)
People prefer files that aren't troublesome to play and aren't tied to some publisher's good will, to files that are troublesome to play and tied to some publisher's good will. News at 11...
Re:At last (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be more likely believe the percentage of people who skip paying and just download the cracked version hasn't changed much over the years.
Give me a few years and a grand for $1,000,000 and I'll do a study that proves this. Just like there have been studies that have also shown that DRM lowers piracy... and this one that shows DRM increases piracy. Now we need a study that shows DRM doesn't affect piracy.
Re:At last (Score:4, Insightful)
You lose access to your content, of course. Wow, it turns out that there really are stupid questions. Here, I'll ask one too: will Steam ever go away?
Stupid answer to that stupid question: yes, of course it will, sooner or later. The smart question are: when is steam likely to go away, and what are the practical losses when it does? For bonus credits, consider that the majority of your content on it wouldn't have been played again anyway, and whether that loss is worth more than the benefits.
As well as the clear benefits listed above, there's also the consideration that the Steam pricing model sends much more money to the actual developer than a shelf-on-a-box purchase, and that it gives developers a level playing field on which to compete, rather than having to struggle against Corporate Sports Sequel 2009 for limited shelf space.
Steam demonstrates that DRM doesn't have to mean "You don't have rights to play that game". It can mean "Hey, you do have the right to download and play this game, anywhere you want, any time you want. Go ahead!".
Now, would you like to have a grown up conversation, or are we going to stick with slinging slogans around?
Re:At last (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW, you can't stop a "Steam sucks" thread in an anti-DRM post.
Re:DRM is pushing me towards piracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Last month I bought a new mid-spec laptop and went shopping for an "old" game that would run on it, and I settled on Civ4. After buying it, I discovered that it too uses SecuROM so I will not install it. Instead, I think it's morally (and legally?) acceptable to download a pirate copy without DRM.
Morally, yes. Legally? Forget it. The uploader violated the law by distributing illegal copies. You violated the law by downloading and burning, thereby making an illegal copy. Remember what copyright is: it's a legal right to copy, literally. Also, usnig a Alcohol to make an image of the DVD is probably also a violation of the law, though the Software Act of 1980 does allow for you to make a copy for archival purposes and as an essential step in executing the program. Whether imaging the DVD can be viewed as "an essential step" or not depends on how good your lawyer is. ;)
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:5, Insightful)
They may not know what DRM is, but it surely affects them when they buy a DVD movie only to find out it doesn't play on whatever device it is they're trying to play it on. Even NASA fell in the DRM trap.
Interesting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's true! (Score:5, Insightful)
I pirated a piece of software just a week ago: it's a very specialized database application on steels that refuses to work if it doesn't find the original CD in the drive. Very useful indeed to use on a CD-less notebook... And I paid the damn thing almost $500!
Needless to say, a NOP has found its way into the executable. For the next version, I'll pay the license, but I'll download the ISO from emule, which not only doesn't require the CD, but also doesn't require the activation key.
This is the strange world of software and movies: when you're honest, you're hassled. If you pirate, your life suddenly becomes a lot easier.
Re:It's true! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the strange world of software and movies: when you're honest, you're hassled. If you pirate, your life suddenly becomes a lot easier.
That's exactly the problem with DRM. It only hurts paying customers. If you don't want to get hurt, you need to get the cracked version. They're driving honest customers away.
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:5, Insightful)
seriously who didn't know this was the case?
(insert name of media corporation here)
Re:At last (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority of users probably have no idea what DRM is and are thus unaffected. Those that do know what DRM is will either buy the software anyway and deal with it, buy the software then download a cracked version, or forego paying entirely and just download the cracked version.
Then of course there are the majority of users that have been unable to get a game to work because of DRM, whether they knew it was there or not. And the people who don't have a music collection anymore because some servers got turned off, so now they just torrent. Or the people who can't get a DVD in their region, so just pirate it instead.
I agree, most people aren't like me - I buy what I can if it isn't DRMed to hell, mainly to make a point (albeit a tiny little one) to the companies that do it. But everyone I know has had problems with legit games, and when people learn that the only reason they're having those problems is because they wanted to reward a company for delivering a product, they'll stop. It's been years since I had a serious issue with installing or playing a pirated game. If the big companies started making ease of use more of a big deal than the pirates, there'd be a lot less 'piracy from necessity', as I like to call it.
Bottom line is, your standard pirate copy says 'Install, firewall, copy crack, play indefinitely' when to get the equivalent from even the standard very-little-DRM game means you need a magic CD that never gets scratched and never gets lost.
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Empirical, right? (Score:2, Insightful)
Your coffee cup is a container. The implication of "content" is that a CD, DVD, etc. is a container also. When you buy it, you're not after the container, you're after the content.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:1, Insightful)
missing codec for an ordinary DVD? I don't think so.
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:3, Insightful)
It's 10 seconds to the wrong people (Score:1, Insightful)
Do the pirates put that warning on there? No.
So the only ones seeing it are the ones who are paying.
And 10 seconds to the five year old who wants Spongebob Squarepants NOW!!!! IS a big deal.
Re:At last (Score:3, Insightful)
Once I buy a game, DRM (positive DRM) allows me to redownload whenever I want, and to play it on any computer whenever and wherever I want. There are some advantages to DRM but of course they're over-shadowed by the many drawbacks and disadvantages from DRM's restrictive aspects.
Eh? The DRM in Steam isn't what is allowing you to download the games anywhere. That's an entirely unrelated feature. The DRM restricts the game to running and authenticating through Steam and nothing else.
Steam without DRM would work exactly the same as it does now, the only exception being that you could run games without authenticating online with the Steam client. That's exactly how it works if you crack a game you bought through Steam.
Locks were meant to be broken (Score:3, Insightful)
But everyone honors the honor system. Well, at least honest people. But as long as you can catch and reprimand the few crooks out there, then you've got a pretty good system going.
Frankly, I don't know why watermarking isn't in higher use. It could even add an element of personalization ("This album / movie expressly prepared for John Q. Smith") and help communities self-police themselves so we're not wasting government money on DRM enforcement / investigation etc. If the studios find out who's redistributing their work, it's a simple matter to report and disable their account.
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:5, Insightful)
That time belongs to me, not to them. Why should they be able to dictate what I watch? Just another reason to format-shift.
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:4, Insightful)
The FBI warning is just the start... often there are minutes of crap before a movie that you can't get past. It's most annoying on my kids' videos - essentially advertising for other videos from the same company, and there's no way to get past it without re-ripping the DVD.
I refuse to buy from companies like that now - they shouldn't control my time like that. What I really am annoyed at though is that my DVD player enables them to do it in the first place.
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:5, Insightful)
Lacking cable and unwilling to pay for it, I'm currently watching airbender on DVD from netflix.
First there's the FBI warning. For like 30 seconds. Then there's no less than 6 segments of spongebob advertising that I can't skip to go to the menu to play the more interesting, slightly more adult anime.
If I'd downloaded it off the internet, it would have been free and advertising free.
What advantage does getting the legal copy give me again?
Fair Use (Score:2, Insightful)
"DRM and its ilk does persuade citizens to infringe copyright "
Is this infringing on copyright? If what they want to do is covered by fair use, I don't see how it is. What is being done is violating DMCA by cracking DRM. They are separate issues, right?
...circumvent authors' protections? (Score:2, Insightful)
What authors have put DRM on their music? I have only found record labels. You know, those guys that get all the money and do none of the work and threaten artists who even try to take the work directly to the masses.
treat me like a dog.... (Score:4, Insightful)
So much of life was captured eloquently by Smythe's Andy Capp [wikipedia.org] cartoons -- most of which are too impolitic to run in today's newspapers. (Smoking, drinking, thumping and getting thumped by your wife... oh my.)
In one of the classics, Andy sums up the entire public's reaction to DRM; After being berated by Flo for the transgression of having some unauthorized fun, he says to her: "Treat me like I'm a dog, and I'll treat you like I'm a dog." ...And proceeds to bite her waggling finger.
Ain't that the damn truth.
Consider the source (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading her bio is enlightening. Seems to me she is anti-DRM and anti-IP. So, an anti-DRM, anti-IP law professor does a study and concludes that DRM is bad. Big surprise.
By the way, "interviewing dozens of lecturers, end users, government officials, rightsholders, and DRM developers to find how DRM and anticircumvention laws affected actual use" is not necessarily empirical. I would bet that the methodology used was guaranteed to get the result she wanted.
If this had been a study by the .*AA, there would have been dozens of posts calling it bullshit, but because it goes with the beliefs of so many unethical slashdotters, it's ok. I am never surprised by the depths of slashdot hypocrisy.
Re:It's true! (Score:1, Insightful)
>It's easier not to pay taxes than to pay taxes
It is? You'll need to tell my employer that, because they take the money out of my paycheque. Sure, I could fill out form and other paperwork to not pay taxes, but that would take time. I then have to spend the rest of my life evading uncle sam. I'm also almost guaranteed to spend time in prison for it and everyone will think I deserve every minute of it. Barrier to entry: Completing special paperwork and having the skills to evade being caught (for life).
Barriers to entry for doing your taxes properly: Visiting an accountant with your incomplete paperwork. This can be had for free if you don't make enough money.
>It's easier to steal your DVD than to wait in line for the cashier
It is? I have find the item I want, then I have to wait until nobody is looking, I have to wear a coat that will easily fit (at least) the entire disc into the pocket (something that tends to be hard to do) or maybe even the whole case if I really want to do it right. I then have to exit the store without anyone figuring out that the bulge in my pocket is a DVD. Barrier to entry: Getting to the store, owning a jacket with the ability to fit the DVD, and having the skills to evade being caught.
And I'm not including undoing security cases and things to set off the stolen merchandise beepers. Both of those are security measures that, when the store does things right (It is the exception when they do it wrong), don't impact the purchaser and once they're deactivated/removed (which should happen before you ever use the product), don't impact the use of the goods whatsoever and are permanently gone.
Heck, even if I buy the stuff from the back of a truck, I have to find said truck, I have to hope there's no cops watching the buy, and I have to have cold hard cash (in small bills since people like that don't give change). I then have to drag whatever it is with me to my car without the assistance of a cart or a clerk. Then I need to scratch off all the serials. And if it breaks, I get to keep the pieces.
At a B&M store, I ask a clerk where what I want is. I carry it in the open to the checkout and hand over money. I then go home with my item in plain view. Barrier to entry: Getting to the store with money.
This is in comparison to buying something DRM laden from the web vs. just downloading it via whatever pirate site there is. Both have the same barrier to entry: You need internet and special software (either their DRM client or torrent software or a newsreader). The difference is after that. Once you have the goods from both sites, buying it means you have further hoops to jump through *forever*, and you need to be prepared to sue the company when they go out of business and your goods stop working. Piracy has just one more barrier to entry (and you only have to learn it once): The ability to evade being caught (which, unlike the aforementioned crimes, is extremely easy).
Surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, disempowerment encourages rebellion? Gee whiz, who'd a thunk it?
Great thing about capitalists, they can just ignore the lessons of history and the realities of the market, and use control and coercion to accomplish their aims. When will this world start to realize that the market is a power branch, and must be separated and regulated as such, and not allowed to corrupt government and culture with its survival-at-all-cost ambitions?
Cheap processed foods almost completely devoid of value, mind-poisoning media, pharmaceuticals to mediate the symptoms of our sickness and addiction, lies, damned lies... someone tell me the great benefits left to us at this time in history by these maggots?
To be fair it's a function of DRM and Price level. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think a lot of people will buy something that is reasonably priced with or without DRM.
I think a lot of people will pirate or not buy something that is unreasonably priced.
The longer DRM exists, the lower that price gets however. Because once folks pirate something at $70 because of price + DRM, then they are more likely to pirate cheaper titles.
Some of my titles without DRM from the 1990's still work. I don't know if my titles with DRM work- I lost the original media or it broke. The non-DRM software I was able to back up in multiple places so I have not lost it. Of course Total Annihilation (which still rocks) was DRM'd but a crack came out years ago that allowed me to back it up.
Unethical? Hypocrisy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:3, Insightful)
What advantage does getting the legal copy give me again?
Warm fuzzies?
Yeah, it's especially rude if you have kids. You generally want some video entertainment for when you are on the road, which means either lugging around a bunch of DVDs or ripping them all to a portable player. This can literally take days, depending on how you do the transcode.
The easiest path? Google for a "Dora" torrent and get every episode ever in AVI format, free of commercials... playable by anything and it will all fit on one $20 USB stick.
DRM doesn't solve anything (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that paying taxes, paying for goods, etc. are all required by law.
Circumventing right-restriction is authorized by the law in some cases (="Fair Use"). But regularly you can't do it.
Besides, DRM is useless and doesn't even fulfill the basic mission it was created for (stopping unauthorized duplication of content).
Case 1:
I'm about to go on vacation somewhere and I want to have a couple of movie on my portable driveless device (PDA, iPod, Netbook whatever), without needing to lug around a drive and a pile of discs. I need to shift formats (DVD/BD -> H264 or whatever the portable device takes) it's authorized by fair use in most juridiction. But I can't because DRM blocks it.
Case 2:
I'm a student making a presentation on a movie director. I want to copy a (reasonably) short segment of a movie to show as exemple to my audience. I can't, DRM blocks it.
Case 3:
I want to make a backup of a movie and keep the original in a safe place (that's actually a case I've been through : I have a mentally challenged brother who has a tendency to damage his favorite movies. It's important to him because otherwise he goes into an autistic crisis. Currently the originals are safely locked away, and copies loaded onto- and played from a server)
DRM blocks it (or would have if I haven't resorted to DeCSS).
Case 4 : ...and this list can go long...
I'm a Linux user (that my case also, actually). I want to play a movie I've legally bought on my custom-computer. DRM blocks it.
All are legitimate uses, which unlike the example of tax fraud or theft of goods should be protected by fair use by copyright laws in most jurisdictions. (Or sometimes are even normal uses like the "i just want to play it, but the system doesn't let me" cases. Fair use isn't required)
But aren't technically feasible because manufacturer of DRM solution only take into account the big 80% of their market : basic average user which buys a media to pop it into a certified player.
They just don't want to spend the additional resource to handle all the exotic corner cases in the remaining 20% even if those are exceptions covered by fair use.
-----
Meanwhile,
Counter-case :
I'm an EEEVVIIILL pirate (Yar!) and I want to get a movie for free, because I'm a free loader and don't want to pay for anything if I can get away with it.
I just go to whatever is the most popular torrent portal-du.jour and just click on a link.
That's it. Just. One. Click.
At no time did any form of DRM get in my way to stop me from doing this.
At no time would I be subjected to FBI warnings, advertising for up coming disc releases, etc...
In my series of example :
- DRM got in the way in lots of situation which are legal
- the sole time when a copyright-forbiden act took place, DRM didn't make any difference at all.
Copy protection worked in the previous decade because the only way to get an unauthorized copy was to copy the media yourself. If it's protected, only a couple of users where able to make copies and thus the propagation was limited.
Today, with the magic of the modern internet, all it takes is one single user to publish a torrent (and at the scale of internet among all milions of user, there's always at least one user having the necessary knowhow/equipement/social engineering skill/whatever to do it) and then suddenly the media becomes easily available to anyone connected to the intertubes, without any protection stopping it.
The Internet is good at making some content instantly available to the whole planet without restriction, and that's what make duplication-level protection obsolete.
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:4, Insightful)
Cool - you can mock ten seconds. What if it were ten minutes? And the DVD forced you to watch those ten minutes. Circumventing those ten minutes of instructive warning from the FBI/MPAA becomes illegal. Fast forwarding is disabled, and finding a way to enable fast forward past the warning makes you liable for a ten year prison sentence.
At what point would you revolt?
The whole point of the controversy is, "rights holders" are infringing on the rights of users, in the name of "rights enforcement". Without the activists, pirates, and lawyers, what do you think the state of "enforcement" would be today? Had Sony gotten away with their rootkits, how long do you think it would have taken for all the other "rights holders" to pull similar tricks? Your computer could be "phoning home" to as many as 100 corporate websites continuously to report on your activities.
Given free reign, the various copyright and patent trolls would have declared that you can't own a computer, DVD player, MP3 player, or even a telephone by now. You could only lease anything capable of reading digital media, constantly monitored, and subject to recall if you break any TOS imposed by the *iaa's of the world.
Re:Surprised? (Score:2, Insightful)
Cheap processed foods almost completely devoid of value, mind-poisoning media, pharmaceuticals to mediate the symptoms of our sickness and addiction, lies, damned lies... someone tell me the great benefits left to us at this time in history by these maggots?
Higher standard of living, greater freedom, and longer lifespan than any time in history? A peaceful and stable society? I could go on, but you're probably spray painting an "A" on the side of a strip mall somewhere, so I'll just go enjoy my life.
Re:At last (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way to avoid the things you've stated is to become a hermit in a cave who communicates with others via carrier pigeon and keeps all his money in his mattress. Unfortunately in today's society, you have to have some level of trust in the companies you deal with. Steam has never given me a reason not to trust them. I realize that there are people who have been burned by Steam and now choose to avoid it, but not me. I trust that Valve will be around for a long time, because they make quality games that are fun to play, and seem more focused on doing that then trying to shovel as many titles out the door as possible. Because of that, I believe that Steam will be kept around until long after my gf/wife forces me to stop playing video game.
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:3, Insightful)
The majority of users probably have no idea what DRM is and are thus unaffected
That wasn't true 5 years ago for music, which is why vendors are dropping DRM'd formats--they don't sell as well as plain old MP3s. It's currently becoming a big deal for E-books, because the cutting-edge of E-publishing is Romance & Erotica-- and R&E readers frequently aren't the kind of people who want to chase down pirate versions or DRM-cracking software; they just want to read their E-books without hassle. They perceive DRM as an increasing hassle, and are voting with their wallets and comments on forums like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books [smartbitch...ybooks.com] about Amazon's Kindle DRM and any other scheme that doesn't let them read their already purchased E-books on the device of their choice, when they want to, where they want to. Once they've been bitten by the downsides of DRM, they don't bother with cracked or pirated editions; they just don't buy from publishers that load their E-books down with DRM.
This is not a small niche market. This is the single largest-selling genre in publishing. You do not want to piss that many readers off if you want to stay in business.
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:and the pirates win again (Score:5, Insightful)
How about this 'what if' scenario:
/. is running an article about how the movie The Cotton Club [wikipedia.org] can't be recorded from one VCR to another. You say,
Imagine it is 1985 and
It doesn't stop you from recording your decaying tape if you have a macrovision free VCR, and most of them are.
Runaway1956 [slashdot.org] posts:
Yeah, but what if they introduced encryption and then made it illegal to circumvent that encryption.
Now choose carefully. Do you:
A) stand up for yourself and say the media companies have gone too far
or
B) say "you can't just make up arbitrary realities"
Congratulations. You chose B. Welcome to the real world, where if you don't stand up for your rights at even the smallest infraction, those stepping on your rights will continue down that path until your reality is based on their arbitrary actions.