How DRM Won 221
Nerval's Lobster writes "In 2009, when Apple dropped the Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions from songs sold through the iTunes Store, it seemed like a huge victory for consumers, one that would usher in a more customer-friendly economy for digital media. But four years later, DRM is still alive and well — it just lives in the cloud now. Streaming media services are the ultimate form of copy protection — you never actually control the media files, which are encrypted before delivery, and your ability to access the content can be revoked if you disagree with updated terms of service; you're also subject to arbitrary changes in subscription prices. This should be a nightmare scenario to lovers of music, film, and television, but it's somehow being hailed by many as a technical revolution. Unfortunately, what's often being lost in the hype over the admittedly remarkable convenience of streaming media services is the simple fact that meaningfully relating to the creative arts as a fan or consumer depends on being able to access the material in the first place. In other words, where your media collection is stored (and can be remotely disabled at a whim) is not something to be taken lightly. In this essay, developer Vijith Assar talks about how the popularity of streaming content could result in a future that isn't all that great. 'Ultimately, regardless of the delivery mechanism, the question is not one of streaming versus downloads,' he writes. 'It's about whether you want to have your own media library or request access to somebody else's. Be careful.'"
XBMC (Score:4, Interesting)
They keep trying and failing (Score:5, Interesting)
The first DRM I saw was funny formats on Apple ][ floppies, followed by DOS format misfeatures, followed by dongles, followed by own-code in apps, followed by ... ite ad infinitum.
Note that you don't see these forms of DRM any more. What you do see is that, each time a new format of anything comes out, some DRM vendor talks the publishers into "protecting" their work[1].
As long as new publishers are suckers, the DRM vendors will suck them in, and make lots of money off a technology that motivates people to not buy the publications.
The publishers lose two ways!
--dave
[1. One of my former employers almost got taken in by this scam, but the techies caught it. ]
Re:They keep trying and failing (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree, those whose business is DRM are the ones who benefit, not anyone else. My bet is that far more money is lost to DRM, than to piracy.
Re:Popularity of streaming content? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like you should hate your home internet not the streaming content.
It's a use case regarding the "popularity" of streaming content. There are others -- I also tend to travel (watching things on a train is great). If these streaming clients had at least allowed a "local cache" option, they would be far more usable.
Re:EMusic and Bitrot (Score:4, Interesting)
Not at all.
I am just presenting one current option.
Keep your backups on something like ZFS and odds are it will never matter.
I personally do not keep collections of media, I own a little bit and do not intend to add to it. I don't tend to watch anything more than once or twice, nor do I want to listen to the same song over and over.
The deal has changed, and for the better (Score:3, Interesting)
The old system: I pay 10 dollars for an album (lets call it $1 per song, to make the math easier), and if I ever lose the album, I lose it forever. I can make a copy of it to back it up, but if I lose all copies, it's gone forever.
The first DRM system: I pay $1 for a song, I can only play it on one (or 5) devices, and if I ever accidentally delete it, it's gone forever and I never get it back. This is the DRM system that sucked, and everybody hated.
The "new" DRM system: I pay $1 for a song, and I can play it on anything that supports the DRM mode (not everything, granted, but all of my devices, so it's cool with me). If I lose the file, I just download it again. If I want to listen to it on my second device, I just download it again. When I'm connected to the internet (most of the time for me) I can access and download every song I've ever bought in seconds. This is a good deal. I am willing to pay the same amount I used to pay for a song and accept the risk that apple might someday disappear in exchange for this convenience.
It all comes down to a trade off, but this "new" deal seems fair enough for me. It is more convenient than either of the old systems, and this way I don't have to carry around a 50GB external hard drive to have access to all of my songs on my 8GB iPhone. It costs more long term, but it is a better system.
Re:Just shows what we already knew (Score:5, Interesting)
That is why I hate streaming, and it's why I will cling to media that I *own* for as long as I can. Until they start ruining that with ads too (like Disney and their infamous unskippable trailers).
Re:The Battle Continues (Score:5, Interesting)
True. Its one of the reasons that I still use Windows rather than abandon it totally for Chromium. The tools to fight the drm to download and archive content still exist for Windows. While Windows thinks its converting to tablet its actually committing suicide. However, that's neither here nor there on drm. Streaming and the cloud have not given DRM a victory by no means. In fact its a sign of desperation. The content distributors are so desperate to continue the distribution that they are willing to lose it entirely. Huh? you say.
What happens if we suffer a terrorist attack? A nuclear 9/11 on silicon valley? Or an earthquake? That cloud will dissipate and with it goes all those songs, movies and games. You don't have it if it doesn't sit on a device in your possession. You rent it instead. Anyone remember those DVDs that lasted 3 days? I loved them. Why? because there had absolutely no encryption on them at all. All I had to do was rip the movie and I owned it. Still do in the original sleeve. of the new disc has a name in sharpie on it.
DRM has never been about copyright infringement. DRM has always been about blocking alterations to the change in distribution. The big names like their money. They don't want it to go away. Short of having all their property seized and them arrested and put in jail, this wont change. (unless aforementioned event above happens)
The cloud is meaningless extension of that interference hailed as progress so those who do it causally will quit. We need to be vigilant to remind that that ownership requires physical possession. If you don't have it so it can play anywhere at anytime, you don't have it.
Will it ever change? Not until either aforementioned event or arrest is made.
We are headed to the world of Continuum. (if you haven't watched this series, you should. Its excellent and very prophetic in a not overt way.)
We must be the change in which we seek. We must continue to fight. DRM has not won. Its hasn't lost either.
iTunes protocol as DRM (Score:4, Interesting)
One way to look at these issues might be to phrase the question in legalese, particularly DMCAese: Is the inability to interact with iTunes cloud storage, using software other than iTunes, due to a "technical measure which limits access?" If someone were to reverse-engineer the protocol that the iTunes application uses to communicate with the backend, so that you could use the service without Apple's shockingly crappy software, and then if Apple sued 'em under 1201, would a fair judge (please, bear with me and pretend) strictly ruling by the letter of the law, say Apple is right or wrong?
If so, then at least it's DRM according to many governments.
I think Apple would do that (i.e. they would say it's DRM) if someone wrote an iTunes cloud client. And I suspect Apple would win, but I guess that depends on the details of the protocol. But history shows that the fact that nothing works with iTunes is on purpose, part of Apple's wishes, not merely due to laziness, lack of market demand, etc.
I do think that the "DRM" label gets overused and applied to things where it should not (e.g. watermarking to detect who leaked something -- that is not DRM!). But trade secret proprietary protocols cut much closer to the line, and when we're talking about a megacorp's proprietary trade secret for transferring media files .. c'mon. Of course you're going to find a "technical measure which limits access" there. Don't you think?
As for your codec example, if the codec were a trade secret (and there have been a few), then yes, it would probably count as DRM. When you get to non-secret things like a supposedly "industry standard H.whatever" where it's documented, I think calling it DRM might be a stretch. We would at least have to depart from the legalese way of looking at it. If the lack of a h.266 decoder were due to patent holders' prohibition, then in DMCA-speak that'd be a "dishonorable-lawyer-trick measure to limit access" rather than a "technical measure to limit access." ;-) At that point, when people refuse to take your money, you don't need to split hairs and argue about whether or not its strictly DRM. They've already gone to a lot of trouble to refuse the revenue, so leave it at that, and just go download the pirate copy which is encoded with the codec that you're allowed to decode. Then everyone wins.