Fight DRM While There's Still Time 424
ageor writes "It seems (not only) to me that DRM is about far more than intellectual property. It's also about monopoly and freedom of choice. It's one of those cases where we, the consumers, must decide against accepting the new industry's rules, which care only about control and making money. The whole matter is very well put in DRM, Vista and your rights, where you can follow the subject as deeply as you like through the numerous relevant links."
Change from the Top Down (Score:3, Insightful)
“Fight DRM,” like “fight breast cancer” or “stamp out racism,” are noble sentiments; such sentiments, I believe, share one thing in common: they suffer from a false sense of sovereignty; and are more autistic than realistic.
In the case of DRM,* the worthiest undertaking may be to climb the corporate ladder; and effect change from the top down.
_____________
* Or in the case of cancer: medical school, etc.
Re:Change from the Top Down (Score:5, Insightful)
Avoid defective by design (Score:5, Informative)
Note: I disagree that the iPod is defective by design, because it does not require DRM. It still works with the open formats of MP3, AAC and AIFF.
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If you cannot transfer these files by a simple drag and drop, to and from an arbitrary directory, it is defective by design.
KFG
Re:Avoid defective by design (Score:5, Informative)
If you want drop and drop support stop complaining about the iPod and go buy a player that supports it.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not the iPod but iTunes (Score:4, Insightful)
My Sansa e260 does exactly this with no problem. The indexing doesn't even take long. Now, granted, my player only has 4GB of flash memory (expandable), so this doesn't necessarily apply to the HD-based iPods, but it does seem to suggest the Nanos could do the same. Given that an equivalent iPod nano costs considerably more than the Sansa, I'd guess it would have all least comparable system resources.
More generally, though, I agree that the lack of drag and drop doesn't mean the iPod is defective by design. It doesn't really even have to do with the iPod (beyond the fact that the iPod indexes songs). What is shows is that iTunes is defective by design.
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If you use iTunes to just store and organize your MP3s and AACs without ever buying anything, it's not "defective by design." If you use the Podcast feature, it's not "defective by design." If you go to the music store and download a free track, it's not "defective by design." (Sure, the free track has DRM, but you didn't pay for it.)
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If you want drop [sic] and drop support stop complaining about the iPod and [...]
load rockbox http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WhyRock box [rockbox.org]?
My, now "old", 4G iPod has absolutely no problem handling this crazy drag and drop. I can browse the drive using "folders" that are a built in feature of the FAT32 FS. Or, just ask it to index all my songs (with their gaint strings), and it does so without any noticeable trouble.
Although the parent's main point is completely correct.
There's no physical or logical lockouts on music on an iPod.
That would be like saying you can't browse the web efficiently because IE doesn't let you.
See,
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I have plenty which don't, but they've all got sensible ID3 tags. Suddenly it's not a case of drilling down the FAT, but reading every damn MP3 to find the ID3 tag and sort by that - and there is no way that can be accomplished on 5,000 songs in "a few seconds" on anything disk based, simply because of the time required to open that many files.
Re:Avoid defective by design (Score:5, Informative)
The directory structure of iPods, while complicated, has been used by a number of third party applications. There is a program called ephPod that allows Windows users to manage their iPods without a iTunes, and I use Amarok for Linux to manage my iPod, which uses libraries from gtkPod, another program for managing iPods.
Nobody's forcing you to use an iPod if you don't want one, but I'm able to use my iPod without DRM on the operating system of my choice with software of my choice. Just because iPods are capable of playing DRM doesn't mean they're limited by the DRM.
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Re:Avoid defective by design (Score:5, Informative)
HDMI as attack vector (Score:2)
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Remember, though, that the HDCP standard places the authentication responsibility on the transmitting device. A transmitter is not supposed to send the data stream to a receiver until it authenticates the receiver. Receivers, on the other hand, are not required to authenticate transmitters before accepting a data stream.
As long as the authentication is transmitter initiated, I don't need to care about it when I'm shopping for a new TV, because I c
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Re:Change from the Top Down (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say that the approach in question has worked at least as well as any other that does not itself involve actions which are themselves worse than racism.
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Re:Change from the Top Down (Score:5, Insightful)
Er, make it illegal to be a redneck!
Er, boycott redneck products!
Wait, what was your argument again? I think you forgot the references to Nazis and Hitler. Throw in some other completely unrelated emotion-jerking things, too.
The way to fight DRM is not just to 'not use it', it's to show all your friends how cool it is NOT to be DRM-infested. See what I can do?
*drags music files to a blank CD on the desktop and the CD burns*
Neat, huh?
*drags video to an portable video player and it auto-resamples it, then shows that same video can be shown on the TV in the living room without any extra work*
Neat, huh?
When they realize they can't do half the neat stuff with their DRM-infested files, they'll consider that each and every time they make a purchase in the future. Until then, you cannot make the common consumer care.
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Hmmm ... if there was a youtube movie about this, I'd post it on my blog, link to it, email it to people and so on.
Anyone
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Re:Change from the Top Down (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporations are the *originators* of these policies; they do so to PROTECT SHAREHOLDER INTEREST. As long there is value in artificial scarcity, DRM and its ilk (yes, copyrights, patents and every other government-sponsored legalistic chokehold on information) will thrive--and necessarily exist. If anyone "on the inside" sought to change these policies, they would be rightly seen as acting outside of their shareholder mandate and would be FIRED. (You could argue that such individuals could make convincing arguments that there is MORE shareholder value to be had by being open with information, but *any* initiative that appears as though it might impinge on future profits would quickly die a flaming death.)
How this comment was modded up is beyond me.....
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The Bolsheviki tried the top-down approach, actually; it involved weeding the gene-pool of potential racists. (That they accidently liquidated the industrious and free-thinking is by the by.)
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Hitler also tried the top down approach. It involved weeding out the minorities.
Is it only me... (Score:2)
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It is simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Only when Trusted Computing means... (Score:2)
Fight it how? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's the problem with pretty much the entire anti-DRM movement. It has no credibility because it only points out problems and not solutions.
I have a pretty unpopular opinion here on Slashdot - I am broadly supportive of DRM. Fortunately I also have great karma and don't care much about losing it, so I don't mind arguing the case for DRM here. On
Re:Fight it how? (Score:5, Insightful)
This contains a couple of errors.
1) The problem DRM tries to solve is the preservation of a particular business model that allows content packagerss and distributors to use their position in between artists and their audience to keep the largest slice of the creative-works pie for themselves. This model once served everyone well, because the marketing power of the packagers and distributors made it possible for creators to reach a much wider audience than they would have otherwise, and people got the opporuntity to buy creative works from artists they might not ever have heard of. On the other hand, there is no evidence at all that cheap copying has stemmed the flow of professional creative works. Show me one musician, one author, one director anywhere who has said, "I thought about making this album/book/movie but decided not to because it could be copied too easily." One suspects that the claim there would be no professional creative works without DRM is just made up.
2) What is this "the" free market of which you speak, and how does it relate to the huge diversity of actual free markets in the real world, which vary in their legal and economic structure enormously? If we replace your incorrect usage with the correct usage, and say, "we want professionals to produce high quality 'creative works' despite us having technology that can replicate such an item for zero cost. A free market really can't cope with that at all..." it becomes clear that here too you are making stuff up. You are claiming that no possible free market whatsoever, out of the infinite possible market machines that we might invent, is capable of dealing with goods that are expensive to create and easy to copy (note that "cheap" isn't really the issue--stamping albums is cheap, downloading tunes is easy.) This is an incredibly strong claim, backed by...nothing.
When somebody can give me a sound, scalable, generic and implementable economic design for goods that cost money to build the first time but are free to copy from then on, I might start to protest against DRM, because I'd actually have an answer to the question of "If not DRM then what?". Until then I'll continue to argue the case for it, use it despite the inconvenience and who knows, maybe even implement it in future.
I guess I could just link to Baen Books here, or to any number of bands like the Barenaked Ladies who oppose DRM and have somehow managed to make an oodle of cash. If examples don't convince you, then you should think about the theoretical persepective that file sharing is nothing more than advertising for the work in question.
While I'm on advertising, there is always the possibility of ad-supported art. Product placement ads have never been been huge, but that may be just because there were easier ways of doing it.
The one thing we can be certain of is that DRM is nothing more than an attempt to save a obsolete business model, and history tells us it will be a failure. The only open question is: will it be an expensive failure, or a cheap one? It looks like it is going to be very expensive for studios and some publishers, and relatively cheap for everyone else.
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Well, there's some truth to that. It's undoubtably true that DRM is being used for many different things at once - Microsoft/Apple use it to lock people into their platforms, the record companies are using it to maintain their business model, etc, bu
Collateral Damage (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fight it how? (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps, but that's not the problem I'm interested in having solved, or that the public is interested in having solved. That problem is that we want as many creative works created and published as possible, and that we also want just as much for those works to be available to everyone who wants them, without restriction, and for the least cost possible, if any.
I don't care if someone is a professional or not. And since there's no objective measure of quality in the field of creative works, we can only try to encourage quantity. (Though there is a rule of thumb that only a small, fixed fraction of all works are good, so the way to get more good works is to have more works overall, so it all works out anyway)
So taking into consideration the actual problem, rather than what you'd like to distract us with, DRM is simply unacceptable. Here's why:
Let's suppose we had a world without copyright, a world with moderate copyright, and a world with excessive copyright. In the first world, some original works are created (as we know will happen from historical example and the fact that other motives exist for artists besides copyright-derived revenue), but probably not a whole lot. This produces some public benefit, but not a great deal. Let's arbitrarily call it 5%. OTOH, there is total freedom with regard to those works, so everyone can have their own personal universal library, everyone can use whatever works they want in creating their own derivative works, without even so much as a transactional cost, and this produces a very large public benefit. Let's arbitrarily call this 44% (34% from the freedom, and 10% from the derivative works created, which will likely outnumber the original works, as we also know from history). The net public good is 49%
In the second world, there is some copyright, but not too much. This produces a substantial incentive to authors and doesn't reduce their other incentives. This results in a large public benefit. Let's say 30%, since we know that copyright is an economic incentive, and we know that the vast majority of revenue from copyrighted works is made within a few years, tops. (Often a few months or even weeks, depending on the particular medium and market). There is some, but not total, freedom with regard to those works for a little while -- long enough for that revenue to get made -- at which point there is total freedom. So while eventually there is just as much freedom as before, there is much less in the short run. Let's call this 29% (24% from the freedom, and 5% from the derivatives, of which there will be far, far fewer). The net public good is 59%.
In the third world, there is a very large amount of copyright. This produces only slightly more of an incentive to authors without reducing their other incentives. This results in pretty nearly the same public benefit as before, since the artists were already getting pretty much all the money possible out of their works, and now they're only getting a few pennies more. This isn't much of an increased incentive to create, but it's about the same as before. Let's say 33%, which is the max. There is little freedom during the copyright, and now it lasts much, much longer before there is total freedom. Let's call this 7% (5% for the limited freedom during copyright, 1% for the freedom when a work expires, which almost never happens, and 1% for the very small number of derivatives that get created). The net public good is 40%.
Since we want to get the greatest net public good, the answer is clear: no copyright is good, but not maximally good, and too much copyright is worse than none at all. The best thing is to have some, but not too much copyright.
DRM is an attempt to have permanent copyrights which are very very limited, and which are implemented privately so that the public and the gover
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No, quality is a matter of subjective artistic judgment, and it's variable over time, as well. The government is in no position to say that one work is of higher quality than another; it's not something they're competent at doing, and in any case, who are they to judge? Part of the genius of the copyright system is that a copyright on its own is worthless. A copyright merely acts like
Re:Fight it how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently DRM forces me to double my downloads... Once off the iTunes store for the TV shows I want to watch, then a second time to get them DRM free for long term archive.
If they came DRM free I wouldn't have to do the second download.
Please explain to me what economic model describes how DRM is protecting the revenue of content creators here.
I think its simple:
The content creators are too nervous to try and sell stuff without DRM.
Which is actually amazing - in all the history of recorded music, TV and film, until about 10 years ago nothing had significant DRM. You could tape music off the radio, video off the TV.
And yet sales of these products brought great wealth to the content producers. According to what you espouse, they should have all gone bankrupt as everyone pirated all the content.
In reality, people don't do this. Yes, they copy stuff. Always did. But they buy stuff too. And they always will, even if the DRM is removed.
Its happening now - there isn't a reason for virtually any sales of music CD's - just copy them off the internet.
But people still buy music CD's.
More importantly, the fallacy in the argument is that someone who gets music off the internet will somehow pay more money to these companies if the music isn't available. In fact, they may not have the money to spend, or the will to spend it that way.
Whilst someone like me is holding back on purchases when because I want to get it free of DRM also.
So in order to get people (who may never buy stuff) to not copy content, they are screwing around with people like me (who are more than willing to pay for content) by giving me the inferior product.
I get stuff from iTunes movies because its available quickly, and the quality is good. The stuff I get on the internet takes longer to download. For the shows I want to watch (eg Heroes, BSG, Stargate) I'm more than happy to pay to know that I'll get the content as fast as I can.
Bear in mind I live in Australia, and have to get the iTunes gift vouchers from the US to see this stuff.
But no way could the music industry or video industry view someone like me as being their target market. No, its the 12 year old kids with no disposable income who they are interested in forcing into the market? Right.
I'm probably the extreme example, but the general case is valid. Those with disposable income to spend on content will spend it. The competition is for how I spend my dollar. The content produces need to produce good content, and the money will come. Locking in bad content is not the winning formula here.
Michael
it can't be fought (Score:5, Interesting)
There aren't enough people who know or care. Only a few of us geeks, and we don't make up an appreciable fraction of the market.
People will buy what the ads tell them to buy. End of story. We lose. Want to play the downloaded movie you just ordered from Netflix on Linux? Sorry, no dice.
I don't like it either, but it's reality.
Re:it can't be fought (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM absolutely *can* be fought. Just tell everyone about the free & superior compeditor to Netflix: The Pirate Bay.
Seriously, this is a simple issue of competiton: Netflix is easy to use, costs money, and provides moderate quality DRM-encumbered files. TPB is slightly more complex, free, and provides decent quality DRM-free files. If Netflix sucked it up and provided high quality DRM-free files, they'd have 2 out of 3 and be compeditive with TPB again.
The only way to fight DRM is to point out one simple fact: DRM *encourages* piracy, because it's hard to get guilt tripped when the pirates are providing a strictly better product.
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Yes, give them even MORE of an excuse to point at.
If you don't want to support DRM in any way you don't partake of the products produced by said companies. You don't buy it, you don't download it in violation of their copyright. One way gives them funds, the other gives them an excuse.
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But, under Russian law, *making* the offer was the only requirement to sell music.
If I go to another merchant and buy the same item at the price I want, the first merchant has no right to complain about it. If you want to say that "the music industry has the right to c
Really important social battle. (Score:2)
Fighting DRM =! Fighting against slavery, ethnic cleansing, racism, sexism, facism, totalitarinism....or any other REALLY important social battle.
I would argue that the amount to which social change of any sort is possible is directly correlated with how easy it is to distribute progressive and/or revolutionary ideas to sympathetic eyes and ears (to console them) and neutral eyes and ears (to convince them) and even to hostile eyes and ears (to force a response of some sort). Each one of the social battl
How is it important at all? (Score:2)
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Because the ranting yahoo isn't the issue. They don't change people's minds (on the scale we are discussing, anyway), regardless of the medium. The effectiveness of a message is also dependent in great part by its artistic quality. A message, no matter how perceptive, will not make an impact if its presentation is so ugly or boring that nobody will take the time to view it or if they do to take it seriously. Liek it or not, in an audio-visual world production values contribute or detract from the present
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Anyone with a cheap digital camera can film their own news stories, and make them available to everyone in the world. I can assure you way more people know about LonelyGirl15 then know what the Cathedral and the Bazaar are.
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DRM is a more important issue than you seem to think it is, because it makes the archival of our contemporary literature impossible.
From the perspective of archival, digital data storage has two interesting properties: First, it makes it possible to produce an unlimited number of perfect archival-quality copies of the work. Second, it means we're storing the data on fragile media that is extremely prone to degradation over time. Now, these two properties *should* cancel each other out, because the owner of
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Which is precisely his point - not enough people care or even know about it to make a difference.
Jeesh (Score:5, Insightful)
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Granted, speaking out against it on
It would have far more value for us to push for these kind of stories where they are more likely to be seen by regular consumers - write letters to the editor at your favorite
Re:Jeesh (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to explain DRM to people outside Slashdot, let them read something like this article [pingwales.co.uk] or Jasper Fforde's The Well of Lost Plots.
Enough (Score:2)
United Front (Score:5, Interesting)
But the point is that not being tech savvy, they are clueless as to what the superficial applications of DRM are, let alone the deeper implications. Until more of the general population is made aware of what is at stake, DRM will continue unabated because people buy it. Fortunately, there have been signs that the main stream media are noticing the implications of DRM as evidenced by recent articles in the New York Times.
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What about their intentions do you consider dishonorable? Illegal, certainly, but what dishonor is there in opposing or violating an unjust law?
Market Forces Are At Work (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM will fail on its own (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand we have some companies, such as Disney, who recognise that piracy is another business model and that if this business model is succeeding then something is going wrong in their own business model. In many ways they have got passed the point of denial and started recognising maybe they should be taking another approach. Unfortunately this is not true for the rest of the large media companies. Two of the issues I see are pricing and availability:
- Pricing: If you look at the DVD series of Star Trek and Farscape, then you are looking at around $140 USD+TAX per season. This sort of pricing stinks of price gauging and targets the core fans. Anyone else who is interested, yet doesn't want to pony up that sort of cash, in acquiring the series either pirates or goes without. On other hand when you see a series such as 'Stargate SG-1' retailing at $30 CAD+TAX, you are tempted into making a purchase.
- Availability: What do I do if I want to buy some music not available in my country? Sometimes if you hunt down hard enough you may find some willing to order it for you, but it isn't easy. Now that there are online stores, such as iTunes, you would have thought you would finally be able to buy music from anywhere easily: wrong, since the music industries still impose their outdated distribution limitations on online stores.
Although I did mention two, DRM makes buying online music inconvenient and also makes it hard to explain to your parents why they can't do what they want with their music. For me technology is all about making the difficult easy, yet DRM is all the opposite: making the easy difficult and makes listening to my legally bought music akin to trying to deal with government. I still buy CDs because they are free of DRM and easy to use because of it.
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In fact, I have been saying that once copyright or patent protected goods are in the market it is no longer possible for that market to be a free market. It is now a market in goods having government granted monopolies.
all the best,
drew
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Anti-consumer. Yeah, tell that to Apple and the (currently) 2 billion songs they've sold off iTunes.
As to the later, you miss the point entirely. Take a look at the lesson from VHS and MacroVision. When consumers started copying tapes for friends, the industry implemented MacroVision's copy protection scheme that prevented most recorders from copying commercial tapes. Yes, you could buy
DRM List (Score:4, Informative)
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Blu-ray Disc (BD): Works the same as Windows XP.
Whew! According to this list Vista does nothing at all! Hey, this is a great list!
Of course, in the real world Protected Video Path [wikipedia.org] actually does something. Quoting from Wikipedia:
In order to prevent users from copying DRM content, Windows Vista provides process isolation and continually monitors what kernel-mode software is loaded. If an unverified component is detected, then Vista will stop playing DRM content, rathe
Really? Sounds worse than I thought... (Score:3, Interesting)
"If you have DVI or HDMI without HDCP (ICT set or not), you don't get any video output. You must use an analog connection at this point. You can either use VGA or Component."
Great, so I get to switch my monitor to an inferior connection. Good luck if your video card and monitor don't both have VGA.
How about a chain letter from us to everyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
But what if WE did the same thing? What if the most articulate amongst us came up with a DRM warning letter, and we forwarded it to all the Joe Sixpacs of our worlds with the a title like "WARNING: DRM THREATENING YOUR PC" and "FORWARD THIS TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS!!" message?
Maybe I'm just idealistically dreaming, maybe I'm being a little rtarded, but how else will Joe Sixpack ever find out otherwise? Broadcast media? Nope. Blogs? Not the ones he's reading. And you know Joe HAS read about the rocket impala.
Too Late for Media? (Score:3, Informative)
After all, why else would these Flash devices sacrifice capacity and manufacturing costs for DRM features they don't use to make money?
Bah why fight it? (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't like people really take the hippie goals of OSS and FSF [and the like] to heart anyways. The vast majority of OSS users tend to be commercial shops that use it just because it's cheap, not because it's libre. Worse yet, they use it to support the development of proprietary software/hardware (example: IBM uses it to develop DB2 which is proprietary).
Frankly I think society as a whole is a lost cause. I suggest folk just get a comfy lawn chair and watch the ensuing madness.
Tom
AAC is not by Apple, and not DRM only (Score:5, Informative)
Considering that the article cites Wikipedia, it's curious how it perpetuates the myth that AAC was "invented and promoted by Apple." While Apple is one of the corporations using it, and it does support FairPlay, it is possible to have completely non-DRM-encumbered AAC files. I've ripped most of my CD collection into AAC format using iTunes with no restrictions placed on how I use those files. The format wasn't invented by Apple either. From Wikipedia: "AAC was developed with the cooperation and contributions of companies including Dolby, Fraunhofer (FhG), AT&T, Sony and Nokia, and was officially declared an international standard by the Moving Pictures Experts Group in April 1997."
Right... I'll just fire up eMule... (Score:2)
If the major hardware vendors like Intel, NVidia and ATI take these recommendations seriously and implement them in their products, it may occur that the client will not only get an inferior product (defective by design), but will also have to pay the extra cost of implementing DRM restrictions (the vendors won't be probably willing to spend the extra costs for something that does not give them any profits).
And the alternative if they don't is that the content will not play at all. What you can hope for is shoddy implementations - like the Westinghouse TV-Sony PS3 issue that pisses customers off. One can hope that faulty implementations and inconvenienced customers will lead to them not buying these products. Then again people put up with BSOD for eons. No I don't trust the market to vote with their wallets. People are too apathetic.
Rather I'd rely on the muslix64s of the world, and the pirate bays. Circumven
Embrace good DRM and make a difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Go ahead, don't buy media with bad DRM. But I'll continue buying good DRM media - because I believe in reasonable precautions against piracy - which to me means non-intrusive.
To which you say "blah blah blah, cracked AAC, blah blah" - to which I say "get me the statistics on AAC media piracy vs. non-DRM piracy." Or "blah blah, burned CD not as good as regular CD, blah blah" - to which I say "CD's aren't as good as vinyl, and I don't much care."
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But I'll continue buying good DRM media - because I believe in reasonable precautions against piracy
DRM doesn't affect piracy, it only affects the paying customer. The content ends up on The Pirate Bay and the other file-sharing networks anyway. This realization is even coming to the music industry. Recently, CDON.com, a large Swedish online music store, set up a special section selling unprotected MP3 files, citing customer demand. The section is even prominently advertised on the download section main page.
While there's "time" (Score:2)
Time for what? Do they plan to integrate mandatory brain purging in our brains or something? Do the planets align in some DRM-favoring way few days from now?
Exactly wtf is the paranoia about? DRM is broken, so fine. By the time people start feeling the effects of this (the wide public still hasn't), DRM will either adapt to be bearable or die.
I don't get it what's with all the paranoia.
DRM is about... (Score:2)
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All DRM does effectively is tie people to specific platforms
New Zealand's own DCMA (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.brookers.co.nz/bills/new_bills/b061021
Particularly obnoxious is Section 226. Breaking a technological protection measure (TPM) even if only to play music you legally bought can land you in prison - unless you're one of the 'qualified' persons such as a librarian.
This blog I picked from a list of Google hits has a fair bit to say about the bill:
http://artemis.utdc.vuw.ac.nz:8000/pebble/2006/12
What's next? Trusted Thinking? (Score:2)
In related news, Dialog Solutions, Inc., released a report stating that "the market of interpersonal conversations requires stronger Analog Rights Management protections". Dialog Solutions aspires to be the world's leader in producing professional quality dialogs, polylogs, and solitary musings which can be used for both commercial and entertainment purposes.
The demand for their products, however, has been allegedly hurt by the rampant piracy. "What is to stop people from taking the fruits of our hard wor
What's plan B? (Score:2, Interesting)
So will any manufacturers step up to the plate and start producing hardware that complies with the letter of the law but that's easy for the skilled user to circumvent? Say by doing a firmware update to the BIOS or something.
Alternatively, maybe some countries that don't sign onto DRM treaties (think Russia and A
DRM is the least of our problems. (Score:2)
In addition drm is the least evil thing about trusted computing. If the only thing trusted computing did was provide DRM to music and movies then it wouldn't be quite so dangerous. We need to concentrate on the other aspects of trusted computing.
Also we need to stop saying stuff like "vote with your wallet". Obviously you should
Two upcoming teachable moments (Score:3, Insightful)
On Feb 17, 2009, US broadcasters are scheduled to abandon analog TV.
There will be, I think, an enormous howl as people realize that
they've been had -- particularly in rural areas, where cable is
not available.
[ the Feb 2007 issue of Scientific American has an
article about this transition; unfortunately, I
cannot find in it any reference at all to DRM or HDCP
or the broadcast flag ]
Sometime after that date, "they" will flip the bit
that enables enforcement of the Broadcast Flag.
Again, I think that this will provoke consumer outrage and rebellion.
But I am often disappointed when I expect to be able to distinguish
between US consumers and sheep.
ars technica post by Ken Fisher on the topic (Score:3, Insightful)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070115-861
DRM story (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a list of stuff that he's bought over the last year or so.
- A really nice "Brillian" HDTV ($10000)
- A PS3 ($600)
- A really high-end Sony digital camcorder that records 1080p ($2500?)
- A really, REALLY high-end Sony laptop that can burn Blu-ray movies ($5000)
- A de-interlacer ($3000)
Ok, so he has all this stuff, and he's excited to start recording 1080p content with his camcorder and burning it to Blu-ray disks, and then watching it on his top-of-the-line entertainment system. Every piece of his setup is among the best you can get, and it all supports 1080p. So he records some stuff, finds burns it to disk, and can't get it to play. I talked to him about his setup several times over the course of a couple of weeks... There were so many roadblocks that he ran into, and every single one was because of DRM. It was comical.
The PS3 refused to even play the disks because they appeared to be pirated. This has come up quite a bit in various Blu-ray forums. So he found a workaround for this, but it sucks because you have to use this "special" format that doesn't allow your movies to have menus. Ok, so he burns another disk with the crappy no-menu format, and the PS3 still refuses to play it. Turns out the PS3 can't "authenticate" the TV over HDMI, so it won't output anything in 1080p. So he has to deal with Brillian on the phone to get a firmware update. He finally gets that, and tries again. Still won't play. Now, the PS3 says it can't authenticate the de-interlacer box. So, he still hasn't found a fix for that, but he can finally watch his movies as long as he plugs the PS3 directly into the TV, AND, burns his movies in the special format with no menus.
The net result is that his movies can't have menus, his $3000 de-interlacer is collecting dust, but after two weeks of debugging and tech support calls and firmware upgrades, his $20000 worth of equipment will actually allow him to record and watch movies. Makes you think back to the good old days, when you recorded something onto a VHS tape and stuck it in the VCR.
and OSX? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your computer is an extension of your home (Score:4, Insightful)
Your computer is an extension like your filing cabinet. It is like your CD collection. It is like your games collection. If you consider all legal and part of your home you would never allow a company such as Microsoft to enter it to inspect your filing cabinet, your CDs, nor your games collection, even if they claim they would never look at anything other than those things. It is a violation of your privacy to not fight against such a thing while watching it happen.
We don't allow private companies to make and enforce their own laws. Just as everyone would love to own their own bank we know every large corporate entity would love to own their own bank, to grant them loans, to set their own interest rates, etc, to collect income off their own interest rates. We don't allow corporate entities to make nor enforce the laws. We elect government to do just that. We know that corporate entities would greatly abuse you. There's no standards of conduct on them set by the law. If we let them make their own laws and enforce them in your home I'd feel that we'd be sanctioning the likes of HP pretexting employees.
You see, the big thing about what happened with HP was that they felt they could do what they wanted and that they could get away with it if only those ordering it were given plausible deny-ability. What really was bad about this wasn't that they violated the rights of free speech and the freedom of the press nor that they participated in illegal acts (in some states), but that they told every single employee that they were subjects (in their personal lives) of the business they worked for. This told every employee that they had no rights when it came to the employer.
This abuse is only an example of what is happening with DRM and content rights management. It tells you that you are subservient to the content provider and that they have the right to enter your home to investigate you and to take action against you even if you were never even in violation.
You need just understand that your computer is an extension of your home.
Think about someone using their vehicle to steal from some business. The way DRM and CRM works is that the owners of those materials can search your car without your permission and can boot your car so that you can't do anything of the sort with it again, even if this inhibits legitimate use of your vehicle for other purposes. Even law enforcement agencies can't search your car without evidence and a warrant while the car is located on your premises. They can't open a door, they can't search through the trunk, they can't do anything to it. While on your property probable cause would be extremely difficult to prove.
Your computer is an extension of your home.
CRM and DRM are the equivalent of allowing companies to make and enforce their own laws and to violate your rights and your privacy. It allows them to do this without the true legal system (with all its procedures and policies, without selective training and strict adherence to the rules of law) having even taken part.
When you can come to grips with the fact that your computer is an extension of your home you'll understand why you can't let DRM/CRM exist in any form. It should be your responsibility to ensure that your children's future is free of private laws created by private companies which are not designed to protect you as an individual (instead giving priority over the company and content rights holder).
Everything that is done in the computer would can be equated to the world we move in. You need only think about it as part of the real world instead of some cyber-world where you can give or take what happens.
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Fair Use is a matter of Congressional, not Constitutional, law. (All the Constitution says is that it's Congress's ball game) Lessig's recent SCOTUS case (wherein he tried to have the recent copyright extension thrown out) reinforces this.
As for not being able to use linux for various DRM'd tech -- which really is the only legitimate complaint against DRM on its face -- the right answer is probably "what do we need to do in ord
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Re:Right "rights". (Score:5, Insightful)
Congress has the power to make all fair use null and void, and to extend patents and copyrights to 3.2 billion centuries from the date of issue. That's legal.
The US economy was built on patent infringement, though. Once we "pirated" enough to get a leg up on the Europeans, we erected intellectual property walls to hold our advantage.
The US is now, intellectual property-wise, in the position of 19th century Europe. High legal barriers protecting old, wealthy, stagnant industries. China is in the position of the US in the 19th century--nominal legal barriers and lax enforcement. And unfortunately for us, the result will likely be the same.
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*shouts a line of Shakespeare and runs, chased by a mob in ink-stained aprons*
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So go and buy the latest Elvis Costello CD and put it in your computer's CD drive.
You've already bought it, and it _will not play_.
"But how about my rights to buy a new car with an eight-track player built in"
No, this is like buying a car and finding it won't function on Interstate 95.
How did I find out? I spent a hundred bux on CDs and found out the hard way. UMG got my money for that one purcha
Re:This isn't about freedom (Score:5, Interesting)
*begin paste*
Alt.Rhode_Island buys music. REPOST
So I'm an Elvis Costello fan. I bought "The River In Reverse" and "The Delivery Man"
The CD for "River in Reverse" wasn't copy protected, but the DVD would only play in my wicked small low-fi portable DVD player that has 1 inch speakers. It craps out after about 5 minutes in anything else. I watched the whole thing. It wasn' worth the effort. They're doing copy protection for THAT?
The first CD in "Delivery Man" is copy protected and will only play in the low-fi DVD player.
I heard mutterings of the CEO of UMG saying that ipods are repositories of stolen music. I didn't figure that he'd be stupid enough to follow through. And good luck figuring this out on your own, as these disks are not labeled as such plainly. The "Delivery Man" cd is labeled as "enhanced cd" on a tiny logo on the back of the package instead of the standard Compact Disc label. In other words, they get around not selling a Compact Disc by not calling it a Compact Disc as defined by the Phillips standard (which gets the manufacturer the Compact Disc label).
I went to the UMG site that describes the copy protection. Apparently if you have a Macintosh you're screwed. They're "working on it" because they say that the only software they have to let you play the cd works only for Windows PCs and it's spotty on that depending on the age and model of your optical drive.
Fine.
I have been hosed for being an honest guy.
I'm not a thief. I will never pay another cent to UMG. This is insane.
You have been warned.
--
BMO
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No. Because it's out of my control. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. However, UMG _is_ something I can do something about, albeit in my own little way, and in this case they _have_ picked my pocket.
I tell my friends that it's bad karma to DL songs and not pay for them, but I'm not going to shove it down their throats.
By the way, in case you hadn't noticed, at the apogee of Napster's popularity, CD sal
Re:Return defective products. (Score:3, Insightful)
Return defective products for a replacement or refund. Insist on it. Follow-up. Customer care is an expense of doing business. Defective products are expensive for the retailers. Insist on non-DRM products. Have fun, Go into a shop and look for CD's. Tell the clerk you can only use redbook CD's. Have them show you the CD's. Have them help you find the Philips "Compact Disc" logo. Don't buy anything without it.
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how about my rights to buy a new car with an eight-track player built in? Is my "Freedom" being trampled? No.
Wrong analogy. Do you have the right to buy a car and then fit (or pay someone else to fit) an eight-track player? Yes? Ten your rights are not being trampled.
Somebody please point to me where Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Constitution our Inalienable Right to Buy DVD's without Digital Rights Management.
Copyright is not an inalienable right either, it is a bargain between content producers and the public. The public agrees to enforce the producer's monopoly, in exchange for which the producer agrees to allow the public access to the work for a fee, and eventually allow the work to lapse into the public domain. DRM is an attempt to disrupt this
Re:This isn't about freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
"We"? Who is "We"?
If you are indeed in the industry, please read my previous messages to the OP of this thread.
UMG has ceased to treat me as a customer. Instead, they have treated me as a potential thief. I have ceased to treat them as something to respect. I could just start downloading UMG content off the 'net out of spite, but I won't, because I won't sink to the level that they expect me to.
--
BMO
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I cannot, because Thomas Jefferson didn't write anything in the Constitution. He wasn't even on the American continent at the time.
He did, however, conduct some correspondence with the people who were writting the Constitution and you'll find that in those letters he wrote of our Inalienable write to be free of copyright.
And DVD DRM only "works" because of the DM
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That's all well and good to say but what about those of us who can't write fiction, draw, and have a voice that gets you shut off at the bar when you start singing?
Eh?!
It's great when I'm in front of a CAD station or Bridgeport, but don't ask me to draw the female form, and most of all don't ask me to sing. You will regret it.
--
BMO
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Vista has gone to great extremes to achieve digital content management. The Vista DRM requirements will greatly affect the design of video cards, monitors, HD-DVDs and other computer hardware in the near future. Microsoft seems to have really gone overboard to try to satisfy all of Hollywood and the music studios fears about computer owners somehow managing to access unencrypted protected content. Windows itself seems to have been designed as a digital content delivery system. Personally, I would have p
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Your thinking might have a chance in the absence of copyright law and patent law.
all the best,
drew
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DONE.
Sayings - Deterred Bahamian Novel - http://www.ourmedia.org/node/262954 [ourmedia.org]
Tings - Anuddah Bahamian Novel - http://www.ourmedia.org/node/85937 [ourmedia.org] &
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/111123 [ourmedia.org]
drew Roberts's Storefront - Lulu.com - http://www.lulu.com/zotz [lulu.com]
Some tings for you from zotz : CafePress.com - http://www.cafepress.com/zotz [cafepress.com]
Now for some other stuff of mine:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zotzbr o&search=Search [youtube.com]
http://www.archive. [archive.org]
Remember DiVX? (Score:2, Informative)
You can no longer buy a DVD player that plays DiVX files. It seems that the MPAA has decided that any free high quality format means 'piracy'. You could in principle release DRM-enabled stuff that just happens to be tagged with no restrictions, but that could be very, very expensive.
The idea that