
DRM Is Toxic to Culture - jrepinc
https://meshedinsights.com/2017/07/09/drm-is-toxic-to-culture/
======
musesum
Some background: I developed a software binary sandbox, in the 90's; patent
cited 500+ times ... mostly by developers of DRM. Now, I am working on an open
source project.

IMO, DRM extends a presumption of scarcity. Hunters share their meat, whereas
farmers guard their harvest. For the hunter, the kill is a short term
abundance of value; if it isn't shared, it will spoil. For the farmer, the
harvest is a long term store of value. Scavengers exploit the asymmetry of
effort in which to obtain that value.

Once value became easy to copy, the symmetry of effort has shifted. As a
result, culture is shifting with it. Freely copied recorded music shifted the
value back to live concerts. Back to a short term abundance of value. When was
the last time you posted on Twitter or FB? These are freshly hunted moments.
Wait too long and that muse will spoil.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
There is no presumption of scarcity, because scarcity is a real phenomenon.

There is a vast qualitative difference between the output of ten thousand
amateurs and one highly trained and exceptionally talented artist (working in
whatever medium.)

This an immensely unfashionable idea. But the real problem with DRM isn't that
it does or does not enable copying, but that it _presupposes that artistic
output is a commodity that can be copied._

In fact artistic output - considered as the cultural influence of an entire
career, and not as a series of copyable files or performances - is not
fungible.

Not all content creators are equal. If you want quality as opposed to
quantity, you need to set up a feedback function that makes some effort to
reward and support quality, based on a more sophisticated metric than a
lowest-common-denominator unit sales count in a mass market.

This is even more true of science. Ten thousand PhDs do not add up to one
Newton or Einstein.

And politics. Ten thousand mediocre politicians do not add up to one Nelson
Mandela or Gandhi.

By the time everyone is having the DRM or no-DRM argument they've already
missed the point - which is that commodifying cultural output as "content" for
industrial distribution mechanisms (including live tours) is to misunderstand
how culture propagates and evolves.

And if you can't invent a system that finds and rewards talent - without
reducing every transaction to the vapid foolishness of markets - then your
culture, science, politics, art, and general joy in invention will stagnate
and eventually disappear.

DRM is barely a footnote here. It's nowhere close to being the main problem.

~~~
sedachv
Your entire comment boils down to repeating Sturgeon's Law over and over,
which can be summarized as "ninety percent of everything is crap," which is to
say, your comment is obnoxious and off-topic to the discussion of Digital
Restrictions Management and its negative consequences (DRM only has negative
consequences).

However, there is an idea there. HN user
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=maxxxxx](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=maxxxxx)
made a very astute observation as to why so many "industries" (rich people
that control companies) are so adamant about ramming DRM down everyone's
throats:

 _Copyright and IP (and probably real estate) are pretty much the only way for
capitalists to make money the more things like internet, 3D printing, AI,
robotics and so on are available to the masses. To me it 's the only way to
keep the current power structures intact so for a lot of powerful people
copyright laws are probably the most important laws. They don't need the state
for personal protection (they can pay for security guards instead of police)
but they need the state for protecting their livelihood._

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12514611](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12514611)

The system you propose to invent is redistribution of wealth and socialism:
free education for those that want to advance their abilities, and universal
basic income to allow them the time to express those abilities. Liberating
knowledge from rent-seeking should be the prerogative of everyone that wants
to improve the human condition and advance humanity.

~~~
millstone
It's not that 90% is crap, it's that there's inherently expensive classes of
content that won't be produced without a revenue stream. Pewdiepie could still
do his thing on a shoestring, but Star Wars could not be produced.

> Copyright and IP (and probably real estate) are pretty much the only way for
> capitalists to make money the more things like internet, 3D printing, AI,
> robotics and so on are available to the masses

I tried to warn the capitalists, but they were too busy counting their $s from
tracking you with AI and replacing your job with robots.

> Liberating knowledge from rent-seeking should be the prerogative of everyone
> that wants to improve the human condition and advance humanity.

A discussion of "knowledge" is important, but DRM is 99% about entertainment.

~~~
kronos29296
And 100% about owning content after copyright expires. DMCA guarantees it.

------
skywhopper
I would say that DRM is merely an inevitable outgrowth of our society's
enshrinement and worship of the idea of "intellectual property". That word,
"property", gives the opposite connotations of "copyright"\--permanent
rightful _ownership_ vs a _temporary_ grant of monopoly on an idea.

But yes, it's definitely the case that the cultural idea that humans and
corporations have the right to own a copyright for a length of time greater
than the duration of any human life means that for 99.99% of all works, the
effective duration of copyright truly is forever, which reinforces the idea
that copyright _should_ be forever. And if it's forever and it's "property"
why shouldn't strong, user-hostile DRM exist? It's the barbed-wire, severe-
tire-damage, border-wall of electronic media.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
And the really weird part is that while the propaganda puts it as "protecting
property", it really has exactly the opposite effect. When you buy a physical
book, that book is indeed your property, and you can do with it whatever you
want. Now, with DRM-infested ebooks, you are actually just licensing it for
very restricted use.

You might as well be claiming that making private home ownership illegal would
strengthen property rights.

~~~
type0
The physical book comparison is interesting. Imagine there would be a way to
publish physical books with DRM that all publishers would embrace. You open
such a book without authorization and it's all gibberish. To read it you would
need to have bought a special strip that you lay over the pages in order to
read (don't matter the technical aspect, it's gedanken-experiment so let's
consider such a strip magic for now). You buy this strip and enter a user
agreement to only use it for yourself (you are not allowed to lend it - even
to your children), it could easily be reverse-engineered but no-one would do
it because that would be a felony.

No sane person would agree to such state of affairs but somehow now because
our books are digital it's all off a sudden okay with almost everyone?

~~~
pdkl95
RMS has been warning[1] about that specific problem for decades.
Unfortunately, very few people listened. Now we have the additional problem of
people already giving up property rights for shiny digital baubles. -sigh-

[1] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-
read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

~~~
scrollaway
I'm getting a little exhausted in every thread about DRM and the likes to read
about how "people don't listen to RMS". People don't listen to RMS because he
makes no effort to be listened to and constantly takes absolutist stances
which only harm what he defends.

In the case of DRM, _many_ people have been talking about this problem for a
long time. It's not a matter of consumers not listening, it's a matter of
alternatives not developing in the market.

DRM in video games is a lesser problem as alternatives _did_ develop. Steam,
the #1 platform, doesn't enforce DRM. GOG and Humble Bundle have been running
their platforms on mostly DRM-free games.

Who do you fault for alternatives not developing/not catching on in the
ebooks/video world? Consumers for making the wrong choices? Companies for not
trying hard enough? Governments for not regulating consumer rights?

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> People don't listen to RMS because he makes no effort to be listened to

So ... you should only take advice from people who put in extra effort to
specifically reach you?

> constantly takes absolutist stances

The concept of an absolutist stance as an accusation is nonsense, as it's
orthogonal to whether it's right. If you are not willing to compromise on
slavery, you are taking an absolutist stance. So should people have fought for
only partial slavery in order to not harm what they defended?

> Governments for not regulating consumer rights?

How about governments not destroying consumer rights by making it illegal to
understand how your own computer works?

~~~
andrewflnr
I can only listen to so many people. It makes sense to focus my efforts on
people who are going to provide the best return on my investment of time.

Meanwhile, absolutism, while not a proof, is a pretty powerful heuristic in
the messy real world of economic policy. And yes, this is also a human rights
issue, but mostly in the same way that a food or housing shortage is a human
rights issue: the roots are economic.

Slavery in particular is a red herring. In almost any other question,
compromise is the way to go, so bringing up the extreme case of slavery adds
more heat than light.

~~~
naasking
I think the other poster sufficiently deconstructed your argument one way, but
I want to point out that you haven't made any case that slavery is a red
herring. Like, at all.

If this debate were taking place just prior to the civil war, there would be
significant debate over whether slaves had human rights, _and_ many making the
economic case for slavery.

RMS is trying to tell you the same thing right now: that DRM is a tool that
takes away some basic human rights, and instead of taking a moment to think
about it, you simply dismiss it out of hand merely because you can see an
economic case for it.

So take a few moments to consider the worst possible outcomes of adopting DRM,
and whether history will regard the economic case for DRM as harshly as it
regards the economic case for slavery.

~~~
andrewflnr
You're responding to a bunch of things I didn't say and don't believe. I'm not
a fan of DRM, just defending the position that RMS isn't the best source on
it.

Also, you yourself haven't made an argument that DRM is anywhere near as bad a
problem as slavery was. It's nowhere close, and to imply otherwise is to
cheapen the suffering of slaves in America. Is that enough of an argument that
it's a red herring?

~~~
naasking
> Also, you yourself haven't made an argument that DRM is anywhere near as bad
> a problem as slavery was.

This judgment was made with perfect hindsight in one case, and no hindsight in
the other, so the conclusion is immediately suspect.

Like I said, consider the worst possible nightmare for DRM, and then judge
whether the comparison is actually fair.

Finally, whether RMS is the best source on it is itself a red herring. If he
makes a reasonable case for a nightmare outcome, his perspective is absolutely
worth considering when weighing the pros and cons of DRM, regardless of how
absolutist you think he is.

~~~
andrewflnr
You have the same lack of time machine as I do in regards to DRM. For the
rest, I think I've made the points I care about well enough.

------
cygned
Lately, I wanted to buy an eBook. I usually buy prints, but this time I needed
it as soon as possible.

Upon searching, every book store told me, I would need to install some Adobe
stuff on my computer to read the file. I am neither a fan of Adobe nor of the
idea of being locked in to an application to view a book. After realizing that
there is no other digital way, I simply bought the printed version and waited
the two days it took to ship.

It's a very frustrating situation for someone who just wants to read
something.

~~~
asdfpoiuqwer
Did you consider pirating the e-book?

To check the ethical box, I would've just used the pirated e-book version
immediately and ordered a hard-copy.

~~~
cygned
Yes, I considered it out of my frustration, but I always try to give back for
good work.

~~~
ZoomZoomZoom
Maybe just send a tip to the authors directly?

------
zanny
This is just the tip of the leaf of the IP tree that is destroying culture.

Since the advent of permanent copyright there is no more commons. The commons
stopped in 1923. Disney will continue to buy the US government into
guaranteeing there is no common heritage of America for as long as they are
able.

It will be interesting to see how, in a thousand years, (hopefully) scholars
of the time will reflect on how systemic the damage was to American society to
artificially constrain creativity so fundamentally and for so long. It is
human nature to take your experiences and reinterpret them in new ways. That
is how creativity is defined. But copyright and IP, especially in perpetuity,
prevent that, all for what is claimed to be the protection of profits by the
original creators, even for decades after the creators are dead.

------
makecheck
DRM and advertising tech have a similar problem of bad execution. Sure, _there
exists_ a way to do each of these that many may consider "reasonable" but _in
practice_ industries have shown that they would rather be obnoxious and make
everything annoying or just much more difficult than necessary. This means
they can't be trusted to do it well, and the solution must be to avoid it
completely (DRM-free content and ad blocker).

~~~
izacus
I don't get this - why is DRM is friggning' NECESSARY? What makes it this
forced law of nature?

The current multi-billion media conglomerates grew at times when being able to
copy a piece of content from TV was encoded in the LAW. Content providers
earned billions of dollars at times when you could press REC on your VCR and
("THE HORROR" now every content provider shill screams) rewatch the show many
times and ( _GASP_ ) give the tape to your friends to watch too!

What exactly was so horrible at being able to rewatch, store and borrow a
movie to a friend that now seems to completely incomprehensible to people here
on HN and outside? What kind of irreversible damage is done by existence of
torrents when WB, Netflix and other content providers earn record profits?

Why are we even debating DRM as something that has a right to exist and helps
anyone?

EDIT: Ergh, sorry for the tone, by DRM is something that really touches my
nerves a bit.

~~~
rhino369
DRM and other anti-piracy measures are all about making piracy harder, not
impossible. It's not an all or nothing venture.

Every little bit you make copying harder results in fewer people copying.

Cntrl C Cntrl V makes it so my mom can pirate. And she did during the Napster
days. But she can't figure out BitTorrent on her own. Well, she could, but
there is a learning curve, and most people aren't interested in it.

They don't have to make it impossible. They just have to make it annoying.

Easy piracy destroyed the music industry. The other media industries are
rightfully suspicious.

~~~
benchaney
The DRM approach to piracy _is_ an all or nothing thing. Once one person
cracks a DRM setup they can distribute any movie protected by that setup to as
many people as they want in whatever medium they want.

I think propagandizing piracy has had a lot more to do with its decline than
ease of use. Try using popcorn time. It is incredibly easy.

------
scarface74
The usual spiel about DRM is that you don't own what you "bought" but in the
case of subscriptions and rentals, why would anyone think they have a right to
_ownership_ when they are clearly paying for _access_?

Why should I have a problem with paying Apple for DRM free music from iTunes
and paying for a subscription to DRMd music for Apple Music?

I haven't pirated music since the iTunes Store opened in 2003. Even from
2003-2008 when it was DRM encumbered, there was a simple built in way to
remove the DRM -- burn it to a CD and rip it.

I also don't have a problem paying to rent a movie from Apple/Amazon, but I
would never "buy" a movie from Apple/Amazon with restrictive DRM. I also
wouldn't have thought about buying a physical disk without an easy way to rip
it to my Plex Server and use in the way I see fit.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I suppose people in general are not yet used to have everything in their life
be some kind of _service_. With DRM, the part of the issue is how quickly we
went from ownership (buying paper books, or even music/video on physical
media) to renting.

Personally, I'm not sure what to think about it. On the one hand, one could
argue that everything becoming a service is a sign of a maturing society. On
the other hand, it makes individuals less autonomous, and society more
fragile. Currently I lean more towards thinking that service-oriented economy
is a _problem_ , and in particular that SaaS and DRM are cancer.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> it makes individuals less autonomous

Really, I think the problem is not so much the decreasing autonomy of the
individual, but rather the increasing concentration of power. In a modern
society, you are already massively dependent on other people, in a normal day
you get into contact with the direct result of the work of thousands of people
(as in: not just people who had the idea to bake a bread, but actually people
who contributed to the specific bread that you are eating now), and I think
that's perfectly fine. What is problematic is if a small group of
individuals/companies get a massive amount of centralized control over a large
part of the population.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Maybe. It seems like a parallel concern.

For example, if I get hold of a textbook about baking bread, and go to my farm
to produce crops for the bread and then bake it myself, using only the things
my soil provides for me, I'm still using the accumulated knowledge and
experience of thousands of people. If I decide to buy the same bread from
someone else, I'm adding more accumulated human touch into the mix. In this
way, there's a difference between services of contemporary people and the sum
of accumulated human experience I can access. The second one is additive, and
I believe society progresses as fast as it can add to it. Here, DRM directly
slows humanity down.

That said, I agree - we're not too autonomous anyway, and modern lifestyle is
directly dependent on being plugged into the socioeconomic machine. Still,
economy was meant for man, not man for the economy; I'm worrying about how
much economic interests restrict us for no other reason than lining someone's
pocket. Technology enables individuals to do cool ways, to build the world
around themselves as they see fit, but then comes the business models that
start restricting these abilities in order to squeeze more money out of
people.

------
rmrfrmrf
I would love to see some use cases of what people want to be able to do with
DRM'd media that 1) can't be done with current DRM limitations and 2) is
within the guidelines of what the distributor allows (or within the rights
given by the user's local government).

For example, my local library buys a set number of digital licenses for
ebooks, so there's a waitlist system for ebooks and each digital copy is time
gated to a certain number of days before becoming unusable. In that time,
though, you can read the ebook offline once downloaded through the library's
app. Annoying sometimes, but overall seems reasonable.

How would that example translate to a non-DRM version while making sure that
the library isn't distributing an unbounded number of licenses to customers?

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> I would love to see some use cases of what people want to be able to do with
> DRM'd media that 1) can't be done with current DRM limitations and 2) is
> within the guidelines of what the distributor allows (or within the rights
> given by the user's local government).

Play it on my linux machine?

Copy it to a different medium for my own personal use?

Inspect it for security vulnerabilities?

Build and sell a device that allows you to split the video signal into
multiple parts so I can watch it on multiple screens arranged into one large
screen?

Buy a device that allows me to inject home automation information onto the
display on which I am watching it?

Do you need more?

~~~
pdkl95
> more?

How about the highly experimental, expensive, poor-user-interface, precursors
to whatever the next truly innovative killer app will be? We don't know what
the really important use cases will be; we don't even know[1] which events or
innovations are in the general direction of the next killer app.

The very idea that some _ideas_ \- aka information, intellectual works, or
(bleh) "content" \- can be owned is already offensive enough. For DRM to make
any kind of sense you first have to presume you can enumerate the ways an idea
will be used. If we knew that, we could skip most R&D.

Instead of trying artificially re-create scarcity, the Silicon Valley startup
culture should be worried about of DRM fencing off next-decade's products.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29#Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29#Content)

------
ctulek
My only concern with DRM in browser is that, as far as I understand the
technology, any website can put a small piece of arbitrary DRM content and
your browser will send information to that website uniq to your device, and
your device will be tracked by DRM providers and probably also by that
website.

Firefox gives you the option to disable DRM in the settings. Chrome also has
it but it is buried deeply in advanced settings. Safari does not seem to have
it at all.

~~~
abecedarius
I think I found this as "Protected Content" in the Chrome advanced settings.
(Searching for "DRM" didn't work.)

------
gaius
_We offer research reports and white papers for your management and Board from
experienced advisors_

Strangely, I couldn't find any of these reports available for free download
and in the public domain...

~~~
comex
_Strangely, I couldn 't find any of these reports available for free download
and in the public domain..._

No, but I bet if you pay for them you get them as PDFs, unencrypted, which you
can view on a vast breadth of devices and OSes and applications,
annotate/modify, clip parts out of, convert to other formats, and otherwise
manipulate as you please, with no arbitrary technological restrictions getting
in the way. (Compare to, say, Adobe Digital Editions wrapped PDFs, which can
only be read in designated apps and limit you to the capabilities of those
apps.)

~~~
gaius
_with no arbitrary technological restrictions getting in the way_

How does the arbitrariness of those technological restrictions differ from the
arbitrariness of the legal restrictions which I'm sure the author would insist
upon, should you decide to republish their work? To me they are the same thing
- mechanisms for saying "you might've bought this but the original owner still
has a say in what you do with it".

The world IMHO is a better place because there are mechanisms by why IP
creators can be paid. Yes there is poorly written DRM (Sony, we're looking at
you) but that is a problem of execution, not one of concept.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> How does the arbitrariness of those technological restrictions differ from
> the arbitrariness of the legal restrictions which I'm sure the author would
> insist upon, should you decide to republish their work?

One of those is decided by a democratic process, the other is dictated by one
party.

> but that is a problem of execution, not one of concept.

Actually, it is a problem of the concept. It is asking for computers to be
robbed of their defining characteristic, and to be put under dictatorial
control.

See also Cory Doctorow's talks on the topic, like maybe this one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbYXBJOFgeI)
(he gave this and similar talks in many places, you can find quite a few of
them on youtube, I have no clue whether this particular one is good)

------
jancsika
> Thus your children won’t get to play your music, show your favourite films,
> read your books, share your culture, with your grandchildren because they
> won’t inherit anything digital from you that’s usable. Historians won’t be
> able to track the influences on an event because the sources have digitally
> corroded. You’ll not even be able to share what you like with your friends.

Even Kodi assumes by (sane) defaults that the user does not want to save
_their own particular copy_ of the relevant media on their own particular
device.

Imagining a future where grandchildren can't inherit the digital libraries
stored on their family devices is early-2000's futurism that somehow skips
completely over the year 2017 where the greater bulk of these future
grandparents are streaming everything.

------
ucaetano
"Travelling frequently in Europe, I’ve had the chance to use two approaches to
the underground/metro/subway, the Paris Metro and the U-bahn in various German
cities."

The author failed to understand the actual cultural issue driving the two
approaches: In Germany you don't need a gate to have people pay the ticket,
most people will do it anyway. In Paris, most people won't pay and just ride
for free, and tragedy of the commons ensues.

So by his own argument, DRM is a product of the culture of a people.

------
microcolonel
Just don't use it, today it is entirely within your power not to use DRM. If
you want it to stay that way, you'll have to be the demand you wish to see in
the world.

------
Silhouette
_The problem with technology-enforced restrictions isn’t that they allow
legitimate enforcement of rights; it’s the collateral damage they cause in the
process._

Indeed, but the problem with not making any effort to enforce restrictions
technically is that typically you then aren't enforcing your legitimate
rights.

The metro analogy was interesting. If the system in Germany works, it is
because people are honest and pay for what they are using without physical
compulsion.

Sadly, if you try to start a business creating original content and making it
available online in the same spirit of trust, you will quickly learn that many
people in the world are not so honest.

You will also learn that unlike a citywide metro system, it is all too easy
for someone of less noble intentions to not only take your content for
themselves without paying but also set up their own redistribution channels
and steal your customers and your revenues.

A third lesson you will learn is that a lot of people may quite innocently
assume that if they can do something then it's allowed, particularly if they
speak a different language and don't necessarily understand the deal being
offered. DRM can be quite effective at deterring this sort of casual and often
unintentional infringement.

~~~
AlexandrB
> Sadly, if you try to start a business creating original content and making
> it available online in the same spirit of trust, you will quickly learn that
> many people in the world are not so honest.

Counterpoint: gog.com

Moreover, I have yet to see a movie that wasn't available on an illegal
streaming/downloading site the day it was released on Blu-Ray, DRM or not.

~~~
Silhouette
GOG is great. I buy from them myself sometimes. However, it's also an anomaly,
and much smaller than the obvious comparison in this case, Steam.

And in terms of things being available immediately, the economics of
mainstream movies are quite different. There's a whole world of niche content
out there that doesn't generate gazillions of dollars and that won't be leaked
when it's barely reached theatres. For smaller operators, deterring casual
infringement even to a moderate degree can literally be the difference between
making enough money to continue operating and going out of business.

------
tomcam
It's all true--but it does nothing to explain how artists can be paid for
their stuff at prices they set.

------
mcbobbington
Interestingly the DMCA prohibits creating software to bypass DRM. It is
completely unconstitutional, violating freedom of the press. That part of the
law should be struck down.

------
nerdponx
_It’s like checking the lift ticket, yes, but also the guy checks you are only
wearing gear hired from the resort shop, skis with you down the slope and
trips you if you try any manoeuvres that weren’t taught to you by the resort
ski instructor; then as you go down the slope he pushes you away from the
moguls because those are a premium feature and finally you get to run the
gauntlet of armed security guards at the bottom of the slope checking for
people who haven’t paid._

How is this at all an accurate analogy for DRM?

~~~
tjoff
How do you play your blu-ray discs on linux btw.?

Bonus question if you succeeded: did you break any laws doing so?

~~~
ioquatix
1\. Realise that you don't have a blu-ray drive. 2\. Install Transmission and
download a rip.

Bonus answer: I probably broke laws making my morning coffee.

~~~
hellbanner
"The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to
work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she
has likely committed several federal crimes that day."

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6611240-three-
felonies-a...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6611240-three-felonies-a-
day)

------
Phenomabomb
DRM only hurts legitimate customers. It seems increasingly rare that people
aren't able to crack DRM's fairly quickly. So the only people that even see
the DRM are the paying customer, and there is always some sort of inconvenient
drawback for them.

~~~
3dk
A good example of this is the Denuvo DRM for games. As I understand it, game
data was temporarily decrypted, while playing which led to poor performance.
Denuvo games were cracked and the pirate versions performed better. Developers
paid a lot for Denuvo DRM which didn't even fulfill the promise of stopping
piracy.

~~~
kgbier
Once the game has been cracked some publishers/devs have opted to release an
update that removes the DRM and the potential performance hit (eg. Mass Effect
Andromeda, Hitman, DOOM). The performance hit in question, however, is an
implementation detail that some developers handle better than others (Rime
comes to mind as a game that performed Denuvo DRM checks many many times per
second, it's speculated it was tied to per-frame update calls).

Denuvo still has a place (if it stays effective) in reducing the number of
day-one pirates, which is its main selling point at this time. On Steam,
interested players have a choice to put money down on release (with the
potential to refund), or wait an indeterminate number of days (weeks?) to
download the cracked version. This uncertainty period has a conversion rate
that Denuvo clients balance against the costs of the DRM.

------
erikpukinskis
All forms of DRM can be defeated by pointing an iPhone at them.

~~~
Buge
It depends on what the goal of the DRM creators is. If their goal is to
prevent copies that most people would consider watchable, then they would not
consider the iPhone to defeat the DRM. But some screen recording technique
with framerate sync would defeat the DRM. If their goal was to prevent sharing
of the original compressed stream, then they would consider even screen
recording to not defeat the DRM.

------
rayiner
I disagree with the characterization of all this media as "culture." They're
entertainment products that exist for the sole purpose of generating a profit.

~~~
harryh
Shakespeare didn't write all those plays for free.

~~~
rayiner
If a modern day Shakespeare wants to create "culture," they can license their
works appropriately. But for the most part the stuff that people want to copy
are entertainment products.

~~~
kasey_junk
I think the point he was trying to make is that you don't start out with
culture. You start out with profit generating entertainment products, and then
via the market bringing lots of people to this enterprise and survivor bias,
you end up with "culture".

