
The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations (2013) - adrianmsmith
https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2
======
jbk
This is one of the most important points about DRM.

DRM are marketed to users (and the society, including politicians) and to
artists as a way to prevent copies. Most engineers implementing DRMs think so
too. And all the discussions we've seen on HTML5 are around this. People have
little arguments against this because it "sounds morally good" to help artist
"live of their creations".

I am the de facto maintainer of libdvdcss, and have been involved on libbluray
(and related projects) and a few other libraries of the same style; I've done
several conferences on this precise subject and I've fought the French High-
Authority-on-DRM in legal questioning about an unclear piece of law...
Therefore, I've studied DRM quite closely...

The truth is that if you consider the main goal of DRM to prevent copies, no
DRM actually work. ALL of them got defeated in a way or another. Indeed, GoT-
broadcast-to-top-of-TPB time is counted in a couple of hours; so why do they
try to push those technologies still?

The answer is probably because the main goal of DRM is to control distribution
channels, not copy-prevention. Copy-prevention is a side goal.

This post of Ian is excellent to explain this.

PS: You can see me speaking of the same point, in French, in June 2013 here:
[http://www.acuraz.net/team-videolan-lors-de-pas-sage-en-
sein...](http://www.acuraz.net/team-videolan-lors-de-pas-sage-en-seine-2013/)

NB: I'm not discussing here whether DRM are good or bad.

~~~
evv
> DRM are marketed to users (and the society, including politicians) and to
> artists as a way to prevent copies. Most engineers implementing DRMs think
> so too. And all the discussions we've seen on HTML5 are around this. People
> have little arguments against this because it sounds morally good to help
> artist live of their creations.

And to that end- that is the legitimate, marketable feature of DRM. As far as
consumers are concerned, thats what it buys them- it allows the producers of
the content to retain some control, live off of their art, and continue
producing.

How would content producers possibly deter copying _without_ exerting control
on the consumption hardware and software? The only answer there is
standardized DRM.

So HTML5 DRM seems to be the only solution which meets the consumer need
(artists getting paid), and avoids the commercial control over your hardware
and software.

~~~
shmerl
_> And to that end- that is the legitimate, marketable feature of DRM._

Except that it's not legitimate. First of all as the post above implied, DRM
simply doesn't advance the goal of "living off one's art" in any way. Or to
put it in business terms, DRM doesn't increase sales (because it doesn't
reduce piracy). I'd even say it decreases sales because some users avoid DRMed
products and it as well increases piracy (because some pirates see breaking
DRM as sport - i.e. they are more likely to direct their attention to a DRMed
product to pirate it, rather than to a DRM-free one).

Plus, it's not legitimate to employ overreaching preemptive policing justified
by "need to live off one's art". Same way it's not legitimate to violate
everyone's privacy by installing police cameras in people's houses as a
preemptive measure against crime.

 _> How would content producers possibly deter copying without exerting
control on the consumption hardware and software?_

They can't deter it. They can reduce it (i.e. turn part of the pirates into
paying customers). The way to do it is old and well known, yet many fail to
remember it - treat customers with respect (and not as criminals by default).
Establish more direct relation with your users, don't be a jerk, be user
friendly and so on. People appreciate services which are explicitly DRM-free.
On the other hand, paranoid attempts to "deter all copying" result in treating
all customers as criminals by default, which turns many of them into pirates
(i.e. serves exactly the opposite purpose).

For some reason not being a jerk and being user friendly is a novel idea for
many legacy publishers which they find hard to digest. Independent studios get
it way better.

~~~
evv
I'm not certain about this notion, but I bet the media executives have done
the math: DRM probably results in more profit due to lowered casual piracy
than decreased profit due to people pirating out of DRM-protest.

And I wouldn't consider standardized DRM "overreaching preemptive policing".
Compare that to the existing legal consumption options and you'll realize that
this "policing" has been happening all along.

Look, its great to say that everybody should be nice, but you've got to
realize that this existing control is the backbone of the big media industry.
Without DRM and the control it ensures, there is no way to ensure
advertisments get watched. The ability to track the success of an ad would be
lost. As it stands, media consumption is very easy for the industry to monitor
and control. This is a huge industry with enormous power- why would they give
that up over some upset rights activists?

I'm all with you when it comes to indie studios. If the non-DRM party is going
to win, its going to be with our wallets. I'd love to see more indie video and
music. Maybe new non-DRM offerings will win out, as we are starting to see in
the game industry.

tldr: At the end of the day, if you want to consume mainstream media, you've
got to put up with the mainstream consumption hardware/software.

~~~
shmerl
_> I bet the media executives have done the math_

I get the feeling it's the opposite. They didn't do any math and do it out of
inertia or because "everyone does it", or because of the completely other and
crooked reasons (like the article linked in the thread explains). DRM doesn't
affect casual or non causal piracy - this was already discussed at length in
the past here. Because once DRM is broken, piracy occurs using those DRM-
stripped copies. I.e. it takes one pirate to break it in order for others to
never deal with it. Therefore it doesn't lower piracy rate.

And I already explained how not using DRM can actually increase sales. And
about DRM increasing piracy, there was an example from CD Projekt Red about
their own game which they originally released with DRM (on disks) in parallel
with DRM-free version (on GOG). And it was immediately pirated. But not the
DRM-free version like you'd assume. It was the DRM-ed one! They said it was an
interesting case study for them, which demonstrated that some pirates
apparently break DRM for sport (i.e. who beats others to break DRM and pirate
it). So it demonstrated for them that DRM boosted piracy. They never released
games with DRM since, and advance the DRM-free distribution cause through
their GOG service.

By the way, music is largely available DRM-free for quite a while already. You
can buy DRM-free files on Cdbaby, Amazon or tons of other music sites. Which
again demonstrates the point that DRM-free distribution works just fine.

 _> This is a huge industry with enormous power- why would they give that up
over some upset rights activists?_

That's exactly the point. DRM is all about certain control (over the market
for example), but not about piracy. Surely those who have that control want to
retain it. But they lie to the public claiming that DRM is used for preventing
piracy, while really it's used for control. It just adds to the reasons to
always oppose it.

~~~
tzs
> DRM doesn't affect casual or non causal piracy - this was already discussed
> at length in the past here. Because once DRM is broken, piracy occurs using
> those DRM-stripped copies. I.e. it takes one pirate to break it in order for
> others to never deal with it. Therefore it doesn't lower piracy rate

Many who would casually pirate (or who would pirate without even realizing
they were pirating) do not know about those DRM-stripped copies.

~~~
shmerl
That depends on what you call "casually pirate". Numbers are important. The
massive bulk of piracy occurs with copies stripped of DRM already by those who
know how to do it. If some users of a DRMed service will decide to pirate
something and will hit a roadblock of DRM not letting them to copy it, they'll
quickly find other sources which provide the same thing without DRM. So DRM
doesn't prevent them from anything - it actually encourages them to look for
pirate sources essentially completely defeating the whole purpose of itself.

------
couchand
_Had CDs been encrypted, iPods would not have been able to read their content,
because the content providers would have been able to use their DRM contracts
as leverage to prevent it._

Moreover, the iPod most likely would have _never been invented_. How about
that for killing innovation?

~~~
bowlofpetunias
I dunno, all video content is DRM-encumbered, and yet I can choose from a
whole range of media players that support all the formats commonly used for
cracked "illegal" copies.

Sure, none of them are made by the mainstream brands that the entertainment
industry has a hold over, but that was the same for MP3 players before Apple
made its move. (And a bold move it was, because everybody knew the only thin
iPods were being used for is to play "illegally" obtained content.)

Also, DRM is merely a weapon. Copyright is the killer.

~~~
EvanAnderson
I don't agree with the "DRM is merely a weapon" bit in your last paragraph.

DRM allows rights holders to create and "monetize" new "rights" outside the
legislative process. Copyright law (in the United States, at least) allows for
"fair use", but the DMCA criminalization of "circumvention devices" creates a
method to eliminate fair use rights via technology. Once DRM is legally
protected rights holders can go wild using DRM to, effectively, make up new
laws.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't think anyone else has mentioned it yet but for me a very important
corollary of what you mention about elimination of fair use rights [where's
the punishment against this?] is the failure of works to enter the Public
Domain.

A work with DRM attached can't be Copyrighted. Copyright is a bargain between
the _demos_ and the creators of artistic works. In that bargain the creators
get protection from the state for their monopolistic exploitation of a work
_on the proviso_ that the work then enters the public domain after a "limited"
time.

Now distribution companies and purchasers of copyrights and employers of
copyright creators have managed to erode the limitation of that period to a
great extent but the limitation still holds. Ergo, works must enter the Public
Domain when the term expires.

Works with DRM can not [properly] do this. Not in any way as might analogise
that imagined by those creating copyright laws initially. The work must be
free to be used in any way the public sees fit (except perhaps those that
contravene moral rights, I'd personally extend some moral rights in perpetuity
- eg right to be acknowledged as creator of a work).

Copyright law should punish those that forcibly rest fair use (or fair dealing
as we get in the UK) from the public and no protection should be offered by
the state for works that can't be guaranteed to enter the public domain (eg by
deposition of non-DRM in an archive to which the rights holder that chooses
DRM pays a fee for maintenance).

Copyright law is a deal that has been broken. Too much power has been ceded by
politicians to the media conglomerates on the public's behalf and without
proper warrant.

------
programminggeek
I was going to say, the purpose of DRM is to get you to pay for multiple
licenses. It's the same reason why a lot of paid download software is now on a
SAAS model. If you can buy 1 copy of something for $20 and use it on whatever
devices you want, then the company has made $20. If you DRM that to be for
just one device, and you have 5 devices, they make $100. If you are a SAAS
operator, you are effectively doing the same thing.

Somehow people are more okay with paying an ongoing fee for software or some
perceived notion of services, but that same does't yet apply to content in a
larger way. The closest equivalent is probably the cable companies and they
are taking their huge sums of money and are buying the media companies, so
maybe eventually there will be just a flat $100/month fee for experiencing a
company's content on whatever device/experience it's available on. Maybe even
movie theaters.

~~~
lomnakkus
> Somehow people are more okay with paying an ongoing fee for software or some
> perceived notion of services, but that same does't yet apply to content in a
> larger way.

I think it's pretty simple to see why this is: Once created (digital) content
is _inert_ and doesn't really require any ongoing maintenance as such.
Software always requires some sort of ongoing maintenance.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Some of the most amazing digital content is transformative, and supported by
an ongoing community of people producing and transforming it. Any one
individual work is "inert", but the value is in the body of work as a whole.

And none of that would be possible with DRM.

~~~
marvy
example?

~~~
dublinben
See any of the works by the artist Pogo:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY&list=TLIfADM1J0R...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAwR6w2TgxY&list=TLIfADM1J0RJOCLzaKkvK2tb17PWmD_4Fs)

~~~
anigbrowl
And then notice what a tiny fraction of views his original content gets:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn-K7GIs62ENvdQe6ZZk9-w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn-K7GIs62ENvdQe6ZZk9-w)

Conclusion: >90% of the value fot audiences lies in the original source
material rather than his enjoyable remixes of same.

------
jamesbrownuhh
What DRM does is makes the 'pirate' goods, the 'hacked' players, the
illegitimate rips, better, more usable, more flexible, and generally superior
in every way to the officially released product.

Which I'm sure is not the intention.

Say I can't copy-and-paste a section from an eBook or run it through a speech
reader? Tell me I can't skip the trailers before watching the DVD I have paid
for? No. Fuck you. Bullshit like that is a red rag to a bull - you just
created an army of people who'll bust off your "rights management" just to
show you how wrong you are, and that YOU DO NOT GET TO DECIDE how people
consume the things they own.

Sorry and all. But that's how it is.

~~~
thyrsus
I was going to buy a Kobo to read technical documents, but then I saw they
don't support non-DRM pdf. No sale.

The last e-reader I bought four years ago was cheap, with atrocious touch
screen response, but it would display my PDFs. After it broke, I just went
back to my laptop. If someone would like to recommend something, I'd
appreciate it. Something with the physical traits of an e-ink Kindle without
the 1984 ecosystem.

~~~
hornetblack
I know my Dad got the GCC manual on his Kindle, he never registered the thing.
As he is not a big fan of DRM.

Although the tool he uses isn't the most usable thing.

------
azakai
This is very true, but also preaching to the choir. Probably most of an
audience like HN already knows this.

The real question is what we can do to fight DRM. The only real option is to
push back against the companies that promote it. For EME, the current DRM in
the news, the relevant companies are Google, Microsoft and Netflix.

It's all well and good to talk about how DRM is pointless. Of course it is
pointless. But unless we actually push back against those companies, DRM will
continue to win.

~~~
drchaos
> The real question is what we can do to fight DRM.

The best way to hit them is to hit them in the wallet, which means pirating on
principle. Don't buy DVDs or BluRays, cancel cable, Netflix etc., learn about
alternatives like TPB and PopcornTime and teach others about them. Every cent
you spend for Hollywood's products is used to sponsor DRM, and things like the
DMCA on a political level, so make sure they don't get a single cent from you.

While this may sound like a David-against-Goliath effort, keep in mind that
pirating content has an intrinsic value proposition (maximum usability, zero
cost, no censorship) which can never be exceeded by DRM offerings. So it isn't
difficult to convince anyone to pirate instead of buying, you just have to
show them how ;)

What we must get rid of is the (content-industry sponsored) notion that piracy
is somehow immoral. It isn't. Trying to take away the rights of users just
because they don't go along well with a specific business model is.

(note: of course all this only applies to DRM content, and companies
advocating it. Non-DRM offerings like gog.com, independent artists etc. are
fine and should be paid for if used).

~~~
rwl
> The real question is what we can do to fight DRM.

> Of course all this only applies to DRM content, and companies advocating it.
> Non-DRM offerings like gog.com, independent artists etc. are fine and should
> be paid for if used

What else? The root of the problem seems to be that major media companies are
demanding DRM. For most of media that most people want to consume, there are
no DRM-free alternatives, except pirating, which does carry some risks. It's
hard to recommend pirating as a solution to the average media consumer, since
the legal consequences _can_ be bankrupting, and avoiding those risks ("just
set up an anonymous VPN for your torrents!") requires technical know-how that
most don't have.

I think we need more thought about the following:

1\. How can we convince the producers of popular media to release it without
DRM? Many will say it can't happen without a serious change in the structure
of the media business; but there might be some room for solutions here, like
Mozilla's "watermarking" idea, that give these companies most of what they're
looking for (more control over distribution and remedies for infringement)
without making the copies of this media basically unusable from a consumer's
perspective. Legal remedies were enough for these companies before the rise of
digital media and the Internet; could publishers be convinced to abandon DRM
if a better legal framework for distribution and infringement was available?

2\. How can we get people to like, and pay for, media that is produced and
released without DRM by independent publishers? As others have pointed out,
these publishers generally already know that DRM is not in their interest. But
they have two problems: it's hard for people to find their stuff, and they
don't have the capital to compete with large media companies on production
value. What can be done to lower the barriers here? New tools that make
indexing and searching for DRM-free media easy for consumers? New tools that
make producing and marketing high-quality media easy for publishers? What
should those look like?

~~~
azakai
> The root of the problem seems to be that major media companies are demanding
> DRM.

That, combined with the fact that users have not actually opposed DRM. On
places like HN there is a strong anti-DRM sentiment, but the average person
just doesn't care or isn't willing to make any sacrifices to fight it.

So the problem is a combination of the media companies requiring DRM, and
consumers buying DRM'ed content and using DRM-enabled browsers. We can't
directly influence the former, but we could certainly affect the latter.

------
noonespecial
Drm is primarily used in practice to do market segmentation. The rest of this
comment is not available in your region.

~~~
hornetblack
I like our 10+ year old Pioneer DVD player that ignores the region.
Unfortunately the the region-free devices have become a rarity these days.

------
beloch
Nothing makes me want to turn pirate quite like being forced to sit through
unskippable anti-piracy ads preceding a movie I've paid for.

~~~
ixwt
If you press stop a few times, then play. This normally skips directly to the
menu (works for me).

~~~
walden42
Looks like you found a bug with your DVD player. Make sure NOT to report it.

~~~
ixwt
Actually I learned about this from an askreddit thread a while back. I tried
it, and it worked. Skipped to the menu when the menu button wouldn't.

------
HackinOut
"Sure, the DRM systems have all been broken [...]"

I have worked with MS PlayReady DRM (which is the "latest" one from Microsoft,
the one used by Netflix) for some time and never stumbled upon any cracks. Not
because it's impossible or even difficult but probably just because nobody
cares about cracking Netflix (which brings PlayReady it's main source of
"users")... Once you pay, you can watch as much as you like, why bother.
Netflix made it extremely simple and accessible. (Yes some features like
multicasting might be missing but it's still way better than Plesk or
PopcornTime. For now at least... The main problem is clearly that the Film
industry make it too difficult to have all content in one place). There is
plenty of other "easier" sources (alternative VOD offerings with already
cracked/worse protections, Blu-rays) to get the copyrighted material from for
underground channels.

I am sure other DRM systems have a clear log for the same reason: No major
incentive to crack them.

------
Karellen
Previous discussion (421 days ago, 22 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5406733](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5406733)

------
shmerl
Of course not. Reasons for demanding DRM can be different, but none of them
are valid or good. As discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7745009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7745009)
common reasons are:

1\. Monopolistic lock-in. DRM is more than often used to control the market.
It happened with Apple in the past, and was one of the key reasons that music
publishers realized that being DRM-free is actually better for them.

This reason also includes DRM derivatives like DMCA-1201 and the like. It's
all about control (over the markets, over users and etc.).

2\. Covering one's incompetence. DRM is used to justify failing sales (i.e.
when execs are questioned about why the product performs poorly, they say
"Pirates! But worry not - we put more DRM in place").

3\. Ignorance and / or stupidity (many execs have no clue and might believe
that DRM actually provides some benefit). This type can be called DRM
Lysenkoism.

------
josephlord
This rings quite true to me. I had protracted arguments about the limitations
the BBC wanted to impose on TVs supporting Freeview HD in the UK (copy
protection flags and only encrypted local streaming) despite the fact that the
content itself was being broadcast at high power across the country completely
unencrypted. What is it the CE companies need to license? The Huffman
compression tables for the guide data which in the license agreement you have
to warrant that they are trade secrets and that you won't reveal them. I did
send the BBC a link to the MythTV source code which contains this trade
secret. If you work out who I was working for during this discussion don't
worry, the content arm of the company was (at least according to the BBC
pressuring them the other way as a supplier).

And the end result? We caved for the shiny Freeview HD sticker.

------
tn13
I do not think there is any problem with DRM. It is pretty much right of the
content providers to chose how they will distribute their content.

What really gets my gears grinding is when I see an open source browser like
Firefox is forced against their wishes to implement it because DRM has somehow
reached a standard.

The job of W3C standards is to protect the interests of ordinary web users and
not content providers.

------
wyager
Interesting. I was unaware of this.

But if this is the case, why is there such a push to put DRM in HTML? Browsers
aren't DVD players. Users are free to use software like ABP to circumvent any
features like "unskippable ads" mentioned in the post. Pressure on browser
makers seems much less valuable than pressure on device makers.

~~~
eli
If AdBlock becomes a big enough problem, publishers will create "unskippable"
ads with current technology. HTML doesn't really change that. It's always been
a cat and mouse with ad blockers.

~~~
pkinsky
It's possible to build a website that renders itself unusable if an ad fails
to load, to prevent browsers with AdBlock enabled from viewing your content.
The problem with this approach is that if a single ad fails to load _for any
reason_ , the entire website goes down. Do you trust your ad network to have
100% uptime?

~~~
wtracy
Do you think that the likes of Disney and Sony care? If the ad network is
down, they're not getting paid for that view, anyway.

~~~
pkinsky
Even if we assume that each page only loads a single ad, which either succeeds
or fails, the perception of a site being unreliable hurts the company running
it. Household names like Disney and Sony might be able to live with that, but
they'll still do everything possible to avoid downtime.

------
crystaln
There is zero evidence of this claim in this article.

DRM is, in fact, to prevent unauthorized usage and copies. In fact, even some
of the examples in this article are exactly that.

What is more important is that DRM doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to
make unauthorized usage very inconvenient - enough that a few dollars is worth
the cost for most people.

~~~
shmerl
What's more important, DRM should never be used. Because it never makes
pirating inconvenient to the 99.99...9% of the pirates. The 0.00...1% which go
through the trouble of breaking that DRM redistribute DRM-free copy to all
other pirates, who never deal with that DRM altogether.

What it makes inconvenient is the usage of that service / product for users
who actually pay for it. It's a brain dead idea.

------
jiggy2011
Pretty much this. The people who will pirate are going to pirate regardless,
you could offer all your movies DRM free for $1 each and some people will
still pirate them.

So the purpose of DRM is to make maximum revenue from those who won't pirate,
for example by charging more for group viewings of the movie or viewing on
multiple devices.

~~~
electromagnetic
It's important to identify that the price of a piece of media is not the only
cost associated with it.

If it takes me 30 minutes round trip to get to a store, 15 minutes in a store.
Let's say an hour total. Blockbuster went bankrupt because that expense was
too excessive for people. You could rent from Netflix for a monthly fee and
the DVDs got delivered to you, then the movies got streamed to you instantly.
When I can sit on my arse and take 30 seconds to put on a movie, there's a
massive 'cost' difference between a $1 DVD rental and a $8 monthly
subscription, and the monthly subscription is extremely cheap.

Our world has entire industries worth billions of dollars around convenience
and it's getting bigger every day. DRM is purposefully inconvenient, which
means it's constantly on a losing battle.

However the question we have to ask is, is this losing battle a necessary evil
to ensure the production of content?

I'm a writer in my free time. I do it for fun, and I might make money from it.
A $100mil budget movie isn't going to be made for fun and the chance of making
some money from it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't have much disposable income so rarely buy movies that aren't on DVD in
the bargain bin at the supermarket. However, recently I wanted [an excerpt of]
a specific Disney movie - so I assumed, it's the 21st Century and all - that I
could go to the Disney website, pay and download the movie and watch it (as
you can skip the first two steps and do the rest elsewhere).

It was a genuine surprise to find that wasn't possible. What was more of a
surprise was that I couldn't find anywhere to buy it, not Amazon, not the
supermarket websites, it was almost impossible to find referenced on a Disney
site.

That movie was of course available online - just not somewhere that I could
directly pay for it.

It's definitely not about serving the content creators when you get to this
situation.

~~~
hga
This could be a special case, since Disney has an official, named policy to
make titles available for only limited periods of time, then they're put on
moratorium for some years:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault)

They're also the content creator, so....

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Disney employees are the content creators, no? You may find that point moot, I
find it highly pertinent. People create artistic works. Copyright is
supposedly - in it's base form - for those people (and the public) and not
primarily intended to ensure shareholders get rich.

~~~
anigbrowl
You don't just stick a bunch of creative people in a room and get a movie, any
more than you put 100 people in a field and get a factory. Yes, it's a
creative endeavor, but (speaking as someone who works in film)95% of the input
consists of grunt work, spread across technical specialties from accounting to
schlepping things into and out of trucks. Even the writing, acting, directing
involves tons of grunt work. Indeed, the whole skill of film/TV work is to
aggregate the work of hundreds or thousands of people so as to make present an
illusion of a few people engaging in (mostly) effortless natural behavior.

Putting on my screenwriter hat (which is maybe 10% of my activity in this
field), I very much want the option of selling my work to a producer for cash
money. Money up front pays the bills. I have ownership interests in a few
films too, but it isn't worth anything. since most films don't make any money
this is sadly unexceptional. It's a brutal market, but also extremely
egalitarian.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'm not sure what your point is here.

Take a potter. His visual style, assuming it is distinct, bears copyright
protection. Rightly so, then an upstart can't legally come in and reproduce
his work and steal away his customers without having put in the work needed to
create the design initially. But the copyright in that work doesn't, and
shouldn't, bear any sense of protection towards the jobs of those that quarry
the clay, or the steel-workers that make the steal used in the potter's tools.

An entire network rests on the potters creative work, but the copyright is
there to protect only the creative portion. If the potter is producing work
without a distinct style then there will be no effective copyright in it's
visual appearance and still all the others will get paid _if_ there is demand
for the product.

So?

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm not sure what _your_ point is. You say the creativity resides with the
employees who make the film, but my point is that the creation is only
possible through their aggregated efforts and there is nothing wrong with
pooling their collective effort on a for-hire basis and assigning the
copyright for the result to a commercial entity with shareholders.

Your pottery analogy is broken because it doesn't reflect how a film is put
together. Imagine, rather, a giant sculpture that requires the collective
efforts of 100 potters.

------
jljljl
Speaking of controlling distribution channels, does anyone know how I can
share this post outside of Google+, or add it to Pocket so that I can reread
in more detail later?

~~~
Hixie
There's no DRM on that page, it's just a Web page. Just copy and paste the
content. "Save as HTML". Print to PDF. Whatever floats your boat. :-)

------
userbinator
_The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of
playback devices._

One thing that's always seemed odd to me is that the DRM use case is presented
as a battle with "content providers" on one side and everyone else on the
other, but aren't these content providers also users? Do they also consume
DRM'd content, and if so, are they perfectly fine with the restrictions? Do
those who devise DRM schemes not realise that they may also be the ones who
will have these schemes imposed on them?

------
gagege
Why isn't screen capture software more widely used? It seems like a dead
simple screen capture suite could make all these DRM worries go away.

~~~
batmansbelt
For pirating DRMed material? Probably because every major DRM scheme has been
compromised, so it's easier to just grab the original stream.

If you're talking about in relation to the article, how would screen capture
software let you skip ads? I could see it used for multiplexing, but playback
on multiple devices would be tricky unless you ripped the content first.

------
ingenter
>Without DRM, you take the DVD and stick it into a DVD player that ignores
"unskippable" labels, and jump straight to the movie.

>With DRM, there is no licensed player that can do this

So, enforcing some rules (via DRM) to the player manufacturing, content
provider makes my experience worse _as a consumer_.

Again, I am a consumer, what is the advantages of DRM for me? So manufacturer
must enforce me watching ads?

~~~
IanCal
The argument would be that it is necessary to keep people paying for legit
copies (ones that pay the original producer). Same as having a branch of the
tax office dedicated to finding fraud, it has absolutely no direct benefit to
a good taxpayer and only downsides. It's there because it's argued to be
necessary to keep tax revenue at the point it should be.

The first part is what's being argued about, I don't think anyone is arguing
it has a direct benefit to consumers.

------
RegW
I have come to find the whole circular debate about DRM particularly boring.
So much so, that I won't bother to read the whole article or comments here.

Yes, DRM is always broken - eventually, but yes it does work - sort of. It is
a technology and legal arms race in a constantly changing landscape.

> DRM's purpose is to give content providers control over software and
> hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well.

No not really. DRM's purpose is to give content providers a return on their
investment, everything else is just a consequence of trying to achieve this.

DRM isn't going to go away as along as people want to be paid for creating
content, and other people want to get that content without paying for it.

Sadly it is probably true that it is always the biggest players that get the
biggest slice of the pie. Irritatingly the open source community refuse to
engage in this battle and support the small player. As a consequence the
smaller content providers have no choice but to hook up with the big
commercial channels who decide how big a cut they want.

------
torgoguys
So I read the page, but find the argument VERY unconvincing. If that _really_
was the goal of DRM, then you wouldn't need the really complicated schemes
used. You just come up with a simple scheme that legally requires licensing
and always use that. No need to keep switching schemes, adding more
safeguards, and so forth.

The content creators still get the same leverage over the legal distribution
channels because they can still be forced to follow the rules outlined in the
examples. That and it lowers your R&D costs on making complicated DRM. If the
article is true, what have I missed?

------
chacham15
While everything that is said in the article is true, the end result is that
the control that the distributers want to have is circumvented by pirating.
Therefore, by continuing to try and control the content more, what is actually
being done is increasing the demand for pirated content. I know of many people
who buy content legally and then in addition acquire the pirated version to
use as they please. Therefore, as that process becomes easier (lookup popcorn
time to see how easy it can be), the purpose of the control becomes more
meaningless.

------
Kudos
Can someone explain to me how businesses can provide a subscription model
without DRM?

I refuse to purchase anything with DRM, but I don't give a shit if it's a
rental or subscription service.

------
mkempe
If one wants a parallel to social-politial battles around the means of
production in recent centuries, it's an attempt by licensing companies to
abolish ownership of reproductions of works of art -- and to establish a
monopoly on the means of distribution.

My perception is that few people understand or care -- and the US political
elite mostly acquiesces because it has been (or wants to be) bought by those
aspiring monopolists.

------
nijiko
Eh, at the end of the day, there are thousands of ways to go around it, so why
implement it in the first place?

People pay for things that are good, easy to pay for, are appropriately
priced, and not a burden or expense more than they see it worth (has to deal
with pricing and roadblocks). DRM, and poor delivery services are usually
those roadblocks.

------
pje
> Had CDs been encrypted, iPods would not have been able to read their
> content, because the content providers would have been able to use their DRM
> contracts as leverage to prevent it.

What? Why? Nothing would have prevented people from recording the playback of
an encrypted CD and putting that on their iPod.

~~~
zeidrich
Sure it would. Apple would have not been keen to develop a technology that
relied on illegal copying to start with.

Copying music CD's was a grey area, but it's a grey area that you can do in a
semi-legal capacity. There was no reason legally that Apple couldn't create a
CD ripping process in iTunes. It's the user's responsibility to not use it
illegally.

However, if CDs were encrypted, Apple would get in trouble if they broke that
encryption to let you copy CDs to your iPad. You could find some more shady
3rd party tools that would work around it, but Apple's whole model is that
it's easy to use and that it just works. Having to download an illegal 3rd
party tool to rip your CDs and put them on your iPod isn't something they
would do.

Similarly, iPods have had video playback for ages now, but there is no method
to copy DVD video to your iPod through Apple's tools. You can pop in a CD and
it asks you if you want to import it into your library. You pop in a DVD and
it just asks if you want to play, no option to import. If they let you import
it, they would be breaking laws. The brand is established, and was established
by the simple copying of music, so it's not important that it can't copy video
as easily. But if it couldn't copy music easily, would it have even been a
thing?

~~~
josho
Further to your point, it has historically been hard to find any commercial
software that converts a DVD to a digital file (so it's not just Apple).

The reason for this is that under US law (DMCA I believe) it is illegal to
circumvent DRM, a DVD has a very basic DRM scheme. So, commercial companies
avoided this area. While any programmers that saw a market opportunity and
built something soon wound up removing the key DVD ripping feature of their
software, likely a result from receiving a kind letter from a MPAA lawyer.

~~~
rroriz
And that's why we have other companies around the world have software for
that; that's why we have other types of legislations too: to circunvent DRM
schemes.

------
QuantumChaos
This argument is completely ridiculous.

Control of _how_ a person consumes content that they legally own is
incidental. If a company can force you to buy content rather than pirating,
they will make a lot more money. Controlling the exact manner in which you
consume that content is the icing on the cake.

~~~
josteink
_Controlling the exact manner in which you consume that content is the icing
on the cake._

I'd rather put that as "attempting to control the exact manner in which you
consume that content is how you lose valuable business".

But that's just me.

------
mfisher87
Steam would have been a great example for his article. Steam does nothing to
prevent you from copying games. In fact, some games on steam can be bought
without DRM from other sources. Steam just forces you to use Steam or buy your
games again.

------
spacefight
TL;DR

"DRM's purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware
providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well."

------
gcb0
dammit, reading G+ on a small 720p laptop screen is absolute hell.

------
briantakita
Anyone who commits double speak is not worthy of trust.

------
chrisjlee84
Yes and David Sterling is clearly not a racist.

------
briantakita
Good thing it's easier than ever DIY.

------
webmaven
Needs a [2013] label in the title.

~~~
dang
Good catch. Done.

------
tbronchain
and that makes perfect sense!

------
10098
I can still make "unauthorized" copies of DRM'ed media and play those back on
non-drm devices. E.g. record sound from a locked-down music player using a
microphone, convert that to MP3 and listen to it using a normal MP3 player. So
it's not 100% bulletproof.

~~~
dudus
I'm going to guess you didn't read the post

~~~
10098
I'm going to guess you didn't understand my point.

Being able to create drm-free copies weakens the power content producers hope
to achieve. If I can create a drm-free copy of a movie, I can stream it to any
device I want, at no extra charge. I'll be able to watch the movie on my tv,
phone, tablet, whatever, and they won't make a dime from it.

