
Dear Congress: It's time for a real fix on unlocking and the DMCA - sinak
http://sina.is/a-letter-to-congress/
======
gscott
Realistically once the DMCA gets in the process of being modified then the
studios will get into action co-opt the process. Better to leave it as it is
then open up for something worse.

~~~
anigbrowl
So, just push into the same table. The studios have a legitimate interest in
protecting their business model, just as tech people have a legitimate
interest in more open business models. Engaging with them is likely to be far
more productive than of demonizing them as incomprehensible and all-powerful
alien beings.

I am on first name terms with the CEO and execs of a mid-size film studio with
a good number of Oscar nominations and statuettes to its credit. They have no
particular love for DRM or desire to screw people, but they do want to
monetize their content. I think this is reasonable considering that they sign
their names to checks for tens of millions of dollar so that good films can go
into production. Gripe about Hollywood not producing great films all you like,
but the reality is that a) almost everyone I know still enjoys watching good
movies and b) good movies typically cost quite a lot of money to make, and c)
it's a very high-risk business model in that films are more likely than not to
lose money.

If someone were to suggest some innovative methods of monetizing content while
simultaneously making it more accessible to a wider audience, that'd be very
interesting. You can assume we're talking about young and tech-savvy people
here, as opposed to people who spend all their time at the country club or on
the golf course.

~~~
kefka
There is no equal footing here. Going head to head in a discussion forum will
do nothing, as long as money trades hands in the back via lobbyists or in
writing bills for politicians.

Piracy, in one way, is getting shit for free. Another way, it IS the balancing
factor mass media must consider. We multitudes do retain the power, but are
told that we are small and cannot effect much change. Except, we have allied
and defeated the voting of some pretty horrific laws regarding the Internet
and technology.

Do I believe that the major studios would have a honest to goodness discussion
regarding copyright and piracy antagonism? No. The studios would rather pay
for laws like the Sonny Bono copyright extension act, or slip the US a SOPA.

~~~
anigbrowl
So lobby right alongside the. As noted (but ignored) earlier this week, Mark
Zuckerberg is in the process of setting up a Tech PAC.
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732410520457838...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324105204578384781088854740.html)

 _Do I believe that the major studios would have a honest to goodness
discussion regarding copyright and piracy antagonism? No. The studios would
rather pay for laws like the Sonny Bono copyright extension act, or slip the
US a SOPA._

I'm offering you a communication channel to studio executives _right now_. I
post regularly about these topics on HN. How about telling me what you think
might be a better business model than the existing one? right now, film
studios depend on DVD sales to make their investment back, because relatively
few films break even at the box office; when you see those big numbers for
weekend grosses you have to recall that over half of that revenue stays within
the theater chains (film studios are forbidden by law to operate their own
chains [1]), and up to half half of the cost of producing a film is in the
marketing campaign, which has to be spent before knowing how the film will
perform. So rare are box-office profits, in fact, that there's a saying within
the film industry that a theatrical run is basically the marketing campaign
for the DVD - people are much more likely to take a chance on renting or
buying a movie that they know was in theaters (even if they didn't go to see
it in a theater). The difficulty and expense of promoting a theatrical run is
what distinguishes a film as a 'real movie' in the eyes of consumers. You
could make the most awesome little film ever, but if you launch it straight to
video your chances of finding an audience are pathetically low - not quite
zero, but close enough that you'll have a hard time raising any money.

So there's the problem: you need a strong brand to be perceived as a 'movie'
and make your money back in the secondary market (DVD sales and streaming),
but it's hard to get that strong brand without spending a lot of money up
front on marketing or waiting years and years on the off-chance that you'll
build an audience through word-of-mouth. If you finance the production of
multiple films, your winners are going to subsidize the losses of the
underperformers, even after all the 'Hollywood accounting' tricks. It's a
pretty tough industry, which is one reason that every Oscar ceremony includes
multiple speeches about never giving up no matter how long it takes.

Now the problem for Hollywood is that piracy is almost all downside risk; you
can offer your film for free on the torrents and use that to build an
audience, but that only works if your production costs are very very low. Past
a few thousand dollars, you'd better have a plan for how you're going to
recoup the money. In the music industry, the new model is that you give away
the music or sell it very cheaply, and make the money back on live
performance, because people will pay a lot of money to see their idols perform
in person. (This kinda sucks if you are the sort of musician who doesn't want
to or can't easily play live, but that's who arts grants are for.)

Unfortunately, that model doesn't work for movies because the vast majority of
films do not translate well to stage performance; and it is also true that
very few people will pay to buy a movie theater ticket or purchase a DVD of a
film they've already seen for free. Within the industry, this is a particular
problem for actors: an actor who does to many TV shows stats to see a decline
in his/her bookability for film roles, because many years' worth or aggregated
data suggests that people are reluctant to buy tickets for actors that they're
used to seeing for nothing on TV - Tina Fey is the latest victim of this
phenomenon. To quote an entertainment writer [2] 'Hollywood Boulevard is
littered with the corpses of TV actor careers that almost were.' TV is a
ghetto, and I promise you that the Internet is even more of a ghetto.

Because the barriers to entry are so low on the Internet, the residual income
prospects for film producers are also very low - _much_ worse than for
musicians, because the cost of producing a film is _much_ higher than the cost
of producing a music recording. The most expensive album ever produced was
Guns'n'Roses _Chinese Democracy_ , which took 15 years and the breakup of the
band before making it to store shelves in 2008 [3]. Total cost? $13 million.
That's the worst fiscal trainwreck in music industry history, but by Hollywood
standards that's a typical budget for an Indie hit with a famous lead and two
character actors. Big Hollywood projects routinely risk 10 times that amount.

Now when you consider that even conservative estimates of industry income lost
to piracy are measured in billions, there's a lot of pressure on the MPAA from
producers to stem those losses. Now I hate Disney's copyright lobbying just as
much as you do, if not more, but that is not the fault of the individual movie
producers whose movies fail to break even. But tech people don't like
legislative approaches, don't like DRM, and frequently refuse to give the film
industry the time of day when invited to do so.

If you won't even attempt to engage, why should they? If you could get over
your disbelief that the industry would like to discover a solution that works
for both producers and consumers, then what _would_ you suggest?

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pict...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc).

2\. [http://www.pajiba.com/seriously_random_lists/9-tv-actors-
who...](http://www.pajiba.com/seriously_random_lists/9-tv-actors-who-could-go-
from-small-screen-players-to-big-screen-stars-in-2013.php)

3\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Democracy>

4\. <http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/allbudgets.php>

You should take inflation into account here as well; a discount rate of about
5%/year is a good rule of thumb.

~~~
shmerl
_> I'm offering you a communication channel to studio executives right now._

They should drop any kind of DRM - point blank. DRM in unethical, doesn't
protect anything against piracy and only hurts legitimate users. If they want
to prove that they don't have ulterior motives that are cloaked in DRM schemes
(like desire for broad control and attempts to stifle innovation and so on)
they should start respecting their legitimate users / customers. By using DRM
(unethical preemptive policing) they show that they treat users as criminals
by default. Why should they get any respect in return when they act that way?
So any model should be built on mutual respect. This excludes any DRM from the
equation. And DMCA/1201 should go away with it.

If they'll insist that DRM / DMCA should exist, it will demonstrate that their
real motives are not about preventing piracy (since they prevent nothing like
that), but really completely different. I.e. they intend to 1. insult their
legitimate users by treating them as potential criminals, 2. stifle innovation
by controlling any new technology by DRM cages, 3. invade users' privacy with
all kind of sick control mechanisms and etc. and etc. I wish someone could
clearly communicate this to various studio executives who push for DRM all
around. Either they'll continue to hypocritically claim that unethical
preemptive policing is "needed to prevent piracy", or they'll start acting
honestly and stop forcing DRM on everyone (like pushing it into HTML standard,
building it into hardware interfaces like HDMI and so on).

~~~
anigbrowl
Look, _nobody_ likes DRM. It's an irritating expense for movie studios, and
one that doesn't even work very well. But expense of DRM is considerably
eclipsed by the loss of revenue if piracy is trivially easy.

 _they intend to 1. insult their legitimate users by treating them as
potential criminals, 2. stifle innovation by controlling any new technology by
DRM cages, 3. invade users' privacy with all kind of sick control mechanisms
and etc. and etc._

sorry, I think this is delusional. They just want pirating a movie to be more
trouble than it is worth for most people, so that they'll pay to rent or buy
the movie instead. The reason they push DRM is because they _don't have a
better idea_ for how to prevent/impede people from distributing the movie for
free before the studio can make its money back. If you're selling a movie,
it's hard to compete with people who ae giving it away for free. If you can't
make the money back, then you find the money o produce more movies.

I'm asking for suggestions on what you think would work _instead_ of DRM.

~~~
shmerl
_> Look, nobody likes DRM. It's an irritating expense for movie studios, and
one that doesn't even work very well_

That's exactly my point. It doesn't work for preventing piracy, which only
leads one to conclude that since these studios push for DRM so fiercely, they
have some other motives at play, while claiming that it's about piracy. This
only doubles the reasons to oppose them, since they are hiding their motives,
which are most probably __not good __for the public.

 _> The reason they push DRM is because they don't have a better idea for how
to prevent/impede people from distributing the movie for free before the
studio can make its money back._

If you claim they are so innocent, but just clueless, then there is a known
rule for them - if you don't know what to do - sit and do nothing (until you
figure out what to do). Doing the _wrong_ thing (DRM) only makes things worse!
They are naturally upset about piracy, but it's not a valid reason to push for
unethical and crooked methods like DRM which achieve the opposite purpose -
insult legitimate users and have zero effect on pirates.

DRM is always unethical. I'm not delusional about it. It's prone to abuse,
like any kind of overbroad policing scheme. Such kind of examples are _to be
expected_ from DRM:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal)
I.e. users should never trust DRM schemes to respect their privacy, since DRM
by definition doesn't trust the user. Trust is always mutual. I also explained
why DRM is unethical in essence here:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5381153> Please try to explain this idea
to your contacts amongst studio execs, if they have hard time understanding
that they are supporting such unethical practices (DRM).

 _> I'm asking for suggestions on what you think would work instead of DRM._

That's a valid thing to ask. The answer is well known. Treat customers with
respect, and you'll get respect in return. It was proven time and again by
various DRM free distributors (like GOG for gaming), which have a loyal
following of users who respect them for treating users as normal beings,
rather than despicable criminals by default. That's the way to reduce piracy -
increase the legitimate user base using respect and encouragement to buy,
instead of using preemptive policing stick. Make content easily accessible,
instead of making it barely accessible with DRM electric fences.

 _> If you're selling a movie, it's hard to compete with people who are giving
it away for free._

In order to compete with piracy, legitimate content has to, you know -
actually compete! I.e. compete where it's possible to compete. Not in price
(that's not possible, even though prices often can be lower than they are),
but in usability and ease of access and etc. DRM _always_ degrades usability
and quality of the content. Always - let this settle in the mind of studio
execs. DRMed stuff can not possibly compete with what pirates offer (quality
and usability wise).

In practice, for film industry (or for any other digital industry - gaming,
book publishing, music and so on), this would mean - start selling files. No
DRM and strings attached. Easy and simple. People buy - they watch it where
they want, on any device they want, whenever they want and etc. That's what
pirated content offers. Streaming should be actually made a convenience, and
not as a method to reduce usability. I.e. streaming service should explicitly
offer an option to save the stream as DRM free file for time / device shifting
and etc. Currently streaming is presented not as convenience, but as a
restriction (i.e. come and see only here, only on this platform and only now,
but not elsewhere or other time). This should go away if studios really want
to reduce piracy. Let them offer the same level of usability as pirates do.
Without such option, how do they possible even expect to compete with superior
(but pirated) option? This will encourage people to buy, rather than pirate
stuff. Since many are surely willing to support the creators.

There always will be some who pirate - they have to come to grips with that.
But there is a big chunk of "pirates" who are simply put off by DRM idiocy and
disrespectful behavior of distributors. These people can be won over to become
legitimate users, if distributors would treat them with due respect. The idea
is quite simple, but somehow it "escapes" the understanding of many
distributors/publishing/content producing execs.

But to be honest, I'm not convinced yet that they are just clueless. Too many
things point in different direction - i.e. some ulterior motives which drive
them to push for DRM/DMCA. I'd be glad if that wasn't true.

~~~
anigbrowl
So basically you're suggesting the honor system. But in the early days of home
computers etc., when a lot of software was published with no copy protection,
people just copied it. I have a whole bunch of CDs gathering dust on my shelf,
and none of them has any DRM or copy protection, so how come they are pirated?

Look, I used to run rave parties. We started with just a donation box, but
eventually we switched to selling tickets because when we used the donation
box _we always wound up losing money_ on the costs of renting the soundsystem
and the location. I hate to tell you this, but relying on the innate goodness
of others - something that I naturally and greatly prefer to do - is a fast
way to go broke.

Instead of going on and on about how awful DRM is - which I largely agree with
but which frankly makes you sound a little unhinged - please show me some
evidence that the honor system works on a larger scale. Because if I'm selling
files for $5 with no copy protection and Joe Pirate is giving them away for $0
(but he doesn't want me to disrespect him by filing legal action against him
or hurting his feeling by labeling him a pirate), tell me why people are going
to give me $5 for the same thing that they could get for free?

'I hope people will do the right and give me the amount of money I ask for' is
not a workable business plan. Nobody is going to write a large check for
production costs based on that, because they're virtually guaranteed to go
broke.

~~~
shmerl
You asked a straight question - how to reduce piracy. I answered - treat
customers with respect (no DRM), and many of the current pirates will become
paying users. If they want to "eliminate piracy" - they can forget about it,
it will never happen. They can however increase their profits by acting
decently. Today they are mostly focusing on chasing pirates wasting resources
on that completely in vain. They should focus on catering to legitimate users
instead. And it will pay off. As proven by those who act decently and
principally don't use DRM.

 _> Because if I'm selling files for $5 with no copy protection and Joe Pirate
is giving them away for $0 (but he doesn't want me to disrespect him by filing
legal action against him or hurting his feeling by labeling him a pirate),
tell me why people are going to give me $5 for the same thing that they could
get for free?_

I thought this is simple. People already can get it for free by pirating it.
I.e. you have such choices:

1\. Sell for $5 with DRM that reduces usability by limiting platforms where
this can be used and etc. etc. By using DRM the distributor also offends
paying customers by default by treating them as potential criminals. Joe
pirate breaks DRM, and gives this out for $0 with no DRM, which can be used
anywhere.

2\. Sell for $5 with no DRM. It gives wide platforms availability and shows
respect to the customer. Joe pirate gives out the same thing for $0.

Note, Joe pirate will give it away in either case. So what is better for the
distributor, to act like a jerk, and still getting pirating in result, or to
act decently and with repsect (and still getting pirating in result)?
Obviously the second is better, since more people will in return pay, rather
than pirate. That's how respect works - it's mutual.

I.e. what can be improved, is making it easy to buy and treating the buying
customers decently. I'm repeating myself really. People will buy - out of
respect in return, and naturally out of willing to support the creators. Since
studio execs see everyone as a thief, they can't grasp this simple truth.

Great example is CD Projekt Red company, owners of the GOG.com games
distribution service, and creators of the highly acclaimed Witcher games. They
had multiple talks about piracy and complete uselessness of DRM. They sell
only DRM free games on GOG - as a matter of principle. Search for their
interviews if you are interested. People gladly support them, because they
treat people with respect. They even brought an example, that DRM gives an
incentive to pirate - i.e. people break DRM and pirate out of the opposition
spirit. But when there is no DRM - there is less incentive to begin with.
(Here is a great article about it:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2012/05/18/th...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnyegriffiths/2012/05/18/the-
truth-is-it-doesnt-work-cd-projekt-on-drm/) ).

If you want to put it in practical terms for video industry, let some studio
become vocal about their opposition to DRM and their willingness to break this
sick trend. And let them put it in practice (the way I described above).
They'll see the increase in sales and the number of legitimate customers. I'm
not joking. But such studio needs to be brave and bold when they come out with
principal DRM free stance, because naturally others in the industry will try
to attack them. But they should simply ignore and persist - and they'll be
victorious.

I.e. to make it more formal - instead of focusing on reducing piracy
(negative), focus on increasing the sales (positive). The second includes
building the loyal fan base (fans gladly support the creators), producing high
quality and unique stuff (people would rather pay for really good things, than
for low quality) rather than following the "mass market" approach, treating
people with respect (no DRM) and so on. This is proven to work. Note that CDPR
whom are brought above excel in all these. They communicate with their fans
actively, they pay high attention to details and don't ever produce mediocre
stuff. They are original and unique. And really high quality. See their talk
about their approach:
[http://en.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?/topic/31748-cdprs-...](http://en.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?/topic/31748-cdprs-
business-strategy/) I can agree that those who can't come up with something
original and follow the "mass market" are at a disadvantage. But that's the
nature of competition. Even DRM won't help mediocre stuff to become really
good.

However DRM gives publishers/distributors the taste of power and control. And
it's one of the basic lusts in people. Which is even greater than lust for
money. So it's not so much about piracy - it's about them playing "the boss",
or "the big brother" for that matter. So many aren't ready to give up the
taste of power.

I'd also recommend your studio execs friends to listen to this very insightful
talk from Cory Doctorow: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg> \- you
should watch as well, if you didn't yet. He addresses the issue of DRM and how
it affects the technology adversely, and especially how wrong are attempts to
abuse the legal system to enforce DRM (i.e. DMCA and Co.).

