Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Good Reasons For DRM? 684
centre21 writes "Having been on Slashdot for several years, I've seen a lot of articles concerning DRM. What's most interesting to me are the number of comments condemning DRM outright and calling for the abolishing DRM with all due prejudice. The question I have for the community: is there ever a time when DRM is justified? My focus here is the aspect of how DRM protects the rights of content creators (aka, artists) and helps to prevent people freely distributing their works and with no compensation. How would those who are opposed to DRM ensure that artists will get just compensation for their works if there are no mechanisms to prevent someone from simply digitally copying a work (be it music, movie or book) and giving it away to anyone who wants it? Because, in my eyes, when people stop getting paid for what they do, they'll stop doing it. Many of my friends and family are in the arts, and let me assure you, one of the things they fear most isn't censorship, it's (in their words), 'Some kid freely distributing my stuff and eliminating my source of income.' And I can see their point. So I reiterate, to those who vehemently oppose DRM, is there ever a time where DRM can be a force for good, or can they offer an alternative that would prevent the above from happening?"
Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can obliterate the used market. You can force obsolescence. You can force time limits. You can force re-purchases for multiple devices.
Oh, you mean good reasons for the customer?
Um. No. The "rights management" is about the "owner" of the content; not the customer.
Art doesn't need remuneration (Score:5, Insightful)
"Because, in my eyes, when people stop getting paid for what they do, they'll stop doing it."
The creation of art is not, nor ever has been, dependent on remuneration. People don't exclusively create to be compensated. People have always created things. It's what we do.
It may be valid to worry that unrestricted copying of things—be those things paintings, songs, sculptures, stories, programs, or whatever—could potentially lead to a reduction in people who earn a living exclusively from creating those things, but it takes a powerfully broken worldview to even begin to think that people only do create stuff so that they'll get paid.
Income (Score:2, Insightful)
They're wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of my friends and family are in the arts, and let me assure you, one of the things they fear most isn't censorship, it's (in their words), 'Some kid freely distributing my stuff and eliminating my source of income.'
Incorrect. Their greatest fear is not piracy, but obscurity.
Because it doesn't do its intended job (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM is really bad at foiling pirates. It only takes one to break the DRM and share the content around the world to render the DRM ineffective.
However it is really good at inconveniencing legitimate consumers. Some DRM schemes have been so annoying to customers that getting a pirated version makes for a better user experience.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
The key to "creators" getting over this mentality is to forget it exists, and to stop focusing on those that might be illegally sharing your work and instead focus on the ones that are actually buying it.
And here's why: people who choose to illegally copy something won't be deterred by DRM. They will nearly always find a way around it, one way or another. So it very rarely succeeds in what it proposes to do.
On the other hand, DRM treats your paying customers like would-be criminals. It often causes installation or playback problems, denies them their right of fair use in making backup copies or transcoding for different platforms; basically, to freely and fully use the content they paid for. In this way you're doing nothing but alienating your paying customers and pushing them towards finding DRM-free illegal copies in order to avoid all the pitfalls that ultimately accompany DRM.
If you create a good product and offer it at a good price people will buy it and you will make money. If you're shoveling out crapware at an outrageous price then no one is going to buy it. It's been shown time and time again that piracy has very little impact on actual sales. A good product/value will sell, a bad one won't, regardless of how much or little its being pirated.
This is why: (Score:5, Insightful)
You say "My focus here is the aspect of how DRM protects the rights of content creators (aka, artists) and helps to prevent people freely distributing their works and with no compensation.", which is an understandable point of view. However, DRM does not actually address this concern - at most they introduce a short delay. At the cost of inconvenience for everyone who actually care and try to use the DRM damaged versions, which raises the question: Why pay for inferior goods?
That is why we don't like DRM, we pay for the goods but get the worst version - or actually scratch that, we get nothing but a non-renewable, non-transferable, rights-removing licensed version.
No (Score:2, Insightful)
Morally DRM is a like murder, even if it helps you earn a buck it is still wrong.
Re:Income (Score:2, Insightful)
If copyright did not exist, people would STILL pay for art. It just wouldn't be the guaranteed monopoly protection.
History is against you. Most artists died in poverty.
If your art is easily reproducible, then it wasnt all that unique to begin with.
Spoken like someone who never created anything worthwhile in his life.
Re:Rights vs. rights (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is it is impossible create a DRM system that both protects the artist's right and respects the consumer's rights.
In any case it looks like the OP is drinking the big media kool-aid. DRM isn't about protecting the artists; in fact they mostly hate it. DMR is about increasing corporate profits buy taking away consumer rights like format shifting, backing up, resale and so forth.
The claim that "DRM protects the rights of content creators" is false and has been shown to be false a thousand times. DRM is based on the idea that consumers have no rights. DRM assumes, right from the very beginning, that you are a criminal that the content producer must be protected from. DRM is an example of the old saying "if you tell the same lie enough times, you will eventually start to believe it".
Re:Copyright. (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to understand that DRM only makes this more difficult, not impossible, and once the DRM has been broken it no longer limits anyone but the legitimate users.
It's not black and white. There aren't two distinct camps: those that always legitimately purchase, and those that always pirate. There is a significant band in the middle of people who will pirate if it's easy and buy if it's not. Non-perfect DRM still performs it's function of increasing the number of people who pay for the product.
First things first (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
The key to "creators" getting over this mentality is to forget it exists, and to stop focusing on those that might be illegally sharing your work and instead focus on the ones that are actually buying it.
Which is exactly what they are doing... Claiming DRM is about piracy is a lie designed to disguise the true reason for such schemes. They know that the pirates will always crack any DRM scheme that is made, or otherwise just do without the content.
The reality is about controlling those who are actually buying it. Controlling how, when, where and on what they can use the content, and charging them over and over as many times as possible, especially selling them multiple copies of exactly the same content.
Re:DRM doesn't work (Score:2, Insightful)
It does work, it does exactly what it's supposed to.
It's not supposed to stop the dishonest. They won't pay anyway, they would rather do without the content than pay for it.
It's supposed to control the honest. They have shown they are willing to spend money, so DRM schemes seek to extract more of it from them while also keeping them as tightly controlled as possible.
Re:Art doesn't need remuneration (Score:5, Insightful)
" Doctors, teachers, taxi drivers - they should all work for free according to this argument, right?"
Not at all.
If a taxidriver drives a client from Manhattan to New Jersey, every other cab driver can copy that drive, even with the same customer.
Teachers mostly teach the same things to the same age groups without any copyright violation.
Doctors can heal the same crabs with the same drugs, even with the same patient.
Re:Art doesn't need remuneration (Score:4, Insightful)
it takes a powerfully broken worldview to even begin to think that people only do create stuff so that they'll get paid.
Of course some stuff is created without thought to getting paid. But those things are less likely to use DRM anyway.
But you're going to cut down creation to a fraction of what it is if there's no profit motive. Say goodbye to feature films and big FPS games for example.
Goodbye! Thanks for all the fish! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!
DRM has no redeeming qualities. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once I buy something, it is mine. You have no natural right to control it afterwards. It removes rights that the OWNER of the media has to use his media as he sees fit, to make copies for personal use, to timeshift, to device shift, and to resell or give away.
DRM is an infringement of digital rights of the owner of the media, not a protection.
And not everyone is a soulless sycophant worshiping the almighty dollar. Artists produce art for the sake of art, to express themselves because of how it makes them feel, and to enrich society as a whole and more often than not to get laid. Slightly reducing the financial incentive will not end art, it will merely remove the posers who are producing garbage for a paycheck from the equation.
You want people to be ok with DRM?
1: make DRM that allows every act that falls under fair use.
2: make the duration of copyright much shorter, 7 years, 14 at the most.
3: make DRM that releases its media after that duration.
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, you mean good reasons for the customer?
Um. No.
DRM has hurt plenty of paying customers, yes. People have been root-kitted, they've had CDs that won't play in their PCs, you can't make a copy of a CD you own for listening to in your car, or a copy of DVDs for the kids to scratch, etc. Legal, paying customers have to put up with all sorts of crap.
Pirates, OTOH haven't been inconvenienced at all by DRM. The idea that DRM prevents piracy is a fallacy, basing your "Think of the artists!!" sermons on it is disingenuous at best.
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can obliterate the used market. You can force obsolescence. You can force time limits. You can force re-purchases for multiple devices.
Don't forget unskippable DVD ads (i.e. you can also force customers to watch other things first if they want to actually see their legitimately purchased content).
And you get to kick customers in the face by reminding them not to dare copy DVDs without permission.
Naysayers (Score:4, Insightful)
Most everyone here is quick to point out the problems of DRM. Honest users don't like DRM because it's going to affect their ability to use the stuff they bought. Pirates don't like DRM, either. (Oftentimes the DRM gets broke which doesn't bother the pirates, but sometimes it slows them down to blocks them entirely.)
Based on this, there's a tendency for people to be dishonest about DRM - the same way you'd be dishonestly harsh about some kid who stole your girlfriend.
I'm generally accepting about DRMs existence - in part because it seems like the younger generation thinks they should have a right to pirate everything. The worse piracy gets, the more I support the creation and use of DRM - both to support the creators and to support the continued survival of the industry that creates our entertainment and our software.
I generally favor the removal of DRM after a set period of time. This gives creators access to the initial sales spike. After a year or so, removing the DRM can be done for the benefit of the customer.
Some of the myths promoted by the anti-DRM, pro-piracy crowd (which overlap but aren't necessarily synonymous):
- DRM always gets broken. Not true. It's true that the more popular a piece of software is, the more likely it is to get cracked. The PS3 DRM system held up quite well for years (and GeoHot's crack only worked for previous versions of the OS; he now says the PS3 is too hard to crack). Microsoft's DRM allowed them to ban a million XBox users - they can still use their XBoxes, but have to buy a new one if they want to play online. Both of those count as positive (and different strategies) for combating piracy through DRM. I also had some software I wrote under DRM. It was eventually cracked (after 10 months) and showed up on pirate sites. Still, that gave me 10 months of pirate-free sales, which is where most of the sales were anyway.
- Piracy increases sales. In case you're wondering: no, I didn't see any increase in sales after 10 months due to "pirates paying for the software they pirated". I actually saw a slight drop in sales, though I'm doubtful about blaming that on piracy. My experience makes me doubt that pirates pay for media after they've pirated it.
- DRM is only about control. The subtext of this is "if it was about getting consumers to buy their stuff instead of pirate it, it might be legitimate, but it's all about control and they have no right to control me. Therefore, by pirating I'm subverting their vile attempts to control me!" What nonsense. I will admit that this kind of thinking fulfills a psychological need among pirates to legitimize their piracy. I've worked with publishers and game developers and I know they hate seeing their products pirated, and the kind of fear that creates when you've invested tons of time and money and you need to get paid or else you'll go bankrupt. (I've heard even some of the smallest game-developer companies ask the question, "How do you prevent piracy?" Do you really believe some small-time company is out to control people?) Creating stuff is a gamble - a big gamble. All business ventures are gambles. It's like walking into a casino and dropping a big part of your life savings. It sucks when you think that pirates are (effectively) putting their hand on the roulette wheel and making it difficult for you to win on the gamble you're taking.
- People should create stuff because that's what they love to do, not worry about piracy. What nonsense. Creators invest tons of time and money into their product. We're not going to live under a bridge just so you can have free stuff. I'd recommend you try that argument with doctors, teachers, and everyone else in the modern economy. We've got bills to pay, and I'm not going to make myself into a sacrificial lamb so you can have great stuff. Maybe if you'd come over to my house and mow my lawn for
Re: Well..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, people want Game of Thrones. [theoatmeal.com]
That also tells you exactly what the providers need to do.
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
No DRM means no income for the artist. No income for the artist, no new art.
So there was no "new" art prior to the invention of artificial copyright?
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't the concept of DRM but how DRM has been applied. In general DRM has become so complicated that it's all thorny edge cases with one bug free area that represents the test environment.
The DRM implementation should be so simple that people know when they're crossing the line, think of it as a "No Trespassing" sign. Something that people are aware of but don't intrude upon them or interfere with their business. And if it does happen to interfere then there is a clear path for removing the problem.
People that are willing to pirate material won't be stymied by whatever DRM is applied and the more problems that the DRM introduces the more people will turn to piracy to avoid the DRM issues. Tell the artists to focus on the customers and not the pirates. The better you serve your customers the better they'll treat you, everything else is just noise.
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your assumption that there is no income without DRM is clearly nonsense. How did anyone make money before the invention of DRM, or the lesser form known as copy protection? How did PSY earn millions from Gangnam Style when anyone could watch it for free on YouTube with only the weakest DRM imaginable?
In fact every music artist releases in DRM-free formats (CD, MP3) and somehow still makes a buck. The reality is that The Hobbit is extremely easy to pirate or borrow from a friend but it still made piles of cash. Books are available for free at the local library but still manage to sell. DRM is absolutely not necessary to make money.
And yes, I have produced open source hardware and made money from it, despite all the designs and source code being freely available to anyone who wants it.
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
An actually valid reason for DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
Hating DRM is trendy here on Slashdot, and I'm usually the first to decry it. The problem is not with DRM but with shoddy and opaque implementation of DRM -- i.e. when its implementation hurts honest consumers.
There are a couple good reasons for DRM. One -- and please bear with me here, I promise I can justify it -- is to stop piracy. Okay, yes, DRM as it has been implemented by the vast majority of businesses has been nothing short of abysmal. It punishes the honest consumer without presenting so much as a stumbling block for hardened pirates. There's actually a lot of argumentative parallels here. Why have gun control when criminals will break the law while honest people won't? Why outlaw drugs when people who want to do drugs will do them anyway? These are actually really important arguments. However, while the contrast is stark, it's not a black-and-white scenario. Simply because we have the Second Amendment here in the states doesn't necessarily mean we should be giving everyone a rocket launcher. Marijuana might not be harmful, but should we really let people make meth in motels and poison all of the other guests?
In these scenarios, the key question is what is "reasonable" regulation. In other words, the question is what is economically efficient -- what methods and standards will save us more money in the long run than we will spend? Do we need to install backscatter machines in the airports to protect against terrorists? Probably not -- we'll never see that money back. Should we deregulate and let on someone carrying an RPG? Also, no. The cost of preventing people carrying RPGs on airplanes is minimal compared to the savings. Even assuming I were lawfully carrying my RPG for non terrorist-y activities, what if it accidentally detonated? The savings are greater than the cost.
The same is true with DRM. The problem that consumers have with DRM is that it robs them of the cost of their experience. I paid full price to get some gimped, server-dependent version of the game that was not what was advertised to me. DRM right now is like backscatter machines in airports; it assumes everyone is a criminal, attempts to push the limits of personal freedoms and privacy, and ultimately is probably motivated by greed more than user experience. But that doesn't mean that DRM itself has to be evil or bad. While there are plenty of textbook cases out there of people who download to try-before-buying, or who live in a country where the software/game is unavailable via legitimate retail, there are also a plethora of people who simply want to download a product without paying for it. They'll justify it with the same reasons -- "I'm punishing the developers for X" or "I can't afford it right now." This assumes that the user has some inherent right in the product that gives them the ability to use that product without paying for it. To be honest -- and I know this is going to be an unpopular view -- but the same can be said of regional restrictions. Nothing gives me the personal right to download and play a Japanese game in the U.S. I might justify it by saying that I'm not hurting the copyright holder if he couldn't have sold it to me in the first place. I might think that I have an inherent right in the public domain, that copyright is (as it is) artificial and should only be presumed where the rightsholder is enforcing his rights (i.e. not in the U.S.). But legally that's not how it works. Nothing specifically grants me the right to use something that I have not paid for. Part of the difference is due to internet culture buying into the notion that information is free and should be shared amongst everyone. We recoil when the capitalist world starts to encroach on our free internet with their advertising and paywalls and out-to-make-a-buck mentality, so we flee the corporatized services like Facebook in search of something more open. I digress, though, and that's a different issue.
DRM's problem is in how it's implemented. Inevitably the cost of implementation is great
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:4, Insightful)
They should stop being jerks. They should stop fixating on imagined theives and instead concentrate on actual paying customers. Stoping piracy is not going to gain you anything. Increasing sales will gain you something.
Strangely enough the upper management at HBO seems to get this. The people that matter seem to understand the situation. It's just web forum trolls that don't get it.
The peasants eagerly defending their lords are a step or two behind.
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
No DRM means no income for the artist.
We know this isn't true. Look at the music industry, now look at your post, now look back at the music industry.
Is it dead? No. It's still a multi-billion dollar industry. But I can legally buy any song I want without drm. Hasn't killed them.
Exactly. Keep in mind that CDs (Compact Discs) have never had DRM (except for a few abortive attempts) and DVDs have DRM that is trivially broken (and Blu-Rays have DRM that is not so trivially broken) and the music and movie industries are doing just fine.
Re:Think about alternative business models (Score:5, Insightful)
> There are numerous business models involving temporary or restricted access that are in the interests of both creator and customer.
No. There are just TEMPORARY access methods that are in the interests of consumers.
The problem with DRM is that it turns everything into a rental. It doesn't matter if you've paid for a cheap subcription, a low unit cost, or a high unit cost. All of it is a glorified rental and most people don't realize this.
This especially true for any content that is tied to a particular service. The service goes away and so do your purchases.
DRM strips away your personal property rights. It prevents you from using that which you paid for. It prevents you from safeguarding your own personal property.
Corporate shills are so busy screaming about "artists" rights that they have forgotten that the rest of us have rights too.
Re: Lots of good reasons. (Score:4, Insightful)
So instead of downloading a pirated version of a book or the hobbit you can just wait 3 months for one of the library copies to become available
Artists have always made money by touring and the recordings have never given them much income
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it doesn't. That's not DRM, that's encryption. DRM is where you try to restrict what a user can do with their computer (e.g., they can watch a video, but they can't keep a copy of it; they can play a video game, but only when the game maker's server authorizes it, etc.). SSL provides encrypted connections between a buyer (and their computer) and a seller, so that others can't easily eavesdrop and get the buyer's credit card info.
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
> Don't forget unskippable DVD ads
There's part of me that wants to say that this *by itself* justifies piracy. It's possible for one to possess illegal downloads of titles that they also own legitimately, because the illegal download is less annoying to watch.
Re:Think about alternative business models (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with DRM is that it turns everything into a rental.
I'm not sure that is necessarily true, but even if we accept the premise, I don't see a problem with rental as long as everyone knows up-front what the deal is.
It doesn't matter if you've paid for a cheap subcription, a low unit cost, or a high unit cost. All of it is a glorified rental and most people don't realize this.
You think someone signing up for a Netflix account with a low monthly fee doesn't realise that they're paying for a limited-time subscription and instead thinks they're buying a copy of everything they can watch on Netflix?
Or that someone who pays a one-off charge to watch a major sporting event on pay-per-view thinks they're buying a permanent copy they can share with friends?
This especially true for any content that is tied to a particular service. The service goes away and so do your purchases.
Part of the problem every time this debate comes up is that too many people assume purchasing is the only sensible way to consume content. It never has been and probably never will be, and my major point is that alternative arrangements aren't necessarily a bad thing for either consumers or producers.
I'm not arguing that if you're making a purchase, on the understanding that you're buying full, permanent access to a work, and someone's DRM scheme then screws up and stops you getting what you paid for, that's somehow acceptable or desirable. I'm just saying you're only looking at a small part of a big picture, and in some of the other parts, there's a case for some sort of DRM.
Corporate shills are so busy screaming about "artists" rights that they have forgotten that the rest of us have rights too.
You do, and one of the most powerful is the right not to pay someone for access to their content on terms you don't like. If everyone stopped buying DRM'd works tomorrow, DRM would be gone on Monday. If customers made it clear that they were willing to pay more for a work as long as they could have a permanent copy, chances are the market would figure out how to price full sales vs. other access models or someone else would come along to fill in the gap.
What you don't have is a right to enjoy someone else's content on whatever terms you feel like or to enjoy it without compensating them at all for their work to create it. That's illegal whether DRM is used or not.
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
DRM doesn't effectively control reproduction. It never has. Everything that is released on blu-ray is torrented immediately. DRM schemes are routinely cracked. What DRM does is to prevent people from selling better solutions, because they can be sued for doing so. So if I want to sell a DVD player that skips ads, I can't, because that's a violation of the license. If I want to sell a video device that interpolates blu-ray to paint a broader background, or that de-shakey-cams movies like the Bourne Conspiracy, I can't, because it violates the license.
DRM is all about controlling the marketplace, and not at all about preventing piracy, nor about helping the artist, who is generally also being royally screwed by what is known in the legal profession (I'm not kidding) as "Hollywood Accounting." [wikipedia.org]
Re:Think about alternative business models (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, that's another reference that probably makes sense to you but not to someone from the UK.
In any case, voting with your wallet is just about the most powerful tool any customer has. No-one is going to be in business for long, DRM or not, if they don't offer products the market wants at prices it is willing to pay. And no business is going to be as successful as it could be if it keeps alienating its customer base by imposing unreasonable terms or screwing up a DRM implementation in a way that stops people enjoying their purchases.
There are very, very few creative works that are actually necessities today. Almost all creative works are luxuries, and it won't kill you not to have one if you don't like the terms it's offered on. The idea that no-one will offer creative works on favourable terms if DRM is allowed is about as plausible as the idea that no-one would create any new works at all without copyright. As evidence of this, I would like to cite exhibit A, the iTunes Music Store and its DRM-free music files.
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
since when are they declining badly? iirc last year around here was best ever for the audio entertainment industry.
what has happened though due to internet and "non popification" of the industry is that the money is spread to more hands, more artists, bigger variety of performers. because we no longer have just top-40 artists that we can listen to and buy records from at the record store. we now have more evenly distributed top-2000 list.
like, did you even read what you wrote? FEWER ALBUMS RELEASED??+#?#?" WHAT THE FUCK?"!? you can buy a fucking hundred different releases for a hundred different shitty techno sub-genres there are. hundreds+ of rock albums released in any country with 5 million inhabitants. there's more music out there to buy than ever, but there's not any beatles that would get a huge share of the pie just for themselves.
for the customer there is no good reason for the drm.. for the seller there is. all they have to think about is "what if everyone who listened to an elvis record had to pay themselves instead of the record having been bought just by one person.."
Re:Think about alternative business models (Score:4, Insightful)
What you don't have is a right to enjoy someone else's content on whatever terms you feel like or to enjoy it without compensating them at all for their work to create it. That's illegal whether DRM is used or not.
Setting aside the errors in what you've just said (e.g. If I didn't "have a right ... to enjoy someone else's work without compensating them at all for their work to create if" I could not enjoy works that the author willingly gave away free copies of), you seem to be forgetting or ignorant of two important things:
1) Even today, the raison d'Ãtre of copyright is the promotion of progress of science, not compensating authors. The idea that authors have a right to compensation for their creative labor is known as 'the sweat of the brow doctrine' and it is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court overturned courts that had mistakenly applied it, in a case called Feist v. Rural, in which they said that it was not copyright infringement for one company to copy a phone book that was compiled by a different company, without permission or payment.
2) In countries where there is a legitimate government, i.e. one that governs with the consent of the governed, copyright not only need not exist, according to the whim of the people as carried out by the government that serves them, but can be more or less arbitrarily written and rewritten as they see fit, whether authors like it or not. If we collectively choose to copy works without the permission of the author and without the permission of the author, it takes just a simple stroke of the pen to make this totally legal. We've done it before on various scales (e.g. non-American authors were not given US copyrights until the late 19th century, architects were not given copyrights on architectural works until 1990).
Indeed, I wholeheartedly support the idea of not granting copyrights to authors for works where the author or a person acting under the author's authority, has encumbered those works with DRM. And further, since those works would be in the public domain, the government ought to encourage and support efforts to crack the DRM systems, and distribute the works to anyone in our jurisdiction who wants them, all in the name of promoting the progress of science. By all means, let authors use DRM -- but don't expect anyone else to help or to respect their choices.
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
The only other references in your link state there was no copyright in Roman times, and moral right (called Author's Right today) did exist prior to copyright, but it's different. More like early trademark, not early copyright, as it had to do with branding, not content.
Physical copyright has always existed. Now that it's gone, do we need an artificial one to enforce analogous rules? Many suspect not, but nobody is willing to try to see what happens.
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:5, Insightful)
An industry that generates $16.5bn a year in revenue is definitely alive and healthy. Just because I'm 40 years old and can't run an iron man anymore doesn't mean I'm not alive and healthy. Also that's $16.5bn a year down from $20bn 10 years a go and we are still amidst a meltdown of the financial system itself. So I would argue that they are as healthy as they've ever been.
But hey they said the same thing when the tapedeck came out, and the CD recorder, and digital downloads, and {insert industry killing apocalyptic product here}.
Re:The best reason for DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that it limits information sharing.
The biggest problem that the internet caused is that it destroyed culture. Worldwide.
Everyone has this common generic culture now.
This kind of culture didn't exist before the internet. Before the internet, you actually had societies develop and advance the arts. But, if you didn't notice already, culture has pretty much frozen since around 1995.
People wear the same clothes as they do in 1995. Style hasn't advanced like it did from the 50's to the 70's. Or from the 70's to the 90's.
People listen to the same kinds of music.
They use the same grammar and language from 20 years ago.
And so on.
It's a pretty well documented phenomenon, and a great Vanity Fair article from a couple years ago describes this perfectly: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/01/prisoners-of-style-201201 [vanityfair.com]
The whole idea of information being free and shared by everyone is actually destructive to society, since that means information becomes devalued when culture becomes democratic. It devalues professional tastemakers, causing populist sensibilities to take hold, which is the exact cause of cultural stagnation. Democratic sensibilities are always obvious, and can never advance the state-of-the-art that professional tastemakers can.
So, not everyone needs to see the same movies, listen to the same music, and so on. It is perfectly fine to limit these items, to make sure there ARE "have-nots". People don't HAVE to have every single goddam song in their library.
We really do need to limit the spread of information, through costs, DRM, or other means, to cause society to advance. Right now the world is frozen in 1995, because information is too open.
Seriously, it is perfectly fine to not know things or to have things. Your life is going to be just fine. But the democratic population wants everything.
Limit them.
Why is this modded -1? I'ts actually a pretty interesting argument, and one I had not heard before. Moderators, using your points as means for censorship makes YOU the bad guy.
Re:Art doesn't need remuneration (Score:4, Insightful)
Furthermore, society has no obligation to give artists retirement plans in excess of other people's. If you are a musician, for example, and want a retirement plan, save the money you make with your shows, which will be far in excess of the money you will end making selling songs though record companies anyway.
Re:The best reason for DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
fads and fashion are not culture. they're consumerism. culture is people DOING stuff, not BUYING stuff.
and people have been listening to the same music since the 1950s since the music industry industrialised the production process for crappy rock ballads.
(there's always been more interesting music out there too, but most people just buy rock music in all it's tediously repetitive minor variations)
mainstream movies are the same bland, repetitive crap too. granted, they often have good explosions and special effects, but how many fucking re-makes of the same movies does the world need?
Re:Lots of good reasons. (Score:4, Insightful)
Ditto - totally not tolerated in this household. DRM on an ebook means an instant download from other sources or purchase of a non-digital copy.
I love this line "Because, in my eyes, when people stop getting paid for what they do, they'll stop doing it."... Youtube creators would seem to disagree - most don't get paid or paid so little it's irrelivant - it doesn't stop them from churning out videos. Encyclopedias? Wikipedia. Game guides? Wikia, Gamefaqs, IGN, etc etc all unpaid.
People will do what they're passionate about, they'll find ways to fund it, they just may not make profit at it. Who says they have to?
Re:Think about alternative business models (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone else said it first, but it bears repeating:
The flaw with voting with your wallet is this: it isn't obvious. The company doesn't know why you stopped buying their products; from their perspective, you just disappeared. Was it piracy? Was it a competing product? There's no way to know unless you explictly tell them. This is why voting with your wallet sends an ambiguous message, if any at all.
Re:The best reason for DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
This argument is absolutely stupid. It sounds interesting for about 5 seconds, until you realize it's absolutely wrong.
Everyone has this common generic culture now.
You haven't been ever outside the USA, have you?
This kind of culture didn't exist before the internet. Before the internet, you actually had societies develop and advance the arts. But, if you didn't notice already, culture has pretty much frozen since around 1995.
People wear the same clothes as they do in 1995. Style hasn't advanced like it did from the 50's to the 70's. Or from the 70's to the 90's.
People listen to the same kinds of music.
They use the same grammar and language from 20 years ago.
And so on.
So, not everyone needs to see the same movies, listen to the same music, and so on
You apparently haven't been noticing what's going on in the world around you for the last 20 years. Back in the 50s-90s, in the USA at least, people (of the same age group) generally DID listen to the same music. With the internet, that's all changed. Now the Top 40 doesn't rule things the way it used to, and there's all kinds of indie music available on the internet. If anything, the internet has fractured "common culture", so that people don't listen to the same stuff like they used to back in the days of Top 40 radio. Things are actually totally backwards from what you say: pre-internet, people (in the USA) were much more homogenous, and listened to the same music, watched the same movies, etc. Now, they've spun off in all directions. I can watch movies from France and Finland on Netflix now with a few button presses. Before the internet, I had no access to such things. Maybe you don't remember the days before 1995, but I do, and we all watched whatever crap Hollywood decided to shovel us. It didn't matter if you were in California or Maine; the movies and music were all the same, from sea to shining sea. That's different now. Now everyone has a different subculture.
The whole idea of information being free and shared by everyone is actually destructive to society, since that means information becomes devalued when culture becomes democratic. It devalues professional tastemakers, causing populist sensibilities to take hold, which is the exact cause of cultural stagnation. Democratic sensibilities are always obvious, and can never advance the state-of-the-art that professional tastemakers can.
What a pile of elitist drivel. "Professional tastemakers" gave us all kinds of bullshit like tailfins on cars, beehive hairdos, Backstreet Boys, the butt-ugly cars of the 70s, Britney Spears, and many more abominations of good taste than I can possibly count. They deserve to be devalued, and they should be doing other jobs, such as cleaning port-a-potties. If you really think the internet has made things more homogeneous, then you're totally blind. If anything, it's allowed people to ignore the more stupid trends, and adopt better ones no matter where they came from.
Re:The best reason for DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't mod it down, but it's at least partially nonsense, and obvious nonsense at that. Ask any linguist why English stopped changing 20 years ago and they'll laugh you out of the room.