> set up their own redistribution channels and steal your customers and your revenues.
And DRM prevents that how exactly?
> A third lesson you will learn is that a lot of people may quite innocently assume that if they can do something then it's allowed
I would take this as a hint that it probably should be allowed then. If lots of people innocently assume that something is perfectly legal, the way of tyranny is to build a police state, the way of democracy is to make it legal.
One practical scenario is that most of the revenue from a new work may be generated in the early days. This is often the case with things like computer games, pop music, and big ticket movies. If DRM delays those trying to set up copycat channels, even by a few days or weeks, much of that revenue may already have been collected.
Another is that fingerprinting techniques may allow for things like automatic takedowns on the major hosting services, or identification of the source of a major leak so full legal action can be taken against the right targets.
I would take this as a hint that it probably should be allowed then.
It's not that simple. To give an obvious example that upset a lot of people, Google added a video download icon in Chrome a few months ago, right there in the controls alongside changing the volume and so on. A lot of people running small web sites that provided video content saw a spike in people who were sharing that content in violation of their terms, and it turned out that many people assumed the download button was a new feature on the site without realising that it was Chrome that had changed. This caused big problems for web developers working in this area, and a lot of complaints to Google about actively encouraging people to violate copyrights. And simply changing the way videos were served so Chrome couldn't provide that facility in the same way then fixed the problem again.
If lots of people innocently assume that something is perfectly legal, the way of tyranny is to build a police state, the way of democracy is to make it legal.
Democracy only works when the population is properly informed and understands the implications. That's hardly the case in the sort of situation I mentioned above.
> Democracy only works when the population is properly informed and understands the implications. That's hardly the case in the sort of situation I mentioned above.
And so we install draconian enforcement technology in everyone's home ... in order to make people more informed on the issue?
Who said anything about draconian measures? Most modern DRM is almost completely transparent to legitimate users, particularly the technologies used with rental models rather than permanent purchases (where as I've said elsewhere I think both the ethics and practicalities are somewhat different).
It's easy to snipe from the cheap seats, so let me ask you some questions now instead. Do you believe that financial models other than a complete, permanent purchase of a copy of a work are useful? And if so, how would you propose to set up a realistic rental/library/PPV scheme for digital content without relying on anything that could be called DRM?
Most modern DRM is almost completely transparent to legitimate users, particularly the technologies used with rental models rather than permanent purchases (where as I've said elsewhere I think both the ethics and practicalities are somewhat different).
I disagree, please provides examples of commonly used and almost completely transparent DRM. I'll start with a counterpoint: a user on Chrome (not exactly a minority), Firefox or Opera can't watch Netflix with a resolution over 720p.
I use several major business software packages. I run the program. It loads and I use it.
Without knowing which DRM they use, this example is irrelevant.
I put a DVD or Blu-ray into my player. I play the disc. I watch the movie.
This is a classic WORKSFORME. New Blu-rays are released with new versions of the DRM, which don't work with older players unless they're connected to the Internet to update their firmware - and if it exists.
Search for "can't play avatar blueray" and you'll find many people for whom it's not even close to transparent.
I'm not a big gamer myself these days, but I've rarely heard anyone complain about Steam's DRM in years.
If you beat them for a while, eventually people stop complaining. I don't know about you, but growing up, not being able to lend games between friends was unthinkable. Steam robs new players of this communal experience, excluding poorer kids from social groups because they can't play the games everyone else has.
I guess I was expecting something that explains your argument?
I mean, unless I completely misunderstood you, you justified DRM by saying that it was ok because it doesn't get in your way ("it's transparent"). And now you are essentially saying that if it did get in your way, that would also be ok, because that's the purpose of DRM. Or in other words: Whether it does get in your way is completely irrelevant as to whether or not you think DRM is acceptable. So, what was your argument, then?
I mean, unless I completely misunderstood you, you justified DRM by saying that it was ok because it doesn't get in your way ("it's transparent").
With the extra qualifier that what you're doing is actually permitted/legal, yes, that's essentially my point. That condition rather changes the meaning, though. Indeed, the difference it makes is essentially the point of having DRM in the first place.
> With the extra qualifier that what you're doing is actually permitted/legal, yes, that's essentially my point.
Now, the question is: What do you mean by "permitted/legal"? Permitted by general copyright law, or permitted by the part of the DMCA that specifically makes it illegal to circumvent or share information about how to circumvent DRM?
> Most modern DRM is almost completely transparent to legitimate users
What do you mean by that and how is it relevant?
> Do you believe that financial models other than a complete, permanent purchase of a copy of a work are useful?
Maybe.
> And if so, how would you propose to set up a realistic rental/library/PPV scheme for digital content without relying on anything that could be called DRM?
I once thought as you do. Then I ran a business that invested significant money, some of it my own, in making original content. We really tried to avoid going down the DRM path, because I didn't like the idea of risking inconveniencing any legitimate customers. Today, in light of the experience doing that, I am much, much less sympathetic to claims that DRM doesn't do anything or should be abolished or whatever.
The degree to which some people will just blatantly rip you off and even lie to your face about it afterwards is staggering. The arguments that if people are going to copy your stuff then they're going to get it somewhere else anyway so taking steps to make it harder have no benefits are simply wrong. There is nothing hypothetical about this. It is not conjecture or thought experiment. It is based on cold, hard data and experience with real money at risk.
Incidentally, in the entire history of that business, as far as I'm aware we've never received a single complaint from a legitimate user that any of our safeguards was interfering with their normal enjoyment of the content. There have been one or two cases we couldn't absolutely prove but were pretty sure about, and otherwise basically 100% of people who complained about not being able to do something turned out to be trying to violate our terms and getting upset when our safeguards stopped them. BTW, in case you think we're just being paranoid, we have literally had people asking us why they couldn't access our material with well-known ripping software, to give one example of how blatant the abuse can be.
Well, as for your business I obviously can't tell whether it was a deserved market failure, but in the end, it mostly doesn't matter, because DRM is just such a fundamentally broken idea with so many negative externalities that it would be hard to find anything that I couldn't live without if it depended on DRM to exist.
However, I wonder about this:
> BTW, in case you think we're just being paranoid, we have literally had people asking us why they couldn't access our material with well-known ripping software, to give one example of how blatant the abuse can be.
What exactly is abuse about this? I mean, I get from what you are saying that you don't like it, but how is it abusive to use some tool to convert some content that you paid for into a format/transfer it into an environment of your own choice that you want to use it in? If your terms said that you couldn't do that, I would rather consider your terms abusive.
The business I mentioned didn't fail. We were just forced to become more aggressive about protecting our IP, and contrary to everyone telling me otherwise, that strategy was very obviously effective even with still a relatively light touch. Like A/B testing a web site and hitting on a simple change that bumps your conversions by 20%, even making something a little less convenient to rip and share can make quite a big difference.
The objection to rippers is that we were effectively operating on a form of rental model. If someone is paying a lower price to rent your stuff, you can't let them rip all of it and keep it permanently anyway, and this was explicitly contrary to our terms. Obviously so was sharing it on major hosting services and even trying to monetize it, which sadly wasn't unheard of either.
> The objection to rippers is that we were effectively operating on a form of rental model. If someone is paying a lower price to rent your stuff, you can't let them rip all of it and keep it permanently anyway, and this was explicitly contrary to our terms.
Now, did they ask for help with how to keep it permanently or with ripping it to their own device? You are constantly confusing those. If I paid for some content rental, I sure as hell would expect that I can put a copy of it on my laptop to watch/listen/read while offline on the train, and I would expect support for that.
Without meaning to be rude, I'm not confusing anything, and what you would expect doesn't matter, only the law and the terms of our relationship with our customers do.
Still without meaning to be rude, I'm really not interested in discussing our position on that one in any more detail. What we offer is openly described, reasonable, and clearly stated before anyone commits to anything. We get overwhelmingly positive feedback within our target market and very few complaints. We tried playing nice about protecting our work -- far nicer than most people in this business, and probably for far longer too. But people abused it, and then straight-up lied to our faces to try to get us to release the locks and let them do it some more.
So now when someone tries to rip us off, we don't play so nice any more. None of our legitimate customers care, because they don't even notice. However, we do get to still have a business and pay the bills. As a bonus, we also waste far less time dealing with the kind of toxic "customer" who thinks a few dollars earns them 24/7 customer service to explain why they can't set up oursite.com.somecountry and resell all our stuff or give it away with their ads all over the place.
As I said, it's easy to snipe from the cheap seats, and it's easy to feel entitled as a customer. It looks a little different when it's you and your colleagues who gave up their jobs, sold their houses, didn't take holidays for years, and so on, and then a group of people carefully exploited your trusting nature to threaten everything you've built.
What I've shared in this discussion is just the real world experience of people who tried to be optimistic and trusting in the kind of way that others here seem to want, allowing the kinds of behaviour that others here seem to think don't cause any harm. The experience was not good, and operating on that basis proved to be unsustainable. That might upset people here who don't like the outcome we observed, but those are the facts, and to be honest I'm tiring of trying to explain this in the face of open hostility in comments and downvotes. If you want to learn the same lessons for yourself rather than taking my word for it, no-one is stopping you; the price of admission is explained in the previous paragraph.
And DRM prevents that how exactly?
> A third lesson you will learn is that a lot of people may quite innocently assume that if they can do something then it's allowed
I would take this as a hint that it probably should be allowed then. If lots of people innocently assume that something is perfectly legal, the way of tyranny is to build a police state, the way of democracy is to make it legal.