Ars Technica has a great editorial on Digital Rights Management (DRM). I don’t claim to be an expert on this issue, but I do tend to lean more toward the Libertarian side of things. I believe that if I purchase a given form of media, I should be able to choose how and when I listen to it. Any sort of copy protection that prohibits this will just drive me to find an alternate source for what I want. I have no problem paying for media, whether it be music, games, or movies; I think my extensive libraries of all three would make even the worst money-grubbing entertainment executive beam with pride. However, if I buy a given media item, it is my humble opinion that since I have paid for it, I should be able to convert it to whatever format my heart desires and listen/watch/play it however I wish. As long as I don’t widely distribute the item I’ve paid for through file sharing networks, or sell copies of the item, then what does it matter?
The point the op-ed is trying to make is that DRM is not and has never been about protecting digital works from piracy. The market has changed at a very fundamental level due to the rise of the internet and the accessibility of personal computers. As usual, when a new product or delivery system hits the market, entrenched businesses make well-financed attempts to preserve and expand their revenue streams. Unfortunately for consumers, the issues of copyright in our digital world are legislated by our congress, which is having an astonishing amount of lobbying dollars thrown at it. (For those that missed it, I am politely saying that some of our congressmen have been bought.)
Our hope lies in an open-source platform which allows the free transition of formats among purchased media. Any software platform that is controlled by a corporation with fingers in the revenue streams from purchased media should be considered to have a conflict of interest. Remove the financial interests (the Zune Store, iTunes, etc.) and see how responsive Microsft and Apple are to demands from the MPAA and the RIAA. Without a direct impact on their bottom line, complaints from these organizations become so much noise. I don’t forsee this happening, but legislation in this direction would help in the upcoming battles for digital freedom.
I would say that the early “Napster” days of the internet have mostly subsided, with the majority of users willing and able to pay for what they receive. There will always be a subset of users who act in the underground, pirating content, and refusing to pay for what they receive, but these fall into two categories of people: teens and college students who would pay for media if they could and people who would never pay for it, no matter how accessible/cheap you made it. Education and restructuring the market within the framework of consumer demand takes care of one, the other can be ignored or litigated, depending on the severity of the infringement.
The comment that most resonates with me is that the MPAA and RIAA don’t trust me to use their products responsibly. I’m not above sharing a cool song with a friend or two, but this usually leads to a purchase or a future investment in a given artist. This kind of grass-roots, word-of-mouth marketing is totally to their benefit, yet this is exactly the sort of activity that they want to crush, legislate, and tax. I don’t need to be watched by our government, and I certainly don’t need to be watched by a corporation to ensure my compliance with some rigid “fair-use” policy that hamstrings my ability to enjoy my entertainment my way.
Bottom line: The next few years are going to be a battlefield with new DVD formats, the increased usage of digital delivery, and the rise of open source platforms. Tech savvy users will eventually find themselves pushed to an open source operating system or computing environment that gives them the freedom they want, while the average American will be forced into a rigid platform by their own ignorance. If there is one constant, it’s that there will always be programmers who are willing to reverse engineer a successful way to circumvent a DRM scheme that seems to oppressive. Therein lies our hope.
Try Ubuntu. You won’t be disappointed.
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Fantastic piece, Peter.
Intellectual property is very important to me. I make a living writing the stuff, so I have a good motive to protect it. Yet my opinion in the matter lines up with what you’ve written.
Intellectual property is a very new legal construct. It was made up just like the concept of an “artificial person”. It was first mentioned in Frace courts in the 1840s. It wasn’t commonly until 1967. Our courts are still learning how intellectual property fits into our legal system. Should all laws that mention “property” be extended to cover “intellectual property”? In disputes, should one be given preference over another?
Currently our courts give preference to artificial property. Consider that honest mother that wants to make a VHS copy of a fragile Barney DVD to help protect her investment from clumsy, dirty paws. The DRM features in her media players prevent her from doing so. Meanwhile, any semi-determined thief can circumvent DRM for illegitimate reasons. DRM deters very little crime while it penalizes honest people.
On a seperate note: I use Ubuntu at work. It is pretty, indeed. Do you play games on it?
Bah.
As soon as I finished reading your op-ed, I found myself reading this copyright story on a local news website. The recording industry is suing a mother for her son’s illegal music downloads.
$750.00 per song illegally downloaded. Why am I angry about this? Mainly because of what clsheppard had stated ‘The DRM features in her media players prevent her (the honest mother) from doing so. Meanwhile, any semi-determined thief can circumvent DRM for illegitimate reasons. DRM deters very little crime while it penalizes honest people.’
While I’m not trying to give credibility to a stupid teenager who wanted the latest in pop-culture at his mother’s expense, I’m angry at the recording industry for punishing the one demographic that has put them in their cushy leather chairs to begin with instead of going after the companies or individuals that are promoting this type of behavior.
What I think everyone is missing here and has been the subject of many arguments; is that the recording and movie industry are not protecting the writers or producers or artists by instituting the DRM or any copy-right protection service. What they are successfully maintaining is that every dollar they can make, recoup and recover from the intial sell and prosecution of those like the honest mother, continues to line their pockets for years to come.
So, while 5-10 years ago when I could walk into my neighborhood record/tape/cd store and purchase a hot new single for .99 cents, make a mixed tape and send it to a best friend or lover to share my tastes, I now have rules as to how I can use the single I just purchased on a convenient website. While there are ways to circumvent the proprietary formatting that many of these companies are using, it’s painstaking and should be unnecessary. I thought when I was handing over my .99 cents for ‘Ice Ice Baby’, that I was purchasing that content for me, and to use it however I saw fit on a personal level. I’m not creating massive amounts of the song, or broadcasting it in a public place. If anything I agree with Peter, that my ‘share’ will prompt ‘word-of-mouth’ sydrome. The person will like what they hear and go out and support that artist in some way. Either by attending a concert or buying a cd.
I’m waiting for the day when I go grocery shopping and on every package of celery, it tells me that I’m not able to cook it for anyone else but myself and that should I be found out, it will be 750.00 per piece of stalk.
Sounds ridiculous? Yeah. I thought so, but soup kitchens in the future are F’ed.
Please tell me that 5-10 years ago would make you sixteen, which means that mix tapes were still cool.
At any rate, I make the same argument about software that I make about guns. There are no dangerous pieces of software, there are dangerous PEOPLE. A great example of this are disc imaging programs, which allow users to make an image of a DVD or CD, store it on a local hard drive, and then mount this image as a virtual drive in windows. This keeps the user from constantly having to switch game discs back and forth out of their PC, as well as providing a back-up should the too-fragile media become damaged. Ubisoft, a major publisher of PC games, uses a copy protection scheme that WILL NOT ALLOW YOUR GAME TO WORK if this sort of program is installed on your computer.
I’m an avid buyer of PC Games, spending pretty close to 4-500 dollars per year on games and peripherals. I advocate playing and try to get others involved in my hobby. I am the poster-child for a grass roots marketing campaign, but when I find a utility that makes it easier to enjoy my hobby, I am pissed on by a company that seeks to control my experience on my computer. This is inexcusable…and also why I have only ONE Ubisoft game in my PC game collection (and I bought that used at EB Games).
I do not actually play games on Ubuntu, but I do everything else. I run my primary Web browser there; I do most of my php work on this site there; I run all of my IM packages except for Xfire there; I use Gimp instead of Photoshop, and I use open office as my spreadsheet and word processor. It is a great alternative. I have nearly 20 GB of DRM-free MP3s on that machine that were either legitimately purchased or ripped from my own collection of CDs. It’s great.
I don’t mean to change the subject, but what Ubisoft game do you own? Did you buy it before the CD-ROM utility from hell?
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is what I have.
I also have a utility that disables the copy protection stuff (Starforce), as well as a no-DVD executable.
On a related note: HD-DVD is cracked. Serenity appears to be the first film ripped.