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It's *all* about DRM!


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This guy is interesting to follow

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/03/death-of-drm-good-news

He is a writer, so he tends to focus on DRM on ebooks, publishing and the like, but what he says could equally be applied to movies/TVshows and other media

So just how have we (the public/consumers) allowed our governments to get us into this mess?

And will it take a small player intermediary (in this example the publisher Tor books) to break this ridiculous stranglehold..

The analogy is obvious for all of us movie and TV lovers.....

We need one of the small media library company platforms to take on "You know who"

Control4, Fusion Research, the guys behind XBMC, ....I don't know...

But someone has to do it. I mean how long are we going to let "You know who" get away with this nonsense?

Yeh, I know it's difficult, yeh I know you would get sued, yeh you might be put out of business.. but who knows..maybe business would take off !!

But gezzz.. what else is going to break this deadlock?

So sure, I'd luv to buy the new Fusion media player. Or use JRiver, or XBMC, or Plex, or Boxee, or buy Jame's DD media server..

The list goes on and on, but the issue remains DRM. Without this resolved and dropped, we have no universal library and no universal player.......

We had this with the multi stack DVD players. Since then we've gone backwards the last couple of years...

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O'reilly posts quite frequently on DRM, and they offer most titles in DRM-free open formats.

http://shop.oreilly.com/category/ebooks.do

http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/05/day-against-drm.html

Their (very valid IMHO) opinion is that putting DRM on eBooks is putting a stick in the hand of Amazon to beat all the rest of the publishers with. i.e. If you're going to pick a DRM-enabled title, it's probably going to be a Kindle format, and then you're locked into Amazon's product line.

Similar thing with Apple, although now they offer music DRM-free, right?

RyanE

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^ Yep

The amazing thing is society didn't accept the bully boy tactics with music, but somehow it's OK with other content...

The point that Cory Doctorow makes is none of this (DRM) favours the artist/studio/musician/writer/software designer (in the case of "apps")

And it's certainly a PITA for consumers and the public. It hinders development of other innovative smaller manufacturers. Control4 included. It doesn't stop piracy. So why do we continue to let them get away with this copyright "interpretation"...?

Just why do government's all around the world continue to protect such corporate behaviour? They wouldn't accept that food you bought from Costco could only be be cooked in an oven bought from the same chain. Or that gas bought from one particular supermarket supplier could only be used in a car serviced by the same outlet. Or Movies made by Sony Pictures could only be broadcast on Sony TV's. So why this?

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DRM is a needed stop gap tech because of industries reliance on physical property / product.

Content distribution via electronic file means there is fundamentally no way to distinguish a copy from the original.

Also, there is no way to assure the transfer of product from one to another, since it is easy to copy.

Content distributors always had inventories and costs for storage and knew how many they had to sell to profit.

Now with digital content, the production costs are the same, if not more and the distribution costs are a lot less. Which makes it much harder to figure out how to calculate that break even point. In fact, most digital content for sale does NOT break even.

DRM was created to insure that content distributors could lock down inventory to a consumer and protect it from secondary distribution aka piracy.

However, ironically, most distributors used to (and in some cases, still does) give away product as a means to seed or promote the product...

I have no issue with content distributors trying to figure out how to profit from the sale of content. However, the biggest issue with DRM, IMO, is that the right of first sale, the ability for me to sell my copy to another is lost.

If I buy a book from a store, I can read it and then turn around and give or sell it to someone else. Property and money has exchanged hands.

With DRM content, it is always locked to me and my account and I have lost the right of first sale.

For DRM to work, there needs to be an open standard, ability to transfer licenses and protect people's identity, otherwise, DRM will fall by the wayside for favor of profit and marketing. Without an open standard, if a company using DRM on a server basis goes under, the content could be lost forever...

Most people don't know that Apple did strip DRM / Fairplay from their new music, however, your itunes account information is embedded in every song, so give that file to someone else, and they have everything but your password to get at your itunes account.

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