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Originally posted by smitty3268 View PostI hate DRM too, but do you really think MS is the one pushing it? It's the content providers dictating to Microsoft, not the other way around.
Microsoft does DRM for a few reasons:
1. Files that only play on Windows is a great lock-in
2. It blocks Linux from taking market share (but not Macs)
3. They probably get some kickback from the content industry to require DRM in their "made for Windows" program. It's free money to do their dirty work.
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The main thing to understand is that there is no benefit to MS to avoid DRM, since they themselves have tried and continue to try (failing miserably) to implement DRM or DRM-like limitations. The nature of DRM is NOT anti-MS.... so they accept it and rake in the $$.
If there was some fundamental reason why MS would be better off (in terms of $$) to NOT implement DRM, they wouldn't. This would, naturally, have led to problem with their customers who lack the ability to use play their content on their shiny and new MS-whatever... and the next logical step from here, would be that the content MAKERS wouldn't be able to use DRM due to it being thoroughly rejected.
The simple fact is that MS is VERY CENTRAL to DRM.
Simply put... if you make something that nobody can use, nobody will buy it. If nobody buys it, you look for the reason why. If the reason why is that you've loaded it up with DRM, then you know that the only way to make it work (and thus get people to BUY it) is to eliminate the DRM, then you ditch the DRM and allow people to actually use what THEY PAY FOR, what is THEIR MORAL RIGHT to do!
... I say "moral" right since the law tends to be at odds with what is actually right and wrong. Especially when it comes to DRM.
In other words, if I buy something, I ***OWN*** it -- not whoever produced it. Like I buy a sandwich -- the sandwich store can't tell me what I can and can't do with it, so I can feed it to my dog if I want. Unfortunately, the law doesn't agree with this.... which is a real pain.
... and I do NOT agree with any nonsense "licensing" ideas. They didn't get my signature (witnessed or otherwise), there is no contract outlining my obligations to them, I therefore OWN it irrevocably.
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Originally posted by droidhacker View PostIn other words, if I buy something, I ***OWN*** it -- not whoever produced it. Like I buy a sandwich -- the sandwich store can't tell me what I can and can't do with it, so I can feed it to my dog if I want. Unfortunately, the law doesn't agree with this.... which is a real pain.
Do you feel that when you buy something you should have the right to make copies and give those copies to your friends, for example ? If not then you and the content providers are probably on the same page.Test signature
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Originally posted by bridgman View PostDo you feel that when you buy something you should have the right to make copies and give those copies to your friends, for example ? If not then you and the content providers are probably on the same page.
So, when a Chinese company takes a product and makes copies of it, nothing happens. When someone in China pirates a product and sells it nothing happens. So, why is all the penalties given to North Americans, Europeans, for e.g.?
As for making copies and giving it to friends, the magic word is 'give.' As long as you don't sell them. That's what it should be but it's not.
It's all because of greed and penalizing the people who are vulnerable hence these MILLION DOLLAR fines to Joe Nobody who happens to have a large video collection and might be sharing here and there.
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If people just gave copies to friends, there might not be such a stink. The problem is that people put copies up on the server that the whole world can download from.
Let's be honest. If DVD sharing on the Internet were legal, how many people do you think would actually go buy a $20 (or even $5, if we assume prices will drop) copy of Iron Man instead of clicking a few buttons and getting it downloaded for free?
It's not greed to expect that the $200 million you sunk into a project actually gets made back, or to even expect some kind of profit. That's not just business, that's how people survive. Sure, a tiny handful of people make most of that profit, but there's a TON of people that are involved that are making their livings off of the success of those movies. If those movies were no longer financially viable because nobody had pay for them because "all content is free" then all those costume designers, set constructors, make-up artists, audio engineers, lighting engineers, caterers, support crew, assistants, set liasons, effects crews, and the hundreds of other people involved would not be getting paid to make the movies... and you wouldn't get to see them, either.
There is a need for copyright re-reform after Congress ****ed up the copyright law in a major way. The death+70 years part is absolute bullcrap. It ignores how ALL media -- all characters, stories, and ideas -- are formed, which is by building on what came before. It's horrifically broken. But that does not mean that NO copyright is the right idea, either.
You need to let the people who are investing millions of their own cash (or even just hundreds of dollars for small indie projects) to recuperate their expenses and make at least a reasonable profit. That only takes a few years at absolute most, so even a 5-10 year copyright term would keep the business machine running smoothly, but a 0 year copyright term would end most media outside of the crappy little college-kid home project indie movies (imagine: the only movies ever to come out are along the lines of the Blair Witch Project. kill me now.). Yeah, Hollywood pushes out a lot of crap, but they push out quite a number of fantastic movies, too.
And don't get me started on games (my profession). The budgets on these things are massive. The art team alone for a modern big game will burn through a few million dollars just to pay reasonable salaries for the number of people it takes to make all that art content. The programming teams go through what is easily the most difficult programming of all (along with kernel/driver devs and compiler devs), working 60-80 hours a week trying to get the technology finished and out the door before it becomes obsolete. It's HARD, and it's expensive purely due to salaries of the number of people it takes to make a game (and again, quite good but still very reasonable salaries, not like movie stars). Sure, many games could disappear and nobody would shed a tear, but there are a huge number of amazing titles that have been released that have budgets in the dozens of millions of dollars. The sales don't just make executives rich -- the sales are what keep the executives investing, and hence keep letting those artists and programmers and designer keep pushing out creative, fun, wonderful games that are the foundation of much of our youths' media and culture.
Games fall into the software category, and get a little tricky, I will admit. I'm still fine with a 5-10 year copyright term on games. Very few games keep pulling in a profit after 5 years, and while I'm sure Blizzard might fight vehemently against a copyright reform that would make Warcraft or Starcraft public domain, let's be honest: they've made back their investment, they've made a huge profit, and they are in no way hurting for more. I believe people should be able to get rich off their work, but I don't think we need to keep helping the rich get richer at the expense of society by any means. The real problem with software (and hence games) is that simply moving the work into the public domain is not enough. With a movie, you can keep re-encoding and transferfing the content to new media formats as necessary. A game is delivered as low-level machine instructions that rely on a complex set of system interfaces. As those machines and OSes become obsolete, it becomes increasingly difficult to port that machine code to modern systems. Sure, old NES games are safe because the difficulty of writing an NES emulator is relatively low, but a modern Windows Vista + DirectX 10 game is going to be exceedingly difficult to get running on future platforms. Look how long Wine has been around and still can't do it.
Software needs source code to be part of its public domain release. That's the only way to ensure that the impact of its artist relevance is not lost due to the complexities of the encoding of software algorithms for specific systems. This is, in part, one of the reasons for the GPL -- being Free to share is a hell of a lot less important than being Free to keep using the software decades from now when the original system it was written for no longer exists. Unfortunately, the GPL mixes in that Freedom to share, so as a tool for preserving code+media combinations like games, it's borderline useless; it doesn't allow for a real business model that actually works (sure, Red Hat makes a profit... that's approximately the size of the budget for a single triple-A game) in addition to protecting the future Freedom of the work. There is no license or way to really make sure that a game can be released, be proprietary and profitable for say 5 years, and then be open with source and all. The company just has to relicense the work, but there's no incentive to do that. And the fact that many games use licensed proprietary (or even patented) technology means that a company that wants to release a game's source is lot less able to do so. And then the fact that the execs know that they CAN still make a profit 5 years after release makes the less likely to sign off on an open source release.
... short version, we need copyright re-reform, but we also still need copyright. Baby and bath water and all that.
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Originally posted by bridgman View PostThe sandwich analogy doesn't work so well with digital media. I think everyone agrees that you should be able to buy a sandwich and feed it to your dog, the question is whether you should be able to upload that sandwich to a public server and have everyone *else* feed their dogs without buying more sandwiches.
Do you feel that when you buy something you should have the right to make copies and give those copies to your friends, for example ? If not then you and the content providers are probably on the same page.
Sharing is another thing. I am not innocent though, I do not have all the music in my playlist.
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Yeah, agreed. The holy grail for DRM is something that allows you to make copies for your personal use without restriction, allows sharing equivalent to "you lending your only copy of the DVD to a friend", both with no hassles or problems, but doesn't allow you to broadly publish the content or share copies while still using it yourself.
The DRM solutions that exist today certainly do not measure up.Test signature
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Originally posted by bridgman View PostThe DRM solutions that exist today certainly do not measure up.
And even if such a DRM system would exist, would you expect the content providers to switch over to patent free formats, to allow everyone to watch their movies however they like? Why would they?
The consumer has nothing to gain from DRM; and as long as music and video has to be output in the form of pressure changes and photons, it will never actually be effective against ripping into a non-protected format and distributing it over the internet.
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Originally posted by bridgman View PostYeah, agreed. The holy grail for DRM is something that allows you to make copies for your personal use without restriction, allows sharing equivalent to "you lending your only copy of the DVD to a friend", both with no hassles or problems, but doesn't allow you to broadly publish the content or share copies while still using it yourself. The DRM solutions that exist today certainly do not measure up.
With DRM this becomes an impossible problem - until you realize that those who make DRM have no reason to give you anything at all. They want to give you the most limited use license possible. They want to erect paywalls so people pay for the same thing in different formats or rebuy because they lose their copies. They want to erect market barriers so they can have globalism and we can't. They want to make you dependent on activation servers so they can kill old products. They want to force you to use it their way like forced unskippable ads. They want to remove your right of first sale by making it impossible to transfer digital products.
They don't want your ideal. That's the bullshit ideal they're trying to sell us so that we'll accept the idea of DRM. Let me tell you what their idea of an ideal EULA is:
This document may be updated from time to time and the current version will be posted at www.take2games.com/eula. Your continued use of this Software 30 days after a revised version has been posted constitutes acceptance by you of its terms.
Licensor hereby grants you the nonexclusive, non-transferable, limited right and license to use one copy of the Software for your personal non-commercial use for gameplay on a single computer or gaming unit
In exchange for use of the Software, and to the extent that your contributions through use of the Software give rise to any copyright interest, you hereby grant Licensor an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way and for any purpose in connection with the Software and related goods and services,
The Software may require an internet connection to access internet-based features, authenticate the Software, or perform other functions.
The information collected by Licensor may be posted by Licensor on publicly-accessible web sites, shared with hardware manufacturers, shared with platform hosts, shared with Licensor's marketing partners or used by Licensor for any other lawful purpose. (...) If you do not want your information shared in this manner, then you should not use the Software.
Oh and for Civilization 5, a definitively single-player game I still forcibly had to sign up for Steam, which has its own gems:
Steam and your Subscription(s) require the automatic download and installation of software and other content and updates onto your computer ("Software"). (...) You understand that for reasons that include, without limitation, system security, stability, and multiplayer interoperability, Steam may need to automatically update, pre-load, create new versions or otherwise enhance the Software
Valve may terminate your Account or a particular Subscription for any conduct or activity that Valve believes is illegal, constitutes a Cheat, or which otherwise negatively affects the enjoyment of Steam by other Subscribers.
On top of this, they've started with very many questionable legal tactics like handing over subscriber information to private organizations, three strikes laws, mass lawsuits with crappy quality data, intimidating ISPs and content sites like YouTube and even hired companies to do DDoS attacks for them.
Further, they are seeking endless copyright extensions looking to be the permanent owners of information, nothing will ever more reach the public domain. They want to sell it to us and yet keep control forever, they no longer serve in society's best interest only their own.
Copyright in itself was fine. I buy a book, it's mine and I use it for whatever. It's everything else that has made me decide the harm is much greater than the good. As long as they are heading down the path they are now, I support breaking the whole system through mass disobedience.
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