Have you found a solution to piracy that doesn't involve DRM? What was its success rate? I'm sure the publishers would love to switch to a better system if it exists.
Are you implying that DRM is a solution to piracy? If anything, DRM is a big driver for piracy, and its success rate is near zero. Virtually all major DRM-"protected" works are available on thepiratebay shortly after release. Sometimes before release.
The "better solution" is to treat your customers with respect and let them own their bought goods. Gog.com is a good example here, in my opinion.
What definitely doesn't work is to burden your paying customers with digital locks and hurdles to enjoyment, that the pirates will shortly find a way to remove for the non-paying audience.
Its fine to have an opinion on how things should be, but some of your assertions are not based on facts.
>Virtually all major DRM-"protected" works are available on thepiratebay shortly after release. Sometimes before release.
"Virtually all Server OSs get hacked/have had security bugs. Nobody should use them to host or store anything."
All you're saying is that DRM isn't perfect. Nothing is perfect, and it isn't exactly a revelation.
If it were impossible to pirate Windows, would all the pirates switch to Linux or another Free OS? If the answer is No, then a non-zero number of people will go out and purchase Windows. From a sales standpoint, preventing piracy is definitely going to drive sales. Also, if your answer is Yes to the question, then all the Free OS advocates should be making it impossible to pirate Windows. :)
>The "better solution" is to treat your customers with respect and let them own their bought goods. Gog.com is a good example here, in my opinion.
If we accept your premise that DRM == disrespecting customers, then you'll have to account for why people are still selling stuff with DRM, and continuing to make millions and millions of dollars. Do customers like being disrespected?
>What definitely doesn't work is to burden your paying customers with digital locks and hurdles to enjoyment, that the pirates will shortly find a way to remove for the non-paying audience.
The success of DRM'd products refutes your claim, entirely.
>All you're saying is that DRM isn't perfect. Nothing is perfect, and it isn't exactly a revelation.
DRM and servers are fundamentally different in that securing a server is an achievable goal. There is nothing fundamental that stops you from exposing an interface without any holes in it, even if it's quite hard. DRM is the polar opposite. Where servers are physically isolated from attackers in a manner that allows for perfect security* DRM is physically colocated on the attacker's machine in a manner that explicitly denies perfect security.
Servers are also broken into fairly sporadically for short periods of time and many of them never at all. Data stolen from servers usually slowly goes stale as people change their passwords and so on. On the other side of the fence I cannot think of a DRM that wasn't compromised relatively quickly and excluding anti-cheats once DRM is compromised it stays that way forever.
You can even see the discrepancy in the availability of files. I can pirate basically any game almost immediately after launch but if I want background production files lifted from server, even for an ancient game, the Half-Life 2 beta is almost the only example. One of them is certainly more niche but not enough to explain the size of the gulf.
Both are examples of imperfect things but there's always going to be a line between "imperfect" and "too imperfect to bother with" and personally I feel DRM falls on the "too imperfect" side of that line.
* = Assuming breaking into the data center is outside of the threat model, which it usually is.
Breaking into the data center is NOT outside of the threat model. We spend considerable amount of time detailing what can be done
With physical access and various levels of physical access (for example, can I open the box versus being at the terminal vs having access to ports).
If you’re not doing that with your data centers then you are not even close to doing security right. And if you think it is close to feasible to completely lock down a server then you’re probably not being realistic.
> If it were impossible to pirate Windows, would all the pirates switch to Linux or another Free OS? If the answer is No, then a non-zero number of people will go out and purchase Windows. From a sales standpoint, preventing piracy is definitely going to drive sales.
What your not counting is the number of people who would be happy to purchase it because it's more convenient but get the pirated version because it's superior, being unencumbered by DRM.
As a firefox or chrome user for instance I could pay for netflix, but the will only deliver the 720p version, why would I pay for a worse product?
> "Virtually all Server OSs get hacked/have had security bugs. Nobody should use them to host or store anything."
Your comparison is flawed. Most server installations are not broken into during their lifetime. But it only takes one copy of a movie getting onto thepiratebay to make it accessible to everyone who wants it. So if DRM cannot prevent every attempt at circumvention, it's useless and can only serve to hinder legitimate use of the product.
> If we accept your premise that DRM == disrespecting customers, then you'll have to account for why people are still selling stuff with DRM, and continuing to make millions and millions of dollars.
No, I don't. The fact that some people accept the deal doesn't prove that there's nothing wrong with it. In this case, the seller unilaterally went back on the deal without the customers being involved at all.
I'm not a DRM fanatic and I do use DRM services on a daily basis. But if a vendor pulls a trick like in the OP, they can't then turn around and ask why some potential customers are pirating the product instead. Their addition of DRM has made the service less convenient than piracy. Remember, it's only your legitimate paying customers who have to deal with your DRM. The pirated version has no DRM.
> The success of DRM'd products refutes your claim, entirely.
The purpose of DRM is to prevent piracy. This has mostly been a failure.
>But it only takes one copy of a movie getting onto thepiratebay to make it accessible to everyone who wants it.
Unlocking the DRM on that one movie allows you to pirate that one movie, not all movies. Finding a security bug for one OS allows you to exploit that particular OS.
>So if DRM cannot prevent every attempt at circumvention, it's useless and can only serve to hinder legitimate use of the product.
No, if something even serves as a mild hurdle, it is still beneficial.
>So if DRM cannot prevent every attempt at circumvention, it's useless and can only serve to hinder legitimate use of the product.
Given the abundance of hundreds, and in some cases thousands of vulnerabilities, it seems securing any OS is an impossible task. To take smartphones phones as an example, a vast vast majority of phones have had vulnerabilities which let you root/jailbreak them.
>No, I don't. The fact that some people accept the deal doesn't prove that there's nothing wrong with it. In this case, the seller unilaterally went back on the deal without the customers being involved at all.
You do, because I don't accept the argument you made. Your broad claim that DRM == disrespecting consumers doesn't seem to be borne out by the market. So it seems we've reached a bit of an impasse.
>The purpose of DRM is to prevent piracy. This has mostly been a failure.
You have to actually demonstrate that it is a failure. Whats plain to see for anyone is that products like adobe photoshop for e.g. are going from 'little league' DRM to 'major league' DRM + subscription and are making even more money. Its fine to lament at how the world sucks, but its important to be realistic and fact based when doing so.
FYI, Bill Gates has explicitly stated he prefers pirated MS Windows use to unencumbered Linux converts:
"[A]s long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
I don't see what point you're trying to make? Microsoft continues to protect all their commercial products with DRM. They clearly see value in doing that.
I hope you realize that "more" vs "less" DRM, is not the same as DRM vs no-DRM. In any case, I don't see anything I can respond to.. so.. thanks for the comment.
This is a very old debate. It was settled a long time ago. Restrictive copyright protection measures hurt sales. Because it prevents potential customers from trying your products. Anyone arguing otherwise is motivated by something other than facts, history, logic.
Companies are not dummies, they know what works and how to make money. DRMd content is a billion+ dollar industry. But yeah, if you believe that it doesn't work, you're free to believe so.
>Anyone arguing otherwise is motivated by something other than facts, history, logic.
Oh? I thought Apple Music was encumbered with DRM in their M4P format. I'm not super familiar with their service though. Maybe I'm wrong..
Edit: Looks like the M4P format was mainly on older songs pre2009. Though I see forum threads with people saying that they have to re-pay Apple w/ itunes match to get the drm-free version.
The whole digital music industry has left DRM behind - I buy my music losslessly and from a number of stores without any strings attached. Of course this can only apply to purchasable content - streaming service obviously need to rely on DRM.
Apple Music (the streaming service) has DRM IIRC. But iTunes used to sell DRM-laden music in the mid-2000s and about 10 years ago they stopped. You can download all of your iTunes songs as MP3s right now.
For movies? Netflix. For books? Piracy is irrelevant. (See far too many articles from Konrath, who at one point uploaded all his books on a torrent site AND advertised that on his blog... to no effect on his sales.)
I don't know if you know this, but DRM is a core part of Netflix. No studio would ever have signed up with them if they couldn't control distribution.
>See far too many articles from Konrath, who at one point uploaded all his books on a torrent site AND advertised that on his blog... to no effect on his sales
I am not familiar with that example. Any link to the data?
- The DRM of Netflix is irrelevant. The people who want to download the movies will do it anyway, but their number got way lower once Netflix (and probably Hulu and others like them) got a large enough catalog. People like convenience and are willing to pay for it.
- I couldn't immediately find the article where he announced that HE uploaded his books (as an experiment), but here is one of the many articles where he dismisses the issue:
The number of people willing to download movies and TV shows is going to only get higher now that the movie streaming space is getting balkanized, and Netflix in particular is shedding its catalogue faster than my cat sheds its fur.
I pay for Netflix. I'm probably going to reduce my plan in the next month or two, to buy a subscription to HBO. Sure. But there's no way in hell I'm going to pay for Netflix and HBO and Hulu and Disney and CBS and whatever other fly-by-night streaming service that happened to inherit rights to the particular show I wanted to watch. Not even because it's too much money (though frankly, it is), but because it's a hassle. Hassle with managing accounts and subscriptions. Hassle with dealing with everyone's bullshit web UI that's different from everyone else's bullshit web UI. Hassle with dealing with VPN and getting a US CC somehow, because I'm willing to bet region restrictions are only going to get worse.
Compared to all that, BitTorrent just works. And between PopcornTime and Radarrr/Sonarrr, I hear it even works better than the streaming services now. I might need to look into it.
Exactly this. I pay for Netflix, YouTube Premium, Amazon Prime, and BT TV. Recently all of my friends were talking about Chernobyl. It's not on any of these services (Sky TV exclusive in the UK). I take pride in paying for my entertainment and software but I'm not signing up to yet another streaming service just to watch a 5 episode miniseries.
So I torrented it. Same goes for the movies that I can't legally watch any other way.
No company has ever gone out of business because of piracy. How is adobe still going in that case? I doubt the average user of photoshop was willing to drop hundreds of dollars to purchase a software license off them over the years.
If someone is willing to pirate one game no matter the cost, then they are very likely to pirate all games they play. That doesn't translate into lost sales, they are stopping people who have no interest in making a purchase to begin with.
From the music industry to software industry, you have to ask, are big companies trying to protect their revenue, or profit? I find it hard to sympathize with companies that are disappointed with making only tens to hundreds of millions in profit. Exponential growth is not realistic, it means more monopolies over products and services.
