I don't know if I am wholly against DRM because I do like streaming services like Spotify for their convenience. I'm just tired of pirating things. And I do make money as a developer as a result of protected APIs/content.
Is this hypocritical?
Is this hypocritical?
Spotify is saying "You may download this, but this program under someone else's control will forcefully delete this data from your machine"
My machine is my own. If I wish to grant other users access to the machine or data on it, cool. That's my choice. If I buy a program to do a task, good. When your program starts taking orders from "nameless faceless someone else", we have problems.
Locked in APIs are just as much as a scourge. When you use them, you're locking yourself into an ecosystem that will go away. It's not a matter of if, but when. I'm less hesitant when these APIs used are standards compliant (where I can go 'down the street' and plug in their credential info)... But that's not where money is.
Lockin is where the money is. And I'll fight it tooth and nail. I already am doing the fight against bad IoT.
And the content you are streaming through 'nameless faceless someone else' is not your own. You pay to get access to it. Are you saying that because you install a program on your machine, you should have complete control over what it can and can't do to the content it provides?
By hook or by crook, yes.
I've admitted that I'm a pirate. Look at my comments and you'll find it. If it's convenient enough I'll buy. I'm not under spending money on media.
And I do have complete control what the program can and cannot do. It's called a debugger. The encrypted files and keys are right there. It's nothing more than a bad obfuscation technique.
Why do you feel they shouldn't?
I believe that software on my computer shouldn't have restrictions that I don't know about, take actions that I don't know about, etc. But if someone else wants to run some super-DRM app, I don't think that my opinions of what's best for them should limit what they can run on their machine.
In short, I want complete control over what runs on my computer and the chance to reject programs that don't work the way I want them to. I don't think that I have the right to change their intended behavior (although, to be honest, I will when it suits my purposes).
1. Do I have the right to run, inspect, modify, or do whatever to a binary running on my machine? Absolutely. Running Linux, I can inspect down to the kernel, if I so choose. But I can hook onto any program I want, and watch any program I choose. If I want to modify memory, I can. Root really means root.
2. So who owns the machine if someone else's program can tell you "You can't do this." ? That's not following what I want, therefore I can only imply that I'm not the owner. I'm all for signed hardware and protections, but things like the TPM give security and ownership to someone that's not me. I'd be for it if I had the private key of that chip.
3. So a computer that doesn't follow the user's requirements... what does that look like? It looks like a Tivo, iPhone, some Androids, Windows 10, and other locked down hardware. Yes, you may have bought it, but you don't own it. Worse yet, is instead of DRM, is that subroutines come from "the cloud" (AKA someone else's server), and streamed to the device when requested. Google shut down a platform for precisely that reason; they deactivated the API servers.
What's the way out? Free Software is a big way out, but so is Open Protocols, and Open Standards. You have a business for IoT (example)? Use MQTT/CoAP and talk via the standards and make it pretty. But also make it so I can close up shop and go elsewhere if you alienate me. Right now, that's the lockin comparable to DRM.
I don't have control over what kinds of garbage someone else puts into their program, but I have control over whether or not I run that on my computer. Technically I have the ability to view memory, run it in a debugger, put in shim libraries to capture data, etc, but in most cases where control is a real issue, it's easier to just avoid the troublesome software in favor of an alternative.
For things I want to own forever, I buy them in mp3 format, or on Google Play and download the resulting mp3s.
Is DRM required for streaming music? Definitely not.
Is DRM required to make money out of streaming music? Debatable.
Putting it on a comparable service, look at GOG.com and Steam. They are both digital game distributor services. Before GOG.com people thought DRM was the only way to make a viable business out of selling digital copies of videogames, as presented by Valve. Then GOG came along and they said "nope, we hate DRM, we're gonna sell digital games without it". Now, is their system viable? Well they've been around for quite a while, I don't know if their money comes directly from game sales or other sources (their parent company also owns CDProjekt which makes Triple A games like The Witcher) but they are still in the business after all these years.
You can't look at the GOG.com on its own because its unclear if the non-DRM "benefits" of a site of GOG.com are being subsidized by Steam.
If Steam was vaporized tomorrow, would GOG.com be profitable enough to support the salaries of not just GOG.com, but the developers, producers, designers, and QA testers of the game studios? If not, it's not viable. Is it? I'm not sure because Steam is the main bread winner.
Is that enough to support main game publishers and developers? I have no idea but that's not the point I was trying to make. The point I'm making is that it's obviously profitable for the people working at GOG.
Why does it matter if Steam disappears? Do you think people would just stop buying games altogether without Steam? People use Steam because of the platform it provides, not because of the DRM. If people wanted to just pirate games they could get the GOG version off a torrent site since that is already DRM-free, it's not like Steam's DRM is stopping anybody from distributing pirated copies.
Technically? No, it isn't required. But it seems pretty necessary if you want to have deals with major labels and publishers. There already exists a musical equivalent of GOG. Bandcamp [0]. Music sales are DRM free, you can choose your file format and quality, and you can stream any artist DRM-free on the website or app. However, you won't find the latest Taylor Swift or Kanye release for sale on Bandcamp or anywhere without DRM.
Most of the point of the DRM for Spotify and Netflix is just so you don't sign up for a week and download the parts of the catalog you like and then quit. That's why spotify uses DRM and itunes doesn't.
It's the fact that it's often done so poorly and clumsily that creates the problem.