Lawsuit could be the beginning of the end for DRM | Hacker News Reader

Lawsuit could be the beginning of the end for DRM

defectivebydesign.org

If it was not for DRM removal tools I would have recently been screwed by Amazon, here is my story:

I was a longtime customer (easily 10 years or more I think) and have bought every version of Kindle to have come out over the years (unfortunately they break easily) and have build up a large collection

Recently I replaced the debit card on my account as the old one expired, placed and order for a digital game code for my xbox one (done it many times before) and bang my account was nuked. Yes I used 2fa no my account was not hacked by anyone. No I never abused their refund policy as some people do. Yes I tried resetting my password and get an email about password change BUT still can not login as it errors out.

I must have rang dozen of times (chat doesnt work if you dont have an account) and send as many emails to everyone from support to jeff@amazon.com (apparently this is a shortcut to get attention to your case) in all cases was told an "account specialist" would get in contact, yadda yadda but no luck.

If it was not for deDRM tools (which I started to use after the 1984 "incident" few years back) all of my books would have been unreadable now, had to deregister the kindle too since account doesnt work.

I wonder how many people who are not as tech savy get screwed and are left with nothing.

I'll only buy DRM content as long as I can easily remove it, and right now the only DRM content I regularly buy is books mostly from Google and Amazon. The first thing i strip the DRM and archive it.

I recommend against the buy-and-strip approach, because you are still signaling that you are ok with (some) DRM. The only signal you are sending back to the manufacturer is your purchase. The only thing the manufacturer sees is how the addition of DRM affects their profit, and you're telling them that the DRM is acceptable.

This battle is lost and the reality is already much worse than just DRM. It is increasingly impossible to actually own digital content and all content is moving to digital. You only lease at the revocable pleasure of some multi-billion dollar corporation. No resale, no inheritance, no right of refusal of obnoxious TOS changes if you want continued access.

Yes, for some technical books it is still possible to buy a DRM free pdf and have something approximating ownership rights, including resale -- for example http://shop.oreilly.com/category/customer-service/ebooks.do.

But as far as I can tell that's only true for a tiny techical niche -- if there is an alternative to kindle, amazon etc. that actually has a reasonable selection and true ownership I'd love to hear about it.

Yes, you might have to do without some things.

This is why some of us were making a lot of noise about this problem 20+ years ago, when sending the message that "leasing"/DRM isn't acceptable didn't require a significant sacrifice. Unfortunately everyone - including engineers that should have known better - was more interested in the media industry's shiny baubles than investing their future property rights.

So now that same fight will probably require some amount of sacrifice. Are you willing to pay that cost now? Or do you want to wait while this transfer of rights to continues? This cost will only increase the more we allow DRM to spread.

You seem to imply I have a moral obligation to make sacrifices for the cause of consumer rights, but realistically any call to collective action that imposes comparatively large costs to the individual for very slim chances of success is doomed to failure and a misdirection of energies that would better be spent elsewhere.

I will continue to seek out and prefer non-DRM, non-leased content where available at acceptable cost, but consumers voting with their wallets is not going to solve this.

Well, we had Stallman saying those things for decades, and everyone in tech mocked and ignored him instead.

Stallman does deserve credit for his farsightedness. At the same time, he never provided a realistic alternative (the FSF tithing hardware manufacturers to centrally plan us some Lisp machine bootstrapped on Unix software utopia is not).

DRM is acceptable to me as long as it is removable. I'll let them think that they are getting one over on me when they are not.

The only scenario, in which DRM makes any sense at all, is B2B patronage.

Other businesses probably SHOULD license hobbled, encrypted garbage from provider businesses. It's a use case where a collective group of people decide to use a pre-defined set of noises and pictures for some reason or another. But who cares why, and no one on the consumer side of that transaction really owns the media samples directly. The provider company owns the masters and the subscriber company owns the user license, and outside of the context of the companies in question, those things might be worthless curiosities.

But for individual consumers, DRM makes no fucking sense at all. It's abusive corporate group-think from square one. Any implementation that causes you to question whether you should share something with your friends, lest you harm a business that extracts money from you, is something of an abomination.

A lot of this comes down to terminology: the people who are the most upset about DRM are the people who thought they were “buying” something in the same manner as a physical item and are at some point rudely reminded that the company considers it more like a temporary license. Very few people mind services like Netflix or Spotify because it's extremely clear that you're paying for a month of access at a time.

I doubt we're going to get much legal change in the short term but imagine how different the discussion would be if there was a clear labeling law which required either labeling things as rentals with a very clear time window or the company is required to either provide access or refund your money should their system lock you out.

This is why generally I don't buy Amazon stuff for my kindle. 99% of my kindle contains stuff that was either free in the first place (ibilio, gutenberg proj, etc) or was purchased without DRM installed.

I made an exception with Audible but I'm going to cancel it because while I love the idea of Audible, I've been racking up freebees every month and not pulling the trigger because I just don't have the time.

I generally see it as a price threshold: when a Kindle book is much cheaper than the paperback I'm willing to accept getting less value, especially if it's something like book n in a series which I'm going to read on the plane and don't expect to reread.

The problem is of course that we as humans don't like to rent, we like to own and for good reasons. We only prefer to rent when overall the price is much better than owning or when we don't have a choice.

Netflix and Spotify don't have a problem with their subscribers because the price is fair. $10 per month is fair for unlimited access to TV shows that you like. $10 is also fair for unlimited access to all the music that you want. And in fact both Netflix and Spotify don't really need DRM in order for them to work. I can already find all of that content on PirateBay, all of that content has already been pirated. And if I'm paying for Netflix, I might do so out of convenience and because pirating is illegal.

But charge $10 for an eBook or $15-$30 for an audio book or $10 for a music album and that price is no longer fair with DRM. The problem is that these companies want to have their cake and eat it too, by creating the illusion of ownership, with people not realizing they are locked-in until it is too late. And that should be clearly illegal, I wonder when people will wake up.

But these prices haven't changed much in decades. Books have always cost that much, as have albums (the exception being textbooks). Discount vinyl record albums were US $5.99 in the 1970s.

I have issues with DRM, but not because I find the prices exorbitant.

When you bought vinyl or CDs, you owned that. How can a temporary rental be worth the same?

Because it takes up less space in my house.

I say not valid because you can rip the physical media and store the original in cheap offsite storage for whoever inherits you => best of both worlds.

I say not valid because audio doesn't have DRM anymore, just books, and ripping a book to PDF is more work than I'm inclined to do.

This service [0] will do that for you for as little as $1 a book.

[0] http://1dollarscan.com/

More like $6 or $8 really. And at some point, I'd really just rather start reading instead of paying more and waiting two weeks.

The prices haven't changed if we are talking ownership. But we are not talking about ownership, we're talking about licensing.

That dichotomy is what we're talking about. People are tricked into thinking they are buying a book. They are not. They are renting a book at the same price as buying.

> Books have always cost that much

How much renting them used to cost?

What makes a price fair?

The general perception of the marginal cost of a vendor of stocking and selling the good, as compared with the price they ask you and the value-added service they offer. With digital goods, the marginal cost of delivering you a copy is pretty much zero. As for service provided - it depends, but most of the time, the service itself doesn't seem to be costing much more than "pretty much nothing".

What matters is perception. To use Amazon Kindle Store as an example - the primary service they (and most on-line merchants) offer you is... a payment gateway. It doesn't seem expensive. They also host the ebooks, but again - downloading digital goods is free at the margin. You could say that e-book prices also subsidize Kindle R&D and/or manufacturing (not sure if that's true, but assuming it for the sake of an example) - but at this point I have to ask, why should I care?

Businesses like to move around costs and profits and do anything but transparent pricing in order to maximize profits. Koerig sells you coffee machines at a loss for price X, and then tries to make it up with DRMed, overpriced coffee pods. I feel it's unfair because - why should I care about the coffee pods subsidizing my coffee maker? They didn't tell me up-front they're doing it, they just sell me a coffee maker for X.

Similarly with ebooks. The marignal costs to the retailer are zero, so the price should be low too - if they're subsidizing something with ebook sales, that's not my problem. I'll call expensive ebooks unfairly priced. If they want me to think the price is fair, they need to work on my perception of their cost structures, instead of obfuscating everything.

Probably nobody would be on board with paying 25-90 to rent a singular work for 5-20 years.

The reason for DRM is to make casual piracy harder. Piracy will always exist, but if it goes beyond a certain point, it can disrupt and destroy the value of a created work. Creative work as it is is already devalued to the point where you are better off investing the hours spent into working at Mcdonalds and reaping a wage from that. If it gets prominent enough, things could get even worse.

I mean, if all you make from a novel is a $5,000 advance for a years labor, and you find that not only can you not rely on ebook sales to earn that out, the pirated copy cannibalizes print sales too, it's not a good thing right?

I've taken to viewing Kindle books as a very expensive indefinite-but-temporary library loan. Between the years+ length of the borrowing period, instant delivery, lighted screen, compactness, and travel-friendliness it can be worth the premium over a public library loan. In dollars per hour of entertainment, it's better than some options. But it is ultimately a rental.

If you have a relatively progressive library and prefer to cope with scarcity by waiting for a "digital copy" to become available and then reading the book in a narrow time window (rather than paying ~$10), you can generally get an actual temporary Kindle book from your library for free.

If the Kindle price is too high for a book that will eventually leave your possession, buy it on paper.

Orrrr support a non-DRM publisher. Ya know

Kobo sells some books without DRM. But there's no way to search by it, and it's no longer mentioned on the search results page. It used to be, but they removed that for god knows what reason. Now you have to click on a book and scroll down to the bottom of the page to check the download options.

But hey, still better than Amazon and Nook.

EDIT: if anyone's a fan of fantasy, all of Brandon Sanderson's stuff is DRMless. That's the example I can remember off the top of my head.

Details section down below the reviews, you'll see "Download options:EPUB 3 (DRM-Free)"

Example here https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/ebook/the-way-of-kings-1

Amazon and BN sell _some_ books without DRM as well. To encompass your Sanderson example, all of Tor ebooks[0] are DRM free regardless of distribution channel.

[0]: http://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/torforge-e-books-are-now-drm-f...

Oh interesting, I guess I haven't paid much attention to the ebook markets since I bought my Nook Simple Touch, I've just made a habit of checking Kobo first because they were the ones offering no-DRM at the time. Good to know!

Fuck no. Life is too short and literature matters too much to pass on good books and read worse ones just because of their publishers' DRM politics.

Don't reward DRM-encumbered ebooks, sure. If you want to punish the publisher, just buy it used on paper or go to the library. But read the books you wanted to read in the first place.

Not sure what you're disagreeing with.

First of all, all Kindle books are DRM-protected, yet you can find many of them DRM-free, especially the technical ones, if you buy them from their publishers directly instead of places like Amazon. I can also show you books selling in Google's Play Store or other places without DRM, whereas all Amazon Kindle books are DRM-enabled.

But speaking about short lives, while I agree with buying books in print (I love to buy used books btw), authors that are alive and that still own the copyright are often complicit in this. So why should I read the ebook of somebody that doesn't respect me? From my point of view, a book takes some resources to read, which could be better spent on authors and publishers that do respect me enough to not DRM-enable those books. Or in other words, there are thousands, tens of thousands of books I could be reading, I only have bandwidth for about 2-4 per month and the rules of competition still apply.

Also, to get one thing straight, there's nothing holy about reading books. It's just another form of entertainment.

I kind of do a variant of this. I buy used paper books and then send them to bookscan.us for scanning. Et voila: non-DRMed ebook. Oftentimes, the price of this activity, ignoring the time element, is lower than the price of the DRMed ebook.

I didn't say anything about not buying paper. I don't know how you extrapolated that.

I prefer books in print but those two philosophies can coexist. Get DRM-free e-material when appropriate, and print otherwise. I prefer manuals in searchable ebook form while books and novels are definitely more pleasing in print.

If I need a book for a specific deep topic it's usually unlikely to find the specific material from someone else.

I started buying from Angry Robot a while back because they sent me free DRM-free epubs to get me hooked on their authors. I've been buying from them ever since, and that's the only reason I discovered that Chuck Wendig's books are amazing. Sure, I've got to pay in GBP instead of USD, but this is the internet and with digital delivery, that kind of stuff doesn't matter.

Unfortunately, everyone else discovered that Chuck was good, so he moved to a big publisher and I assume they required him to go with DRM. I can no longer find his books unencumbered.

tl;dr: There are great non-DRM publishers, and they might have great books. It is in our interest to support them.

And now I know what I'm doing tonight.

The recourse for anyone else would be a lawsuit in small claims court. That would at least get their attention, and possibly an issue resolution.

Credit card chargebacks for every kindle book you bought? Would probably remove all chance of reconciliation, but it would send a message.

I doubt it works just like that. If you do that you'll have to file for a claim, which will then be investigated by your bank or credit issuer. There's some procedures around what you can and cannot claim for and more things that need to happen according to the Fair Credit Billing Act (in the US). Since you've already taken possession of the good and used it I'm not sure you'll get much out of it though I have no idea how this would even work/apply to digital works.

And I doubt they'll let you go back years.

Your credit card company needs Amazon more than they need you. They would side with Amazon.

Don't rely on any 'official' solution to maintain your digital library as those are sure to stop working in one way (company goes bankrupt or gets bought) or another (planned obsolescence, forced upgrade, etc) in a few years time. Configure your own using one of the existing tools; if you use Owncloud or Nextcloud you could use my OPDS Catalog app (https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php?content=168132), possibly combined with Reader (https://apps.owncloud.com/content/show.php/Reader+(ebook+rea...) for when you happen to be without a reader device.

Try to send the industry a signal by refusing to buy encumbered books (DRM, proprietary formats, etc). If you feel like you absolutely must have a book which is only available in an encumbered format I'd suggest you convert it to an open and unencumbered format as soon as you get your hands on it. Store it in this format, it should be usable in years to come.

Keep good backups, this is one of the advantages of a digital library which partly offsets its greater vulnerability to disaster compared to a physical library. It takes a lot of effort to destroy a physical library, but a simple rm -rf will do for a digital one. Store your backups in several locations, off-site, somewhere out on the 'net in an encrypted container file (free cloud storage accounts are handy for this purpose, just refresh them every now and then and don't rely on them as a single source).

Second this. While I do occasionally buy Kindle books, I only buy them as long as the DRM is straightforward to remove. The moment they get aggressive about DRM, it'll be the last time I ever buy one.

I don't feel strongly enough about it to avoid books I want to read that are only available with DRM, but I do insist on having an unencumbered copy.

And when a book is available from a source I know are good about not using DRM, I will aim to buy from there, and buy direct in preference to buying from a DRM-friendly outlet - e.g. I prefer to buy from O'Reilly direct for that reason.

The only form of "DRM" I don't mind are the e-book stores that provide you with a personalised copy that includes my name/e-mail, but otherwise leaves the book unprotected.

>The only form of "DRM" I don't mind are the e-book stores that provide you with a personalised copy that includes my name/e-mail, but otherwise leaves the book unprotected.

And that also implies that you give up right of resale.

I can sell a physical book after I have it. I can choose to write my name in there... Or not. Having my name plastered as you indicate is OK, means giving up my own guaranteed rights of resale.

is it not the copyright owners right to allow others to resell or not!?

I absolutely have the right to buy a copy , watch it/read it, and sell it to someone else. First sale doctrine states that.

I don't have the right to make and sell copies. I do certainly have that right for the original.

Part of the issue with this case, to me, is that the standing for bunnie does not adequately describe what is believed to be "paid for" content. As in, there is no differentiation between a streamed license or a purchased 'copy' in technical terms. To me this is a very important sticking point, legally, simply considering the nature of modern commerce.

That certainly wasn't the original intent of copyright law, and in most places it wouldn't be the default position. Copyright is normally about controlling the making of new copies, not retaining control over an existing one after sale. The difficulty is that copyright law has been extended in various ways over the years.

Some of those extensions might seem reasonable and in the spirit of the original law. For example, in some places buying a single private copy of a movie on DVD doesn't give you a legal right to show that work, for money, to the general public, even if it's still your physical DVD in the player.

Other extensions in the scope of copyright protection have been much more dubious. For example, just about anything in the digital world tends to be vulnerable to arguments about making copies in a computer's RAM while you're running the software, playing the movie, listening to the song, or whatever it might be. Some horrible law has been made in some places using this kind of argument, even though it's totally distorting the spirit of the original copyright principle since you're only enjoying the copy you lawfully possess and not really making further copies to redistribute to anyone else. Trying to limit resale rights is another hot topic.

Some places have rather more sane laws in these respects, and even some reasonable discussions among the governing and lawyerly classes about how digital works should be handled in the modern age and how to balance the intended protection of creators with the legitimate right for customers to enjoy what they paid for. But there is still a long way to go even in the more enlightened legal environments today, and plenty of first world countries are far behind in their thinking so far.

With physical items it most certainly is not on principal a digital item ought to be the same however I don't know how you enable that without drm.

Maybe the inherently absurd situation is best resolved by giving up the absurd notion of artificial scarcity.

> And that also implies that you give up right of resale.

I'd love to see that tested.

Not really. You can still legally sell a physical book if you've written your name in (if the buyer doesn't mind), and you can always remove your name from a non-DRMed eBook (though there may be more subtle forms of tracking left in).

The first sale doctrine is a legal matter, and unfortunately in the US it's been found essentially inapplicable to digital copies [1] whether there's a watermark or not. In other jurisdictions it may be applicable, but again probably regardless of the presence of a watermark.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_LLC_v._ReDi....

I feel like right-of-resale is legitimately complicated for digital products. The right to resell a physical object doesn't give you the right to mass-produce it, but for digital products the two processes are identical.

That's fine with me - I never resell my books.

But yes, you need to keep it mind.

> Try to send the industry a signal by refusing to buy encumbered books (DRM, proprietary formats, etc).

This is what animal rights activists are advocating to do with meat products in the industry. Does the technique work, universally? Does it have success? It sounds reasonable, but requires a lot of people to change their behaviors.

Boycotts can work because you are able to excersize social influence and slowly change the morals of your society. What you eat is going to be something that people you interact with learn about you.

How you interact with DRM isn't something many people are going to learn about you unless you make an effort to share it.

I think it's a lot easier for DRM than for animal welfare. For one, DRM directly affects your use of the product, while animal abuse occurs out-of-sight somewhere far away. DRM has no consumer benefit, which also makes agreement easier. Where each consumer draws the line for animal abuse varies considerably and it takes significant personal research to choose brands.

I'd go one step further and build your own private cloud for a bunch of stuff. I did all this easily through a slick web interface for open source software and linux that Synology has created.

A lot of this stuff includes apps for phone/tv/etc that you can download for free in stores or even from their own site, and it can be available to everyone in your household for some pretty decent savings - if it still works in a year I'll have saved more than I spent on it ($290 + disks x4).

- cloud files almost directly equivalent to Dropbox, I haven't solved sharing files yet but I have versioning and undeleting for my work

- note server like OneNote with a browser extension to save pages, screenshots etc

- music streaming ala Amazon Music et al

- torrent downloading I guess is like seed boxes but never had one

- video streaming server like Netflix

- photo uploading like iCloud

- email server, didn't actually install this one yet but everything else is up and running

- dns server with network-wide ad/malware/tracker blocking

> cloud files almost directly equivalent to Dropbox

And when your electronics get trashed by water damage or the stray lightning strike? Cloud computing involves redundancy and fault tolerance and a box in your closet is neither. That goes particularly for "almost directly equivalent to Dropbox"; even setting aside sharing, "not having everything go up in smoke because my house burns down" is kind of a killer-app feature.

You can, of course, build a "private cloud". (I've done it for clients before!) But it will cost you.

It can also automatically sync whatever you want to any of dozens of archiving services... encrypted or not. Including Amazon Cloud Drive boasting unlimited space for $60/year, BackBlaze B2, S3, Glacier, Dropbox, Google Drive etc.

It can keep a redundant NAS in sync too but not sure how seamless that would be in practice if you wanted redundancy for the software running on it.

However what really makes me optimistic about this stuff is the aligned interests:

- a great software experience for their hardware leveraging open source solutions (I think it's brtfs for the versioning/restoring, transmission for torrents etc)

- Dropbox selling a blob of space for $10/month and trying to solve the "problem" of you not paying more by lying in their advertisements

That is exactly what something like Owncloud/Nextcloud (for which I made those book/publication-related tools) enables you to do: create a 'private cloud' (what a silly word it is, really... cloud). It does some of the things you mention 'out of the box' (file storage, photo uploading) or after installing some 'apps' (note server, music streaming, video streaming, email user agent (not a mail server)). Since it runs on *nix you get the rest (mail server, dns server) more or less 'for free', just configure it the way you want.

Same in principal, but Synology have built a lovely, multi-window web interface for a lot of linux and each of those apps, along with their own Android + iOS apps.

https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/live_demo

That consolidates a lot of different UIs, signins, permissions etc into a single coherent interface - even terminal commands like configuring firewall, network interfaces, user permissions, all that stuff.

To give you some examples it takes two clicks, a domain and any contrived email address to get a Let's Encrypt certificate. It takes three more clicks to assign it to a web app Synology is serving from that device. You can add SSL to your own reverse-proxied app, also effortless to add, just as easily and enable HSTS with a checkbox.

Their torrent software can watch RSS feeds and download straight into a folder where it's indexed for their video server. Their video client provides a nice interface for browsing but delegates the actual playback to VLC.

I would argue that it is more ethical to purchase a physical copy of the book you would like, then download a DRM-free copy from alternate sources. You have covered yourself ethically (and maybe even legally?) by purchasing a copy/license, without supporting the DRM-crippled offering. If more customers started to affect sales in this way, publishers might take a hint, and drop DRM.

You make me wonder what I should do to preserve my Steam account now... Maybe there's some way to get a VM image of the computer in offline mode?

Steam DRM is even more trivially defeated than Amazon DRM. Drop 4 files in the game folder and run it.

Which four?

I don't dare look this up on a work machine, but a google in the general direction of "Steamworks emulator" should get you going. The files in question are modified Steamworks DLLs (x86 and x64), an info file that holds the Steam metadata for the game, and a launcher to read it.

Hrm. DDG shows one (unhelpful) result for that. Google sent me running in circles. Has this emulator been taken down?

> Configure your own using one of the existing tools; if you use Owncloud or Nextcloud you could use my OPDS Catalog app…

Okay, so this is a whole new world for me. Thank you!

OPDS appears to be for electronic publications what RSS is to blogs and podcasts. There are feeds, there's content management software that generates them (like "OPDS catalog"), and there are reader-style apps to consume them and view the syndicated content. Yes?

But as someone with tons of Kindle purchases, I'm a little confused about where to go from here, and how to protect myself from what happened to throwaway1974. Is there an "OPDS for Dummies"?

OPDS for dummies? There is the Mobileread wiki (http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/OPDS) which gives some pointers to catalogs and software, but it doesn't really explain all that much.

What OPDS enables you to do is gain access to a collection from any OPDS client device. To test it you can just install an OPDS-compatible reader on a phone or tablet or some such device and point it at an OPDS catalog. If you install FBreader (for Android) you'll find a number of OPDS catalogues pre-configured for your perusal, it is also possible (and easy) to add your own. You'll be able to browse the catalog, search for publications (something which I have not implemented in my Owncloud/Nextcloud tools yet due to the (IMnsHO) lacking search infrastructure in Owncloud) and download publications to the device. So yes, in this way it works just like a feed reader, which makes sense as it is based on the same technology (RSS and Atom).

Kindle does, as far as I know, not support OPDS - I don't have one so I can not try. I do know that it has a (rudimentary) browser so that might be an option to get access to publications on a 'personal cloud server'. In the case of OPDS Catalog you can just point the browser at the library root in the Owncloud/Nextcloud 'Files' app to see the same files as those which are served through the OPDS feed, bar any filtering done on the latter (it can be configured to show only certain types of files and/or to skip certain patterns). You will not see the metadata which OPDS Catalog has collected on those publications, once Nextcloud matures I'll see if it is feasible to implement this as an addition to the Files app.

Calibre (https://calibre-ebook.com/) is able to convert publications on the fly to a format understood by (unmodified= Kindle devices. It also contains a server which publishes in both OPDS as well as HTML, the latter would be useable on a Kindle. I think Calibre does a good job on the conversions but it is rather overweight and overly complex to use as a server. Of course there are other options, check that Mobileread wiki I linked to for some examples.

This is very helpful, thanks again!

Wow, thanks for the implicit warning, I've been an Amazon customer since a year after they opened, am using them very heavily right now as I remodel and move to a small house built in 1910, and it would be crippling to be disconnected from my order history and wish lists.

I've only bought a very few Kindle books sold for $0 or on deep discount, never bought a Kindle, and only bought 1-2 digital copies of music when the CD was out of print and way too expensive. No way will I buy another digital item from Amazon if they make it this dangerous....

I don't think they want this outcome, but the more they savage their customers like they did you, the more it'll happen.

Comment on "Kindle breaks easily". I have different experience. About 6 years ago I got Kindle for my birthday. Happily used it for half a year and then misplaced and couldn't find it for another half a year. Then I found it - it fell in a gap in my outside furniture and was lying outside exposed to elements for all this time. To bring it back to life all I needed is to charge it - used it for more than 5 years after that without any issues.

i've gone through multiple ones myself, the e-ink screen is the big failure point.

My significant other ends up going through about 1 kindle every year or so. She uses the backlight and reads it sometimes 2 - 4 hours a day. What happens is it starts randomly crashing or locking up, or just acting wonky when it hits around the 1 year mark.

Same here. I got a paperwhite for Christmas 4-5 years ago. No problems. Still works well. And I use it every day.

The battery doesn't last as long as it used to, but it's still good for days.

I do keep the backlight as low as possible...

If you can document this, you should contact the EFF legal team and offer your testimony as someone harmed by DRM.

I'm not anti-copyright or pro-piracy in any way, but if I had lost everything I bought because of a DRM snafu, I'd have no ethical concerns torrenting new copies of the things I lost.

In fact, if Amazon upgrades their Kindle DRM so that it is no longer easily removed, I think I would probably torrent copies of things I buy just so I have an effective backup.

I'm not surprised. Amazon treats its customers like shit. They sell a lot of shit products from China especially that break immediately and they don't care. They do NOT have a refund policy like the one you claim other people violate, but they will shut down accounts randomly with messages about violating said NONEXISTENT policy, even accounts that haven't had returns. Their algorithms are shit, in other words. You should sue them, seriously, in small claims.

On their website is a banner: "Cancel netflix!". I click on it, and I'm told I should cancel netflix because they put DRM on their HTML5 delivery of movies.

Now look, Im a self-professed pirate. I say screw most DRM and I dont recognize IP law. However, I totally disagree that I should "cancel netflix". What are they supposed to do ? Deliver all their movies DRM-free and see them immediately get copied to torrent sites ? Or else, what , not use HTML5 and require STB/smart tv support to use their product (which ALL have DRM, btw ) ?

Netflix is the good guy, they are pioneers in electronic content delivery. They are fighting to break the monopoly of the movie industry while having to work with them to get content. And they are producing their own content. All for a very reasonable rate.

I will absolutely NOT cancel netflix because they support DRM. What a ridiculous thing to suggest.

I agree. I think a barrier to distribution helps certain business models that are legit. Especially with the backdrop that most of the public don't care enough to change the situation. Ten years from now, overly-broad laws in copyright and big distributors owning rights will still exist. The work of groups like Netflix... even Redbox... are a nice compromise until something better comes along. I'm impressed Netflix got as far as they did.

I appreciate you pointing this out, because it's a very spurious attitude. It is ridiculous, and thank you for explaining why you see it that way.

Netflix shows are all on torrent sites anyway. I'm not sure they would actually lose anything if they dropped the DRM.

Not saying it's right, but in practical terms, I'm rather certain they would lose all their contracts with major studios / content holders. They're in such a tough & unique position.

Oh, for sure- it's not like it's Netflix that cares, its the contracts they have with content owners. I guess they could turn off DRM for the show they produce but that sounds like a technical hassle for no gain.

Some gain. Some attempt could be made to then compare piracy rates of netflix's non-drm vs drm content. They'd be showing good will to those who side with "Cancel Netflix"

Netflix has moved into the content creator sphere as a direct rebuttal to the, well, extortion that content holders have hung over their heads.

I was listening to a local talk radio station (1310 The Ticket) which does an 'Entertainment News' segment and they mentioned that the chief of FX went on record lamenting that Netflix might become a go-to for content.

One of the situations they mentioned was the upcoming Playboy series done in partnership with Hugh Heffner. The discussion was about how that series might have landed on FX or AMC a few years ago - now? Now it's a proprietary Netflix show.

I'm pivoting more toward screenwriting for 2017 and saw some chatter that Netflix doesn't particularly take "pitches" from the traditional Hollywood / content system. They reach out. According to the source, a meeting with Netflix is one of the hardest to "get" because of this approach.

They're trying to turn the tables and it seems to be paying dividends - at least from a customer engagement standpoint. Offering exclusive content is a whole different conversation (re: Drake, Chance the Rapper & Apple Music) but their actions are becoming recognized. I can definitely respect the move on general principle.

The question to be asked in turn is rooted in why would Netflix play by different rules than they had been subjected to re: DRM when the established system has trained a majority of customers to accept it.

From my perspective, Netflix and other legal streaming services have dealt quite a blow to the torrent scene. I'm sure there are private trackers that are alive and well, but the scene in total seems diminished even from a few years ago.

Personally I prefer to do my 'piracy' the old-fashioned way: at my local public library. Better selection than all but the most elite torrent sites...

Is it actually diminished, or just more out of the public eye?

I don't go trawling around for pirated content, but I've stopped hearing much in the news about big "busts" of things like Suprnova every other week - I think the first one I heard about in months, if not years, was all the noise around KickAssTorrents being shut down.

After a lot of thinking about DRM over the years, I realised this is one of the great myths.

Yes, DRM is often readily broken. And yes, much of the content is available via "alternative sources" for those who know where to look and how to protect themselves from whatever else might try to come along for the ride. Those who really want to rip something and have a bit of know-how will most likely be able to do it sooner or later.

However, DRM can still prove a significant impediment to casual copying, which in itself may protect significant revenues for the content providers. DRM also makes it very clear to those with access to the content that certain things -- say, trying to keep permanent copies of content streamed from sites like Netflix that rely on subscriptions to operate -- are not intended to be possible. Again, in a culture where a lot of people have barely even heard of copyright and just assume anything available online is free, that can be a big win.

> Those who really want to rip something and have a bit of know-how will most likely be able to do it sooner or later.

The kind of piracy it does prevent is putting movies you've watched onto a USB stick and handing it to a friend who doesn't pay for a subscription.

For distributing pirated content online, people wanting to download pirate content still have to spelunk through torrent trackers or Popcorn Time or whatever to actually get the video, whether it was distributed originally with DRM or not. DRM-free just makes life a little bit easier for the uploaders.

Can the average grandma use "torrent sites" (and figure out how to show the content on a TV) ? Can the average grandma use netflix ?

What a strange reply. You're the one who brought up "torrent sites" in the first place.

The argument is way more nuanced than whether something is on torrent or not. Which is why it appears that I'm arguing against myself. I'm not.

I originally brought up that without DRM, someone could rip netflix's entire catalog and publish it straight to bittorrent. Thats a concern to IP stakeholders and likely a big reason they require DRM from Netflix.

He's saying "they're on torrent already, so why should netflix use DRM?". I'm countering that argument with the fact that just because something is available DRM-free on torrent doesn't mean it's as easy to access as Netflix, which requires DRM.

The broader point is that DRM can be technically ineffective, as in it can be circumvented, but it can still be "functional", as in fulfilling its originally intended function. DeCSS was published in '99, yet it's still not easy for an average user (grandma) to duplicate a DVD.

> DeCSS was published in '99, yet it's still not easy for an average user (grandma) to duplicate a DVD.

Would ripping a DVD really be easier without the DRM, for an average user? To strip the DRM you just need to have libdvdcss (or whatever) installed, and your ripping software strips the DRM without you even knowing it's there. It's not much harder than ripping a CD.

HandBrake doesn't even tell you there's any DRM- it's completely transparent, more or less one button to rip.

They are not the "good guy" - they're merely among the lesser of a few evils. If they were the "good guy", they would deliver content 100% DRM-free and actively support the public domain. For me, "Cancel Netflix!" is not merely a call to remove myself from their service, but rather a call to remove a DRM-friendly platform from the face of the Web. Because as it stands, every other DRM jail can point to Netflix and say, "See! They do it and they're the good guy!" - and we need to cut that off at the ankles.

They do work with DRM on a regular basis. They are, or work willingly with, the bad guy. Until you remove yourself from them and we work to remove them completely, we will never win.

If they were the "good guy", they would deliver content 100% DRM-free and actively support the public domain.

And pay the hundreds or thousands of people involved in making a major movie or demanding TV show for months or years of their time with what, sunshine and rainbows? It would be lovely if we could all just contribute our skills and talents for the general improvement of humanity, but the thing about professionals is that their profession is what pays the rent.

I've always been pretty down on DRM, more on the basis that it often winds up inadvertently harming legitimate customers than anything else. And yet from personal experience, there are few things more depressing than spending years of your life creating something truly original, offering it without DRM-like protections for a fair price, and then watching as people just openly rip you off anyway. It turns out that if you challenge them, sometimes they freely acknowledge what they were doing, and in a stunning bit of irony, even ask you what you expected if you made your content available without DRMing it.

If you want to "win" from your point of view, you'd better start with telling people who actually create content at considerable expense in time and money how to deal with the problem of freeloaders in some other credible way. Otherwise, the only thing your approach would remove is a large amount of the creative work that gets done in the world. As I said, I don't much like DRM myself and typically don't buy DRM'd content unless I'm reasonably confident of my ability to break it should the need ever arise, but that's a long way from calling anyone who employs it in a genuine attempt to protect themselves from illegal behaviour a "bad guy".

I feel a little disappointed that so far, based on the comments I'm reading, this seems to be the minority opinion.

Sadly, it is often the minority opinion. There are a lot more people who want to enjoy good content than people who actually spend the time and money creating that content.

The false premise behind your question is that DRM does anything to prevent copying.

Whether it is effective is irrelvant. The question is: Do they have a right to prevent you from copying? If you purchase something, like a video game, I 100% think that no, sellers do not have that right. In netflix's, I think that they do. Whether it's effective shouldn't factor into the equation.. it's an implementation detail.

Of course it does something to prevent copying. The idea that DRM doesn't prevent a single copy being made is as absurd as the idea that every single infringing copy made of a work represents a lost sale.

In reality, most infringing copies (other than professional pirates) are casual copies made just because someone can, and most works being copied illegally are recent. If DRM avoids even a modest fraction of those infringing copies for even a relatively short time before it's cracked, it probably still leads to increased legitimate sales as a result and has at least partially succeeded.

You assume that I have a problem with less media in the world. I don't. If 90% of the new content that we see and hear disappeared tomorrow, I would be just fine with that. As it ism we have an overwhelming amount of content that distracts us from things that matter like actually helping people. We give tons and tons of money to entertainers while hard-working EMTs and fire fighters are woefully underpaid. We willingly individually give $12+ to waste two hours of our lives instead of giving that money to a good cause and seeing the people around us flourish - or giving it to creators who don't paywall their creations.

I vehemently make the somewhat radical statement that less corporate-backed media would have a positive impact on the world.

The lack of implied paywall is not going to stop the people who have real passion from doing what they love. And anyone who's skilled that it does stop (because they were in it for the money), well, we might mourn the loss. But someone will come along with the passion and skill to replace them. It might slow them, it might change the scope or the distribution, but it won't stop people from doing whatever it is they love.

I don't want professional media creators, copywrong, DRM, and corporate-backed media. I want a world of passionate hobbyists who produce beautiful things without the utterly ridiculous need to be "profitable".

You assume that I have a problem with less media in the world. I don't.

Then you're welcome to ignore anything DRM'd. No-one is forcing you to watch it, listen to it, play it or run it. What you're not welcome to do is dictate to many millions of other people who do enjoy that content and/or find it useful how they must live their lives or what must matter to them.

The lack of implied paywall is not going to stop the people who have real passion from doing what they love.

Perhaps not, but lack of funds to buy food or pay the rent certainly will.

And anyone who's skilled that it does stop (because they were in it for the money), well, we might mourn the loss. But someone will come along with the passion and skill to replace them.

Unfortunately, the world does not work like that. Producing the best work is often a full-time job for many people for an extended period. Few of us are lucky enough to be financially secure without working for a living, and that includes those with the talent and and skills and creativity to produce amazing work.

At best, we're going to have to agree to disagree here.

I don't agree to your assessment of the overall situation. Up to a point, I do believe that revolution doesn't always come easy - and right now, a revolution is what's needed against DRM and those who perpetuate it. I did say, though, that I believe in people who do things for passion. There might even be some content I'd be willing to fund, from proven creators through crowd-funding.

Also, I know several people who do create amazing work in their spare time. And most of them don't work in content-related fields.

If you don't even like the media why do you care about not being able to watch it without DRM? Do you have to ruin it for everyone? I get so much utility from Netflix. This attitude reminds me of how some religious people want to force those who don't believe the religion to still follow its commandments. I'm going to go to hell either way, why do you care if I have some fun first?

So they should take investor's money and say "thanks guys, we're going to use your dollars to pay for new, cool shows and release them for free to the public domain, cause screw DRM! that's, why!"

oops, I intended to reply to the parent comment.

Yes.

> they would deliver content 100% DRM-free

Then most of their content would be 60s era public domain garbage. No movie studio would license their content if any high-school freshman with libpcap installed could copy their whole catalog!

I'm NOT pro-DRM, all DRM does is get broken and it allows fraudulent business practices (such as the top comment Kindle owner post). But it's "the lesser of a few evils", to use your own words. No "decent" movies would be available if the studios knew the distributor was taking no steps to even try to keep it from being illegally copied.

Look, I never in a hundred years imagined I'd be on HN defending DRM, when I have a 24/7 VPN to Croatia for all my pirating needs. But truth is it's more effort to copy files from the NAS to the DLNA server than it is to use Netflix. (To be 100% honest, I dont even like watching TV and I just do it for my roomate).

But I digress, if they made no efforts whatsoever to show they do not condone piracy, what studio in their right mind would agree to license their content ? Ok, so they should do all original stuff you say ? Great, your $14/month online streaming service has 12 titles! whoo hoo ! Dont all try to sign-up at once!

> But I digress, if they made no efforts whatsoever to show they do not condone piracy, what studio in their right mind would agree to license their content ?

What makes you think the studios are in their right mind to begin with?

Netflix's catalogue is small enough, the value of re-watching existing content low enough, and pirated copies widely available enough that it's unlikely people could be bothered to do this. Meanwhile the DRM means there are annoying restrictions on what devices you can actually watch i on.

The whole schtick about DRM is that you don't own the content. When you subscribe to Netflix, it is explicit that you are paying for access not ownership. I have no problem paying for a DRMd Apple Music subscription as a rental model and DRM free music from iTunes music that I own.

"Netflix is the good guy, they are pioneers in electronic content delivery."

The basis for this is that Netflix was a major player in the success of the push for Encrypted Media Extensions in HTML5. The possibilities for abuse here are just unreal.

Pissing off their competitors by not being incompetent when it comes to technology isn't enough to make me call them "good guys" even if some of their stuff I happen to like. It's a bit more complex than "good guys" and "bad guys".

> The possibilities for abuse here are just unreal.

Serious question/request: please elaborate. I pay $14/month so I can watch 4K content on my TV and share an acct with my dad so he can watch 3 shows a week. My room mate uses it more than I do.

I pay the money with the expectation that I can watch video. What about DRM (in this particular case, I'm not saying I support ALL DRM) could be "abused" and prevent me from watching video ? The only thing that would slightly piss me off is if it only worked on Win/Mac platforms. But personally I dont even watch with a computer so this wouldnt affect me. Just as principle, thats the only potential for abuse I could foresee.

EME requires a binary-blob decryption module. Imagine the scenario where the only browser that provides some function "X" that you use isn't one that a binary-blob is released for.

For most people that don't care about "X", they'll go for the browser that supports EME. As the userbase becomes more widespread, why wouldn't a content owner want to DRM-enshroud their media? Everyone but the mainstream gets squeezed out, choice is reduced, and we're all worse off for it.

Maybe that's a little over-dramatic. But if I want to watch DRM content and HTML5 with EME is the accepted standard for that, then I need a browser and platform that support it. That limits my choices, purely for the benefit of others. That's a reality that I wish I didn't have to deal with.

Everyone but the mainstream gets squeezed out, choice is reduced, and we're all worse off for it.

But we're not all worse off for it. In fact, only a small minority who choose to be outside the mainstream are worse off for it. Making unusual choices sometimes means you don't enjoy the same opportunities as those who go with the flow, even as you perhaps enjoy advantages in other respects, and as unfortunate as it might be, that's life.

In cases where we're talking about something important or even essential to living an otherwise normal life, there are arguments for regulatory intervention, public services, and so on to protect those who choose to follow a different path, and indeed those who have no choice.

But here we're talking about being able to enjoy certain entertainment via one particular channel. If that doesn't suit you, you can enjoy the same entertainment by various other means, such as watching a movie in a theatre or buying it on a disc, and there is a whole world of other entertainment you can enjoy instead if none of the alternatives suits you.

But if I want to watch DRM content and HTML5 with EME is the accepted standard for that, then I need a browser and platform that support it. That limits my choices, purely for the benefit of others.

That is true, but it limits you no more than not having that content available online at all.

> But we're not all worse off for it. In fact, only a small minority who choose to be outside the mainstream are worse off for it.

But we are. Innovative ideas from fringe software tends to find its way back into more mainstream software.

> But here we're talking about being able to enjoy certain entertainment via one particular channel.

Well, and video information in general. Part of my argument was that if the technology makes it easy to "protect" content, and that becomes the standard expectation, things that shouldn't or don't need to be DRMed will be anyhow.

> Netflix is the good guy, they are pioneers in electronic content delivery. They are fighting to break the monopoly of the movie industry while having to work with them to get content. And they are producing their own content.

Then why don't they release their own content without DRM? It's because they favor DRM just as much as "the bad guys."

Because you're not buying shows/movies from them....?

You're essentially renting here. I see DRM as generally bad only when it's on things you purchase.

Because they can deliver the content that users pay for though one platform. no need to deploy a major software update, full regression test, just for some political reason.

As other's have pointed out, they are contractually required to use DRM by the content providers and it's not really effective anyway.

But what really annoys me is: I want to watch netflix on my TV, it's a little too far from my Computer so I have a Raspberry Pi hooked up to it. The Pi is fully capable of running netflix, it can run a webbroswer with html video support and decode 1080p mp4s. But because the raspberry pi foundation refuse to lock down the firmware and provide a safe area for the Widefire DRM plugin to run, netflix refuses to run.

I pay for netflix. Why should I have to buy a locked down device like the Chromecast to use it?

I think the DRM-less Netflix can only work if they would sell you the movies; they don't; they rent them. You did not pay $25-30 per item you watched after which you can say you own it; you paid a fraction.

So I agree with you; they make it easy for me to watch legal content, something I have been shouting for for years. I would not care about DRM if I could watch everything like I can on Netflix; unless I buy it (on a DVD or online, no difference), in that case I'm actively against DRM. I generally am because it doesn't really work for the purpose it's used for so then it's more of a hassle, but like said, I wouldn't care if it's seamless. There were times when I could not watch content in Linux because the DRM decoder didn't work in Linux, so even if I paid, I couldn't get the content I paid for. That's another story, but with HTML5 that's all fixed.

The only time I pirate things still if they put geo restrictions; if some episode (and this is not an IF this is reality) of a series i'm following is aired first somewhere else and I really want to keep up to date I have no choice. If Netflix could break that mold...

Maybe someone knows; for Netflix originals they presumably own the rights right? So why do those not air the entire world at the same time? As if my assumption is the case, that makes them more evil again. I do not know much about the rights in this case though so maybe some greater evil forces them to...

Goodness gracious, I cannot think of a single movie I would like to "own". Is it just me? Am I the only one who doesn't like to watch the same 90m video over and over ?

Sure I dont represent every consumer, but I think this is why netflix is successful: not overselling the customer. You get to use the content and put it back. I know how Titanic ends, I dont need to see it over and over again. I get no utility from that. Some flicks might have fanatics that want to "own" it (whatever that means), but most dont.

I cannot think of that either. That is basically why I stopped caring about it, for good or for bad. I was a soapbox standing, card carrying anti DRM but it is not an annoyance anymore so I backed off. I cannot stand DRM or whatever it is called on chips for OSs though...

Are you referring to SecureBoot?

There's a lot that I don't want to see more than once...and Netflix is great for that. There's a lot that I do watch at least several times (spaced out over years, often). If I see something being sold for an amount I'm interested in paying, it at least means that I don't have to track down how to watch it next time that I want to.

> Goodness gracious, I cannot think of a single movie I would like to "own".

Aww, c'mon. Not even this?

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dvd-smokey-and-the-bandit-th...

Ah wait, you said single movie. Wink! Gotcha.

There were times when I could not watch content in Linux because the DRM decoder didn't work in Linux, so even if I paid, I couldn't get the content I paid for. That's another story, but with HTML5 that's all fixed.

How? Do you really watch video in the browser on your computer where you can run Google-provided builds of Chrome? Isn't that pretty annoying?

What do you do if you have some random small ARM or Atom box running Linux with an UI that's convenient to use on the big TV screen it's connected to and using a remote control? I don't see an obvious way to watch DRM-protected video there. HTML5/EME doesn't help a bit as you still need a (binary-only) content decryption module that you can't get for your platform.

I guess I am old and did not have that issue yet. I have fought computing for so long by using Linux as my primary OS since the mid 90s, I guess sometimes I stop thinking when something just works. I am not Stallman and I realize even there that I am limiting myself but when it just works and the damage is less than what is possible in my mind I will accept it. I cannot see a solution that works currently and Netflix etc do provide something that works for a price which you do not have to think about and you do not have risk of the feds running in. Maybe there is something here as a middle ground. Annoying as it is when you think about it, it seems to improve... You are right and yes when I think about it it is annoying as hell, but a) netflix simply cannot do without or they would have no content (my question about ownership remains) b) we have no good rapport for just opening up all. I understand we all are doing that anyway but not for most and so it is a hard sell.

Edit: as someone who grew up in the 80s, Linux is the best thing that happened to computing outside the internet and Linux was a large part of that as well. It was hell before with MS, Sun, HP, SGI, Digital, etc and their flavours of hell. They did a lot of good but the closed off nature was terrible.

> What do you do if you have some random small ARM or Atom box running Linux with an UI that's convenient to use on the big TV screen it's connected to and using a remote control?

Myself, I run a small ARM box running (an embedded and completely inaccessible) Linux, designed as a dedicated streaming device (or sometimes a similar device that is included in the workings of my Blu-Ray player). I'm not particularly interested in using a TV as a display for a general-purpose computing device, so this works well for what I want to do.

I have a few ARM boxes that can't play anything DRMed other than what's handled by libdvdcss or libaacs, but those are the devices that I wouldn't use to play video even if I could.

>What are they supposed to do ? Deliver all their movies DRM-free and see them immediately get copied to torrent sites ?

Is that not already the current situation?

A) Everything is on bittorrent anyway

B) Music download sites removed their DRM and they're doing fine, last I checked

I heard an argument that it isn't about stopping piracy; it's about controlling legitimate distribution, e.g. so they can charge Samsung for putting Netflix on their TVs. No idea if that is true but it certainly sounds plausible.

In fact everything on Netflix is already available in torrent, so DRM-free or not, nothing will change on this side.

Just a friendly reminder that there are online shops that sell DRM-free content. I found this guide helpful: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide

In particular, I'm a Downpour.com customer for audio books. Up until now they had all the content I wanted, high quality too. And with a subscription the prices are good.

I've also bought DRM-free games from Gog.com. E-books I sometimes buy from Google Play, where they have mixed content. I only bought DRM-free books from them, like for example the books in the Ender's Game series. The publishers of all technical books I needed, like O'Reilly or Manning, are publishing DRM-free. If I want a book that's only available as DRM-enabled, I buy it in print.

For music, I used to have a Google Play Music subscription and also tried Apple Music. But then I realized that I need streaming for work basically and online radio is better. For example I like RadioParadise.com, they are ads free.

Bitching about DRM to let other people know about its problems is cool, but even cooler is voting with your wallet.

I'm a long-time, very happy Beatport customer. DRM free. To my knowledge, a purchase also includes the implied right of public performance (as in, can play in non-ASCAP/BMI venues without violating terms of the purchase).

I agree. I signed up for an Audible trial not realizing the extent of their appalling trash-fire DRM. In summary, you have to run their app on a device they support to be able to listen to their content. Shocking since my local library lets me check out audio books with fewer restrictions. Needless to say that in spite of their very-nice electronic pleadings, I canceled the trial promptly.

It appears the EFF intend to fight section 1201 (thou shalt not circumvent) on first amendment free speech arguments, and on the idea that punishment for circumvention creates a chilling effect.

I don't think a court will buy it. They'll argue that 1201 protects the free speech of content creators, and that it works as intended - and they will cite the decss appeal, which was won by the media giants on the same argument. https://www.2600.com/news/112801-files/universal.html

How is this possibly about the speech of content creators? That implies I'm obliged to listen whenever anyone speaks.

In a previous discussion, I was informed of a mistaken assumption of mine: There was a case where Section 1201 was ruled as more applicable than Fair Use. It's my belief - and apparently questionable in reality - that Fair Use that passes the four-factor test should absolutely be exempt from DMCA restrictions. If the EFF case can somehow convince the court that the chilling effect is real, I will be thoroughly impressed. What I mean by this is I think competent defense will point out that the Internet is awash in DMCA violating individuals engaged in Fair Use activities (commentary, parody, etc) and the merit of the DMCA is to curtail incentive to engage in infringement on an industrial scale.

> the merit of the DMCA is to curtail incentive to engage in infringement on an industrial scale.

But that is not what the law says. It is written in much more broad, general, terms. If they get them to say that in court then it would be a huge step forward.

I'm all for it! I want the law clarified, not completely tossed out. The expression "throwing the baby out with the bath water" is what I somewhat believe to be at play here.

I agree fully. We need a big, BIG revamp of copyright laws, but that's "The War", this is -a- battle in that war, and in order not to fully alienate the 'other side', we must be aware that large-scale commercial copyright infringement, with our current system, is really, really bad.

Getting the courts/legislators to make the anti-circumvention clause only apply to commercial efforts, instead of absolutely anyone and anything (including researchers, oftentimes), would be a great victory.

DRM doesn't solve copyright circumvention at all. Accessibility to content is what does that.

> I want the law clarified, not completely tossed out

I'm honestly fine with either, but yes, either way it's a win.

I look at 1201 and 512 as intertwined. Either both exist and balance each other out, but taking away one or the other seems genuinely unfair to me.

My perspectives tick off both camps, Content & Tech, because I see both of them using the same dirty playbooks and hiding their motives behind talk of "artists" or "customers" or whatnot.

The courts may not buy it, but I don't think it will be for the reason you say (protecting authors' free speech).

I think the argument against that would be "the authors are free to protect their content, but users can't be forced to use that protection", similar to how someone is allowed to insult you, but you can't be forced to listen to those insults.

In other words, content owners will be free to use whatever DRM mechanism they wish, but it wouldn't be illegal for someone to break it, if they can do that. And that's basically EFF's argument, too.

I think this is similar to how some Courts have said that advertisers are free to show ads up in your face, but you're also totally free to block them. Maybe the EFF can use that argument in Courts as a more "practical" analogy to make the judge understand.

I think part of the argument the EFF will make is that section 1201 is inherently in conflict with itself in regards to fair use (an argument which was explicitly not ruled upon in the DeCSS court case) and free speech (to a lesser extent). On the one hand the DMCA states that no one may make available any tool that circumvents a control that protects a copyrighted work while on the other hand it states (c 1):

    Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, 
    limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, 
    including fair use, under this title.

...and also (c 4):

    Nothing in this section shall enlarge or diminish any
    rights of free speech or the press for activities using
    consumer electronics, telecommunications, or computing
    products.

If a control exists and there's no mechanism to circumvent it how can those two paragraphs ever apply? You could make the argument that for certain works such as movies and music you have alternate means of obtaining the material but for something like a hardware device (e.g. pacemaker) there exists no mechanism other than circumvention tools for anyone to exercise their right of fair use. Therefore (in such cases) the anti-circumvention clauses of the DMCA are a violation of constitutional rights.

If circumvention tools cannot be made available then citizens are effectively barred from exercising their constitutional rights.

I firmly believe that the judge made a horrible mistake in the original DeCSS case when it was ruled that posting the source code of a circumvention tool does not constitute free speech. It damn well is free speech! It's literally just a bunch of words and numbers along with a few math symbols (code). I believe the idiocy of the ruling was made abundantly clear when people uploaded audio of themselves singing the source code aloud.

Apparently it's time to put that "Source Code is Free Speech" bumper sticker back on my car.

I am getting a customized T-Shirt with that message.

The fact is both sides of this have a lot to answer for in terms of eroding the underlying relationship when it comes to any consumer/creator transaction. For a long time media companies made it artificially hard to purchase content legally and in so doing are at least partially responsible for the rampancy of piracy. In turn, a lot of people got used to pirating content for free instead of paying for it, even when reasonably priced options were made available.

A decent number of pirates now refuse to pay for digital content/software because "information should be free." This is a farce and anyone who earns a living writing software or producing content knows it.

A decent number of media companies now treat their customers like criminals, constantly checking and rechecking if they actually own the stuff they're trying to use, which would be fine more or less if the software doing this actually worked. If any one of the thousand links in that given chain break, then the media the customer has paid for becomes unusable or is even deleted, and that is unacceptable.

Both sides have their bad actors and it's hard to see a way out of this mess.

This is very encouraging to read and I'm in complete agreement. I've posted a link to my essay in this thread because I share the media/tech slugfest perspective.

Personally I think the starting point to get out of this mess is an overhaul first and foremost of Copyright terms. They're so far out of whack it genuinely stifles innovation and expression and progress...etc. Now, more than ever, time moves quickly - what may be profitable yesterday (e.g. "Gangnam Style") may quickly fade. Thus it stands to reason that temporary protections should be, well, much more temporary! I say this as a content creator and paying customer - life + 5 years is, to me, more than fair. There's a window to allow families of the deceased creator to make a bit of cash and get their affairs in order before the works head into the Public Domain for the benefit of all.

The problem is the greed and narcissism on both sides.

The content corps make a ton of money by exploiting creative people. They used to be able to justify this by claiming that they sponsored and nurtured talent.

That was always a stretch, even when 15% of a CD sale - maximum - went to the original creator, and the rest to the rest of the industry. But advances did happen, and they were the only way creatives could afford to get on the first step of the professional ladder.

Now we have shitty YouTube and Spotify streaming deals where advances don't happen, and the industry - all of it - keeps way more than the 85% of nominal value it used to.

But the "I want it, so you should give it to me for nothing because it costs nothing to copy" pirates aren't any better.

How many pirates have made any effort to sponsor creators, or pay creators directly for original content?

So what we actually have isn't a moral battle between good guys and bad guys. It's a battle between two distribution cartels - one legally sanctioned, the other not yet sanctioned but hoping to be.

And both are increasingly indistinguishable in their lack of interest in sponsoring and promoting original creative work.

> The content corps make a ton of money by exploiting creative people.

That shouldn't be part of this debate. It's despicable, there's no doubt but a company doing unethical things doesn't give license for anyone to steal from them. If you don't want to support them that's your choice, you can't choose to steal the product under the banner of moral outrage and claim to be in the right.

Tons of companies exploit tons of people, creative and otherwise. I can't steal a Ferrari because one of the engineers feels underpaid.

It shouldn't, but supporting artists is often brought up as an argument from the content industry to justify DRM or absurd lengths of copyright. So it's valid to debunk that argument in this context.

Of course that doesn't change the fact that supporting artists is an actual problem and TheOtherHobbes' objections to the privacy cloud are very real. However, there are other projects (e.g. Patreon) that experiment with solutions without resolving to DRM.

piracy crowd*. I don't even

> How many pirates have made any effort to sponsor creators, or pay creators directly for original content?

At least some, because cstross and Stewart Lee (among many others) have bits on their websites about what to do if you've somehow got some pirated content of their and wish to give them money for it.

(cstross asks people to buy a book, which sends money to the infractructure he uses to produce books. Stewart Lee asks people to send money to a donkey sanctuary.)

Some forms of piracy have been recognised by industry who changed practice to mitigate. Parent who buy DVDs tend to buy many, and to see them destroyed by children. It's easy for parents to buy a DVD then download another copy of the film than to keep rebuying the same DVD. Disney now provide a free digital download when you buy a DVD/Bluray.

Very well thought out response and I think you do touch on something I'm aware of and might be able to mention:

There are fan-artist platforms in existence. Patreon is one of the most prominent. BitTorrent now has a "rolling" grant process (disclosure: I plan on applying) to nurture talent by way of financial and promotional backing. These avenues exist, but they are, frankly speaking, outside the RIAA-dominated easy-access to content services like YouTube or Spotify.

The music business claiming artists "used to" make a living off sound recordings is total garbage. It only applied to the top 1%. The tech industry claiming that it's "being persecuted and rights are being trampled" when the root-motivation is to disrupt an industry for profit without the bothersome issue of negotiating licenses for content is also garbage. In the middle, fans & artists both kind of lose out in the grand scheme of things.

How many pirates have made any effort to sponsor creators, or pay creators directly for original content?

Studies in Norway, the UK, Australia and the US have shown that pirates actually spend more than the general population on digital products like music and films. The idea that you're either a Buyer or a Pirate is not, and has never been true.

The fact is that a lot of people simply can't afford to buy all the content they enjoy, and while some may find that morally repugnant, cracking down on that piracy won't bring a cent more to authors.

Citations please? I agree, but would like to have sources to back up my own observations.

Norway: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pi...

UK: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121126/00590921141/dear-...

US: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/02/26/57-million-americ...

Australia: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150722/06502731723/aussi...

Many thanks :)

> A decent number of media companies now treat their customers like criminals

To the point that the majority of the ways we consume video these days don't even allow us to keep copies locally. Thanks for letting me cache content on mobile devices Amazon, but a big middle finger for not being allowed to do so on my PC so I can actually strip the damned garbage and put it into Plex so everytime I put on a show for my daughter I have to navigate through all the other "offerings" you have available because there's no way for me to just organize and curate what displays on screen.

It's gone beyond just treating customers like criminals, as a result of getting locked into video providers we have to wade through a deluge of adverts for other content instead of being allowed to control our own experience. I'm this far away from just throwing money down to rebuy all my children's content on iTunes and pay the $50 for a DRM removal tool just so I can regain the control I had over my experience like I had when I first started purchasing digital media.

To make things more irritating it's horrendously difficult or simply impossible to actually buy physical media for a lot of things, especially TV shows, these days. Ripping a blu-ray is easy, I have yet to find any solution for stripping Widevine off a streaming video.

> reasonably priced

When a cartel has monopoly on distribution (which is $$ thing copyright provides and DRM attempts to shore up) and thus sets prices and even when/how/if you get to buy/rent content, how can you claim to know what reasonable price is?

Your other claims are even more spurious. "A decent number of pirates..." Yeah, how many is that? what % is "decent"? what study are you citing for this shocking revelation? and what exactly is the economic impact of these people refusing to buy what they were never going to buy anyway but proving free markting? Cause there are actual studies showing piracy increases sales. You can use the google. Though, I suspect you're too lazy, here's one https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/1354.html

The problem facing media industry is that the actual value of most content is probably near $0.00. The supply of content is unbelievably massive. Far outstriping demand. So, the Media industry spends much money to generate artificial demand. Through marketing, advertising, whole shows / channels E! exist only to generate demand for content and voa lobbying for distribution restrictions.

Two blogs deep is the actual lawsuit: [1] Here's the legal theory: "To the extent that Section 1201 forbids circumvention even where such activity would be a noninfringing use (such as a fair use), or facilitates other lawful uses, it undermines the constitutionally required balance between copyright liability and the First Amendment and thereby disturbs the traditional contours of copyright."

As a constitutional claim, that's weak, not being an absolute First Amendment claim. The courts tend to defer to Congress where there's a balancing test. But let's see what happens.

[1] https://www.eff.org/document/1201-complaint

Anti-circumvention laws should be repealed of course. But so far such attempts didn't go far. If this lawsuit will succeed, things will be easier, but it's a pretty random thing with courts. It might as well fail. What should be done is much stronger pressure on legislators to fix this mess. Most simply don't care about this issue because they don't understand its deep impact, and in result, politicians get away with keeping the status quo achieved through corrupted undemocratic lawmaking.

I completely agree that legislators are really at the fault of this, and I do see it as a tug-of-war between two gorillas - Content Lobbyists and Tech Lobbyists - with, well, honest customers and researchers caught in the crossfire.

DRM is a symptom. The disease is ridiculously expansive and one-sided copyright law.

This is still good fight. Although I'm not optimistic. If DMCA wasn't laughed out of the courts when it made Sharpie(tm) markers illegal "circumvention devices" I kind of doubt that logic and rationality is in control at our legislative and judicial systems.

So, I just kinda-sorta stumbled upon this thought and would like your honest opinions regarding a proposition:

Remove Section 1201 (DRM Circumvention) and Section 512 (Safe Harbor) at the same time.

What happens next?

An amazing cacophany of copyright lawsuits flood out to everyone covered by Safe Harbor at once - e.g. ISPs, CDNs, anyone who provides any sort of storage or bandwidth to another person at all...

Thanks for giving your thoughts, I think they are constructive.

DRM exists to counter piracy. Without DRM, the publishers/authors have to rely on the end customer, who, more often than not, will encourage piracy either by sharing our not buying through official channels

The concerns raised are against corporations' clumsy implantations and you have to make your case heard against them.

Which is vastly different from how it works now.

"Let's watch X!" "Is it on Netflix?" "Aww damn, give me 5 minutes." "Alright, I've got it!" downloads xxx_X_1800p_brrip_supervids.mp4 "Just let me plug in my laptop" "THIS MEDIA IS PROTECTED BY INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT LAW" "Haha, I love it when they leave the warning in." enjoys movie.

> DRM exists to counter piracy.

That's wrong. DRM ensures that piracy provides a better experience because it simply works under any circumstance.

I hope, but I am not optimistic. 1201 has lasted this long. It'll be hard to strike it down.

I wonder if you could make a fourth amendment claim as well. It can hardly be said you can be secure in your effects if your effects are working against you.

Is this blogs CSS messed up for anyone else? The font selection makes it almost illegible.

The link is to a reasonably thought out and worded perspective from that of a technology industry participant. As noted within, there are some guiding principles which establish the basis for perspective and action. As in, the Free Software Foundation wouldn't be interested in participating in the for-profit software market.

For a counter-point, when this case first broke and I was able to study the implications from a creator and "IP holder" perspective, I wrote the following essay:

https://medium.com/@6StringMerc/arguments-against-the-dmca-s...

I will genuinely engage with anyone who would like to take some assertions or postulations of mine and challenge them for the sake of discussion. These are important topics!

> As in, the Free Software Foundation wouldn't be interested in participating in the for-profit software market.

You are mistaken. The FSF does not object to making a profit with software. In fact, they have been selling software themselves. It's about free as in freedom, not about free as in beer.

Arguably destroying the DRM protections will have ripple effects on the for-profit software market. Do you contend otherwise?

Pretty much every change in law has some ripple effects on some for-profit market. Saying that therefore, an organization pushing for that change is somehow against making a profit in that market is just straw-manning it.

Okay, I can follow how you interpret my statement. I'd like to clarify that what I was reaching for - and maybe missed - is establishing a "motive." As in, what is the "motive" to change the law? Is it completely altruistic? Is it capitalistic?

I'd like to think you'll grant me that the article is very one-sided, in that there's not a single mention of the arts industry's concerns with why they would fight so hard (almost psychotically hard) to establish and maintain the existence of DRM. Thus it felt, to me, extremely one-sided and, perhaps unwisely, I questioned the motive for such a framing.

> As in, what is the "motive" to change the law? Is it completely altruistic? Is it capitalistic?

Well, the motive probably varies person by person, but in any case probably can't really be reasonably summarized in a single word.

> I'd like to think you'll grant me that the article is very one-sided, in that there's not a single mention of the arts industry's concerns with why they would fight so hard (almost psychotically hard) to establish and maintain the existence of DRM.

Why should it not be one-sided? It's not like they are or pretend to be a neutral reporter. People from the "art industry" haven't exactly been known for presenting the EFF's and FSF's (and many others') arguments against DRM, and in particular against laws criminalizing the bypassing of DRM, have they?

> Thus it felt, to me, extremely one-sided and, perhaps unwisely, I questioned the motive for such a framing.

Well, nothing wrong with questioning it, I guess. I just don't see how you could then end up with the conclusion that it has something to do with the FSF disliking profit (or something to that effect), which is evidently not true.

Also, one very good reason for framing things a certain way is to challenge the prevailing framing. It's not exactly like the framing that's been established by the "art industry" is somehow neutral, after all.

No, I understand, and I am no RIAA or Irving Azoff apologist. I want both sides to at least reconcile - in public - that they are at odds with one another and playing extensive PR games. I mean, I don't think we as a society, as voters, can make effective thoughts regarding compromise when simply being fired propaganda into opposite ears.

Or, to put it more bluntly, just because these entities can talk past one another doesn't mean they should do so. If they both act in this manner, should I just go ahead and give them both a pass?

The first "side," I think, to "rise above" the cherry-picking statistics and hyperbolic "negatives" will draw more support and eventually have the upper hand in negotiation. Not overnight. But cases like this try to sledgehammer something - to enact drastic change overnight - and in my opinion, that's not a prudent course of action with respect to most functions of Federal Law.

> Or, to put it more bluntly, just because these entities can talk past one another doesn't mean they should do so. If they both act in this manner, should I just go ahead and give them both a pass?

I don't really think them talking past each other is the fundamental problem. From all I can tell, the "digital freedom" side (for lack of a better label) generally understands pretty well the reasons for why some people want to have DRM, and they even address all of those reasons publicly if you go and look for it. But the "art industry" has a vested interest in ignoring all the arguments, and that, indeed, seems to be mostly about profit (and to some degree a lack of understanding of the technical possibilities and of their side effects). That's why a serious and productive argument between the two parties doesn't work, and why the "digital freedom" side is forced to use similar propaganda strategies to counter the unwillingness to even engage with the arguments on the other side.

As for whether you should give them both a pass: If you think that that's going to get you to the world that you want to live in?

> The first "side," I think, to "rise above" the cherry-picking statistics and hyperbolic "negatives" will draw more support and eventually have the upper hand in negotiation. Not overnight.

Well, one wishes.

> But cases like this try to sledgehammer something - to enact drastic change overnight - and in my opinion, that's not a prudent course of action with respect to most functions of Federal Law.

And yet, that's exactly what was done with the DMCA. It's not like the counter-arguments were invented after the DMCA was put in place. They were simply ignored, and the DMCA was, as you put it, sledgehammered into place.

To the FSF, and many others like me, DRM is a violation of human freedom. The art industry's concerns are valid, but introducing them into the DRM debate makes as much sense as the dairy industry's concerns when discussing the adulteration of milk with melanin. The point is simply not up to discussion as far as we are concerned.

Ah okay I'm not going to reach really deep down into the philosophical issues - I will give passing rebuttal that human freedom also includes "freedom from" in the notion that one's creative works should be protected from exploitation by another. Saying the industry's concerns are valid, yet claiming they have no voice in one of the basic, established mechanisms that addresses those concerns strikes me as an underwhelming dismissal. The concerns may be disagreeable, but to eliminate them from discussion does an immense disservice to the espoused goal - as in, not acknowledging the presence of a motivated, determined "foe" is like a horse wearing blinders. Sure, the direction can be established and focused upon, but it's getting hit by an unseen bus that can throw the whole course into disarray.

That essay could start off better. Assigning your side blue and the opposing side red and then immediately showing that red==bad, blue==good feels kind of hostile to opposing views.

That was not my intention though I understand the impression it might make. I was going for higher contrast. I suppose even using "green" for one could be interpreted as a form of insinuating greed? It was a sketch of an idea to conceptualize, as I'm genuinely between both parties with respect to merits and criticisms. Which, I do acknowledge, is not necessarily a welcome perspective in this particular site.

> Copyright Abolitionists

Only a small subset of people against DRM and the problems in the DMCA are against copyright.

Also, as zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC already pointed out, the FSF is fine[1] with for-profit software. This confusion often derives from an assumption that you have to deny distribution rights to your customers to sell them anything. That isn't always true.

> study the implications

What you seem to be missing (in general) is about the EFF's fight against Section 1201 is that this isn't about copyright. The EFF is fighting the ban on bypassing "technological measure[s] that effectively controls access to a work"[2]. This ban makes some types of security research illegal, because the law treats security researchers announcing a DRM bug the same as someone exploiting the same bug to copy a movie.

Right now you are probably using a browser that contains a 3rd part black box CDM ("Content Decryption Module"). Every day you use that browser you're betting that nobody has found an exploitable bug in that black box. Bugs are particularly dangerous when they are hidden in a black box; it's easy to ignore bugs that nobody can see. This concern isn't hypothetical: a bug in Chrome's Widevine CDM was discovered recently[3].

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

[2] 17 U.S.C Sec. 1201(a)(1)

[3] http://boingboing.net/2016/06/24/googles-version-of-the-w3c....

Using your reasoning, only a small subset of people are genuinely affected by the Section 1201 implications - security researchers in particular. Again, you also in some ways prove my point by mentioning that DRM work-arounds are nearly a daily occurrence in certain arenas. My essay argues - vehemently - that academic exemption that passes the Four Factor Fair Use test absolutely deserves to be codified into the Section 1201 going forward. This is not hard to understand.

What you are missing, which is extremely important, is that Copyright is a synthetic construct and therefore absolutely useless without any protectionist mechanism. AKA "the right to make copies" - DRM is just that - a mechanism to protect the right of the originator to, under Copyright law, retain power over the "Intellectual Property." I believe it's counter-productive, or maybe even logically dishonest, to claim that destroying DRM isn't extremely intertwined with Copyright as we know it.

> Using your reasoning, only a small subset of people are genuinely affected by the Section 1201 implications - security researchers in particular.

Using your reasoning, only a small subset of people would be genuinely affected by a ban on medical research - medical researchers in particular.

Security researchers don't do security research for the sake of it, but to make information technology more secure. When they find a security problem that allows criminals to compromise your system, to steal your data, to break into your bank account, whatever, they publish those findings to allow you to protect yourself, and to allow people building those vulnerable systems to fix them (and to pressure them into actually fixing them, as vendors usually don't fix vulnerabilities without the threat of them becoming public). So, the current state of the DMCA means more security vulnerabilities in everyone's computers/smartphones, including your very own, and in the servers that you rely on and store your data on. So much for only affecting a small subset of people.

> Again, you also in some ways prove my point by mentioning that DRM work-arounds are nearly a daily occurrence in certain arenas.

Which doesn't really make it a good idea to keep them illegal? Just because it's usually not enforced, doesn't mean there is no risk for those using the workarounds.

> What you are missing, which is extremely important, is that Copyright is a synthetic construct and therefore absolutely useless without any protectionist mechanism.

First of all, much of the legal system is a synthetic construct. But most of the legal system works just fine without "protectionist mechanisms" of the severity of DRM. Is it illegal to stab people with a knife? Yes. Do we forbid passing on knowledge about how to create a knife? No. There is no mechanism that actually hinders people from stabbing other people. It's only a synthetic construct and punishment if you don't follow the rules.

But also, it's just not true. Copyright was not useless before DRM or the DMCA. There were more than enough cases of people being successfully sued, or even prosecuted and convicted, for selling unauthorized copies of works.

It's a basic principle of a free society that you don't do everything that would technically be possible to enforce the law, but you rather accept that the reach of the law is limited, in order to achieve freedom. The law is that you aren't allowed to murder people. It would probably be technically possible to prevent almost all murder by chaining everyone to their beds. But we don't do that. We instead accept that some murders will happen that could be prevented this way in order to gain freedom. That does not mean that the law against murder is useless.

> AKA "the right to make copies" - DRM is just that - a mechanism to protect the right of the originator to, under Copyright law, retain power over the "Intellectual Property."

Yes, it is, and it is a highly unfair and overreaching mechanism. It's a mechanism to retain power at a high cost to the other/controlled side. It's taking away everyone's power and freedom in order to enforce that one interest.

> I believe it's counter-productive, or maybe even logically dishonest, to claim that destroying DRM isn't extremely intertwined with Copyright as we know it.

I don't think anyone has ever claimed otherwise? Destroying (aka abolishing) slavery was extremely intertwined with property laws as we know them. That does not mean that property law, or copyright law, cannot work without slavery, or DRM.

Interesting perspective, and unfortunately I do not even remotely share the "scope" of the effects being claimed, which is why I time and again argue for effective reform. You've framed this as an incredible societal harm, which I simply don't see from a practical standpoint. I'd feel a lot better about your perspective if you would agree that "effective reform" can be possible in this instance without over-arching slavery and murder insinuations. Equivocating DRM with murder is ludicrous to me, it just is from a rhetorical standpoint.

> Equivocating DRM with murder is ludicrous to me, it just is from a rhetorical standpoint.

Except I didn't say anything of that sort? I mean, I didn't even compare DRM to murder. So what the heck have you been reading?

Yeah, you did in arguing that just because some Murders happen doesn't negate the utility of a law, but you've conflated Copyright which is a Civil matter in trying to discuss freedoms in a grand philosophical sense. I see you and I view the practical implementation of Copyright in the modern era from different perspectives. As in, you work from the premise that Copyright is sufficient in and of itself without the DMCA & DRM, and I patently believe that they were a response to Copyright being exposed as insufficient when something like basic Blu-Ray encoding was broken in seven (7) days. Discounting the dark-side capabilities of technology is, apparently, inherent in your premise. On this we are not in agreement.

> Yeah, you did in arguing that just because some Murders happen doesn't negate the utility of a law, but you've conflated Copyright which is a Civil matter in trying to discuss freedoms in a grand philosophical sense.

You seem to confuse analogy with equivalency, as well as failing to recognize that, like homicide, there are both civil and criminal remedies for violation of copyright; neither is a purely civil or purely criminal matter.

How is using Murder, the taking of another's life, in any way a suitable analogy to Copying a file/song/film without permission? They're completely different ballparks and to do so is a form of equivalency - more like equivocation, as I mentioned - because the harms are so drastically different. It only takes one Murder to be convicted of a Criminal offense and sent to Prison - there is a significantly higher bar[1] before Copyright Infringement is remotely similar to the nature of the reference point. I mean, I get the basic underlying philosophy being argued but I disagree with it. Talking about Copyright and Murder in the same sentence, I will reiterate, is rhetorically off-base.

A much more reasonable line of "analogy" (which it wasn't) would have been talking about Theft and Copyright Infringement have disparate parameters on the books, and therefore expose the over-reach of Copyright. I frequently sense that because I'm not "pro-freedom" in the definition of those who disagree with me that I'm somehow on the other side. I'm most definitely not and it is quite tiring to feel such derision when I'm not a Partisan - I'm a goddamn Independent.

[1] http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Piracy-Puts-People-in-Pri...

> Yeah, you did in arguing that just because some Murders happen doesn't negate the utility of a law

OK. Your claim was that I equivocated DRM and murders. So, given what you are saying here, that would mean that I have said something to the effect that "just because some DRM happens, doesn't negate the utility of (copyright?) law"? Could you please provide a citation of where I said that?

See, I would be happy to discuss your actual arguments, but I won't even try if you insist on strawmanning my position.

Also, if you want this discussion to go anywhere, I expect that you refrain from derailing it by insisting on discussing form over content. If you understand an analogy, I expect you to discuss based on what you understood, instead of starting a discussion on how I should have expressed my argument to make you like its form better. I write what I write in order to be understood. Analogies aren't perfect, that's what makes them analogies. The point of an analogy is to show commonalities, despite all differences. If you understand an analogy, it has served its purpose, and any argument as to how I should have expressed myself instead therefore is completely pointless and only serves to derail the discussion. If you actually don't understand what I mean to say, ask, and I'll be happy to try and explain. If you disagree with the content, explain why you disagree with the content.

> Discounting the dark-side capabilities of technology is, apparently, inherent in your premise.

This, BTW, pretty much betrays that you don't understand the arguments of the other side at all.

The core of the opposition to DRM and in particular to the criminalization of the bypassing of DRM is precisely because of the dark-side capabilities of technology.

There are more dark sides to technology than the ones that you are considering. It's not that people aren't aware of the dark sides that you are thinking of. It's not even that they don't care about them. It's that they think that the other dark sides are way, way scarier in their long-term consequences.

edit: typo

By the way, something to think about regarding your suggested solution to the "John Deere problem":

John Deere will simply start selling smart tractors. You know, a large machine with a strong motor and everything. And with a computer controlling it. But without any software. Or with only very basic software. You cannot actually do anything useful with it unless you install some tractor apps. Which you can licence. From John Deere. So, what have you gained? Or do you have any workaround for this that does not entail abolishing DRM?

The workaround is to buy a Kubota or a Lamborghini or another equally suitable brand without the knee capping. Is this not a reasonable market-forces-problem-solving perspective?

Also, just to belabor the point, once a person purchases the John Deere under First Sale Doctrine they are completely entitled to replacing the computer with a third-party controller. Thus, that's Fair Use of the vehicle one purchased. Legally, in this context, John Deere can not claim that DRM was circumvented because the rights were terminated upon sale of the physical item.

> The workaround is to buy a Kubota or a Lamborghini or another equally suitable brand without the knee capping. Is this not a reasonable market-forces-problem-solving perspective?

Why is it a problem at all then? Doesn't this option to buy a different product exist currently?

> Also, just to belabor the point, once a person purchases the John Deere under First Sale Doctrine they are completely entitled to replacing the computer with a third-party controller. Thus, that's Fair Use of the vehicle one purchased. Legally, in this context, John Deere can not claim that DRM was circumvented because the rights were terminated upon sale of the physical item.

Well, there is actually a huge pile of problems buried here. Namely, the pile of problems that proponents of DRM tend to not understand. Or to not even be aware of.

Are you saying that only replacing the computer would be allowed? Is it crucial that the computer is swapped out? Or is the computer also part of the machine that you own, so you should also be allowed to modify the computer itself however you like? I'd like to understand where you think the line should be drawn between what pieces of the physical thing that you buy that you are allowed to modify as you like, and which pieces are off limits, if any?

Also, it would be helpful if you could give some short indication of what you know about the inner workings of computers and software, so I don't end up explaining stuff to you way above or way below your level. Do you know some assembly? Digital circuitry basics? Theoretical computer science/halting problem? Complexity theory basics? Cryptography?

My first computing experience was with the Mac 512k at age 5. I grew up in an Apple household and then discovered how behind I was with not knowing DOS. We became a Windows household in the age of Dell vs. Gateway PCs. I learned how to work on machines, replace hardware, work through software conflicts, and got a job at 16 working in a small office making broken things into Frakenstein boxes. Taught myself HTML from books. I can whistle the 28.8 modem handshake from memory. Went from QBasic to C++ using the Borland compiler. Went to University on a CS scholarship and hated having to work in Unix and play with algorithms instead of focus on modern skills. So I quit and went over to English, and turned my attention to using my technology skills to enjoy the burgeoning and blossoming nature of computer assisted art.

Honestly I don't care for your thinking that you're going to explain anything to me, because it's obvious that my attempts to explain artistic creator perspectives are follies.

So, in turn, it'd be helpful if you could give a short indication of what your creative experience is to set a parity of baseline: Have you published a creative work? What instruments do you play? How good are you at drawing? Have you ever been on a film set, professional or otherwise? How have you distributed your creations? How much have you made from them?

> Honestly I don't care for your thinking that you're going to explain anything to me, because it's obvious that my attempts to explain artistic creator perspectives are follies.

Well, if you don't actually care to understand, why pretend so in the first place?

Also, I don't really see you explaining much so far? Though I suspect there wouldn't even be all that much disagreement on my part with the problems that you see.

> So, in turn, it'd be helpful if you could give a short indication of what your creative experience is to set a parity of baseline [...]

I think I'll skip this simply because I don't see the relevance. Just assume that all answers are no/none. Or explain how it's relevant to the discussion at hand.

Now, you skipped the most important part, didn't you? Where do you draw the line with the smart tractor that I bought? I didn't ask for your level of knowledge to get into a competition, but in order to be able to make myself understood to you. But if you don't say anything that I could respond to, what's the point?

None? None. So we have no common ground. I have some from your platform, and you have none from mine. To accuse me of not willing to engage or understand is, to me, hypocritical.

I guess we just have a failure to communicate. We'll just have to wait and see and maybe re-visit these threads after this case is settled. I've done more than my fair share of explication and noticed some kind of gap that neither you nor I are willing to bridge for whatever reasons. Good day to you Madam or Sir.

> None? None. So we have no common ground.

Is that how you conduct discussions with people from outside your field(s)? You might be more successful if you are willing to find common ground outside your immediate field of expertise. Also, I told you I was willing to reconsider if you were to show how my personal experience in that area is relevant to the discussion.

> I've done more than my fair share of explication

No, actually, you haven't. I don't know whether you maybe have elsewhere in this thread, but in your responses to me you did indeed not explain your position particularly much. You have to some degree in your medium article, and I was willing to build on that.

> and noticed some kind of gap that neither you nor I are willing to bridge for whatever reasons.

Really, it seems to me that it's only you who isn't willing to entertain just for the sake of understanding the arguments of the other side the idea that maybe they indeed have thought this all through, that they are aware of your arguments, and that they have reasons to reject them after all.

I would be more than happy to be shown that DRM and the criminalization of DRM bypassing is indeed not a big problem, as that could solve a lot of problems with ensuring fair compensation for creative works, which is a big problem that the digitalization of the world has brought. Unfortunately, I can't really recognize any effort on your part to bring forward any arguments to that effect. Instead, it seems to me that you are utterly unwilling to reconsider your own position, and as a result don't even understand what you are arguing against, which only compounds the ineffectiveness of your arguments.

If you want to make yourself understood, you have to be willing to seriously question your own position, and you have to assume that the other party is not trying to sabotage the conversation if there is any chance to do so. And you have to try and avoid sabotaging it at all cost yourself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com