DRM Broke Its Promise
locusmag.com
locusmag.com
Ironically, if you do want something that really does play for sure, get a pirated copy.
When it's much easier to be a pirate than to behave, you turn everyone into a pirate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
> Professors are offered substantial bribes to select the most expensive texts
I've never heard of this happening, and certainly have never been offered a kickback myself to take a book. Accepting one would be a crime for state university professors where I am, and probably almost everywhere else.
Anecdotally, I once had a professor who had personally remixed an existing textbook and forced us to buy his version for the class, because he would reference page numbers and chapter headings from his version. Admittedly, this is essentially what most "nth edition" textbooks do anyways, but it was a little jarring to see him personally emulate this so directly and unscrupulously.
Professors either have to grade themselves OR assign a publisher's book, with a one time code, at no cost to them/their department where the publisher will grade for them. All for free from the professor's perspective.
In both cases the professor is likely using the publisher's resource to assign homework, because that's one way publishers encourage expensive book requirements: Allow professors to offload their work to the publisher.
There's 101 classes where the professor only turns up to teach. That's it. No homework creation, no grading, and they just have a TA take the publisher's grade report and import it into their student system.
So, yeah, I don't think it's bribery, it's just a heady mix of (ignorance of) diminishing returns, moral hazard, and status signaling. Plus its a petty injustice that only hurts people in aggregate, and it only hurts people who already can afford college in rich places, so no-one is really going to care about this to change it.
New interventions often aren’t tested head to head against their alternatives. Or inadequately tested against them.
So we have no idea if they’re even better, but manufacturers don’t want to risk the embarrassment of evidence that they’re inferior.
The next day I had a severe allergic reaction to it, and the dentist replaced that prescription with plain old penicillin (which cost me $10 for the complete treatment). I was absolutely furious that he didn't go with the affordable and time-tested treatment first.
Yes, but students need to buy textbooks. Is it really for "the best" if students have to worry about paying hundreds of dollars for the latest version of a textbook rather than getting 99% of the benefit from the PDF for edition n-1 they can find online?
> Plus its a petty injustice that only hurts people in aggregate, and it only hurts people who already can afford college in rich places, so no-one is really going to care about this to change it.
No, no, and no :(
No, that's not it at all. Calculus 17th edition is not in any way better than Calculus 16th edition. If anything, the newer one has more typos, weighs more, and is more expensive. A 600-page single-variable calculus text does not help students learn the material, since the small number of wonderful ideas that make up calculus are diluted in a fetid sea of repetitive examples, mindless busywork, pointless "real-world applications" that have no relevance to the real world, and a general tendency to give recipes that guarantee you will get the right answer even if you have no idea what you are doing. That's not math. That's the opposite of math.
But surely what's best for patients is the treatment with the best cost/benefit ratio, not necessarily the treatment that is marginally more effective but much more expensive.
It's not just the choice of the bookstore, but of the publisher. Most scummy academic publishers now (maybe 'scummy' is redundant) simply stop printing or selling the old editions.
There's almost certainly no significant mathematical difference as far as the calculus it teaches goes.
If the target audience for the book includes students who aren't really interested in calculus, such as students who are just taking it to fulfill a requirement, and don't expect to use calculus much after they finish the class, then I'd expect the new edition to update exercises and examples to try to make them interesting and relevant to today's youth.
If the target audience is students who actually want to learn calculus, either because it is interesting to them per se, or because they know it is useful for things that do interest them, then there is probably little or no need for frequent new editions.
For example, a few top schools use Apostol's two volume text, "Calculus", either as their main calculus text, or for the more advanced track if they have multiple calculus tracks. Apostol volume 1 is currently all the way up to 2nd edition, which came out in 1967. Volume 2 is also on its 2nd edition, which came out in 1969.
Another example is Spivak's "Calculus", also used at several top schools, which is on its 4th edition, which came out in 2008. According to the preface, "Although small changes have been made to some material, especially in Chapter 5 and 20, this edition differs mainly in the introduction of additional problems, a complete update of the Suggested Reading, and the correction of numerous errors". The preface to the 3rd edition says that the biggest change was the addition of a chapter on planetary motion. It also rearranged quite a bit of material, and added problems. It looks like 2nd edition was a pretty substantial upgrade over 1st edition.
Spivak 1st edition was 1967, 2nd edition 1980, 3rd 1994, and 4th 2008.
Did you buy your copy of the book?
Ever been given a complimentary slide deck?
Ever had a publisher give you suggested questions for tests?
Ever seen a student have to use "online resources" that does the teaching and grading for the professor?
The publishers are doing professors jobs for them, and the students are paying for it. The bribe is you don't have to do your job.
What if the publisher were to reimburse you $30k/year so you could hire some additional help in grading papers? Would that count as a bribe?
What if you were to spend the time freed up not on additional teaching, but with your loved-ones? Would the money count as a bribe now?
What if, instead of providing $30k/year to hire some help, they provided you with an online tool to do the job. You still spend the time now saved with your loved ones, not on better/more teaching. Is the provision of that tool a bribe?
What if access to the tool costs each student $100 per year (access for one year, via a voucher that comes only with the purchase of a brand new $100 textbook). Would the tool that makes you more efficient, thus allowing you more time with your loved ones, be considered a bribe now?
What if the benefit to you (in saved time) was $20k per year, the additional cost to your students was $40k/year, and there was no change in the quality of education. Would you consider provision of the tool a bribe in this case?
That kind of reasoning is perfectly logically consistent, but it wouldn't track our ordinary understanding of the world very well. It would also condemn almost every situation in which someone uses a third-party tool that they don't personally pay for to make their job more efficient. If you're a developer, and you convince your employer to pay for a license for an IDE so that you can get your work done quicker and spend more time playing with your cat, that's not bribe-taking...
At the time students sign up for college and commit to paying tuition fees, they expect to have to fork out money for textbooks. They don’t expect professors to give them free materials that mean they don’t need to buy their own books. But they also expect that professors will provide some tuition (including grading homework), as that’s what tuition fees are for.
On your last point, if I convince my employer to pay for an expensive IDE that happens to come bundled with $30k of credits for Upwork, and I outsource part of the job I’m being paid to do, then that’s bribe-taking. And it's more similar to the scenarios I outlined than would be the purchase of an IDE without such a bundle.
EDIT: looked at your personal site, and see that you create awesome materials for your students and the world to use for free!
- The professor receives some direct purely personal benefit from a publisher, like cash or a trip to Florida; or
- The professor receives some benefit that allows them to shirk their responsibilities to students, as defined by the common reasonable expectations of the academic process.
Maybe that second one should also have a proviso that the result of this shirking is that the students get less-good instruction, or maybe (being more strict with the professor) that the instruction the students receive doesn't improve, or doesn't improve sufficiently to justify the extra cost passed onto the student.
I think this does some work to track the difference between corrupt and non-corrupt textbook-assigning practices. But it also, unsurprisingly, leaves plenty of grey area. For example, I'm not sure if publisher-provided homework and grading falls into this category, since textbooks in many fields have included assignments and have teachers' manuals with the answers since basically forever. (I know that I had homework assignments out of the book in math-y classes as far back as the 80's and 90's, for example.) So I'd think that this would be part of the ordinary expectation of students.
On the other hand, it does seem fair to suggest that if the professor offloads all, or substantially all, of the course to some textbook publisher, then they're violating the expectation of the students that their own professional judgment will be used to guide their education.
(And yeah, I try my best to provide free materials to my students. I can't do it in every single course, because it takes an immense amount of time to create them, and, often, it's hard to figure out what materials work best for a course until you've taught it a couple of times. But I do it as much as possible.)
I think what bothers me is that the professor is forcing the student to buy a tool with their own money, when buying that tool is neither expected nor optional. And not cheap.
If access the tool were purchased standalone, rather than being bundled with a book, they might not get away with it. Because the students would (rightly) say that they're already paying tuition, so any systems that are mandatory for them to use should be provided by the university.
Let's say I'm a professor, and it is an accepted part of my job to set homework, and provide feedback on that homework in the form of grades (or a % score) and some comments.
Assume the subject I'm teaching doesn't change much year to year (as far as undergraduates are concerned anyway). So for the last 10 years my course has been based on the same edition of the same textbook. As it's now 10 years old, there are plenty of used copies available for $20, even though new copies are $50.
Let's say a publisher approaches me with an offer that provides ME with more value: a textbook that comes with a code for online access to homework and automatic grading, good for one student for one year only. The catch? The students need to buy the textbook for $50 and, because it's the only way to get a code to allow students to submit homework, they can't buy a used copy.
If I accept, then:
- my students need to shell out $50 each for a new textbook (vs. the existing one which would have been effectively free, as they could recoup their $20 outlay by selling it at the end of the year)
- I get paid the same, but the textbook company takes over some of my work
If I'm the professor in this case, the textbook is offering me something of value (doing some work that I'm already being paid for through students' tuition fees paid to my employer) in exchange for me forcing my students to give the textbook company money.
How is this different from accepting a bribe?
The section on how pharmaceutical companies work with doctors was eye opening. It is relatively easy to manipulate even a very honest person's loyalty.
(I'm not saying you are even in a position to be influenced)
And apparently "inducements" such as free textbooks or meals occur fairly often: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13687/do-textbo...
And, frankly, all involved should be prosecuted, at least if they work for the state.
[1] e.g. (paywalled) https://www.chronicle.com/article/Selling-Out-a-Textbook/254...
I refuse to use any of the drmed proprietary online platforms. As someone else asked, yes, the textbook publishers do frequently provide quiz banks and powerpoints but they typically are garbage. I use few of their quiz questions and have to edit and adjust their PowerPoint slides because they don't emphasize what I want to emphasize and often use shitty transitions or have too much text on each slide. If that is a bribe it is a shitty one.
No bribes, but a tolerable amount of goofiness in the authoring.
In my opinion the solution is easy: to receive subsidy from the government, universities must provide their courses online free and in either the public domain or under a copyleft license, so that all citizens paying taxes can benefit from what they payed for (both indirectly through the usual study by other citizens, as directly by self-study). If a professor refuses to put his course in the public domain, fire or replace him with a professor willing to put his textbook in the public domain. Courses only change slowly over the years in practice, why should professors be able to extort a hidden enrollment fee from their students? The only reason I can think of is to arrange gate-keeping of those professions set aside for the higher classes... since the lower classes will then choose the other disciplines even though the university wide enrollment fee is superficially "the same".
If the university refuses to put its courses in the public domain, the government should refuse to subsidize the university. To make sure the populace has unbridled access to all relevant course materials, reward students for telling on professors / universities for handing out materials without uploading them to the public domain or copyleft courses platform. All a professor has to do is upload the materials.
Well, if you're the type to never have noticed this happening, they surely wouldn't try to contact you.
This is very common all around the world, including the US. In fact, it has been written about since time immemorial, even Feynman mentions his experiences:
"One book in particular drew his attention. It was one out of a three book series. During a meeting he was asked by some of the other committee members what he thought of the book. He responded that he really couldn't say, that he hadn't received it. One of the members continued to press for an answer. After Feynman repeated himself a second time, a book depository employee piped up and explained that he had elected not to send the book on to the committee members. The publisher had missed the deadline and substituted a book with blank pages instead. They had included a note explaining that the book would be ready in time and hoped it could still be considered.
The amazing part of this story is that several of the committee members had nominated the book for inclusion on the approved list!
Feynman went on to talk about the unsolicited gifts he received from the publishers. He kept sending them back but one incident took him completely by surprise. He had arrived in San Francisco the evening before a committee meeting. He left his hotel room, intending to wander the streets to find a place to eat. As he walked into the lobby, two men popped up, greeted him by name and asked him if they could help him in any way. He explained that he was just going out and no thank you. They persisted. He said, "Look, I'm just going out to get into a bit of trouble." They responded, "Maybe we can help you with that too." He demurred and then later kicked himself for not seeing just how far they would go and documenting the evening."
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/pajze9/people-are-finally...
https://www.lukethomas.com/the-textbook-industry-greed-its-g...
>Accepting one would be a crime for state university professors where I am, and probably almost everywhere else.
Isn't committing the crime and profiting from it the whole point?
> > Professors are offered substantial bribes to select the most expensive texts
> I've never heard of this happening, and certainly have never been offered a kickback myself to take a book. Accepting one would be a crime for state university professors where I am, and probably almost everywhere else.
As also a professor, I have certainly never encountered outright bribes, nor anything that I'd call 'substantial', but certainly book reps take every opportunity that they can get to drop off small gifts—small enough that it feels overly fastidious to complain about it—carefully not advertised as inducements to use their products.
(However, there is certainly no shortage of outrage over things professors are imagined to do. My university's student newspaper ran an outraged article a while back on the fortune that professors make by selling off evaluation copies of textbooks. At least in my field, the worst that is done is to give away for free the evaluation copies to pestilential resellers to get them (copies and resellers) out of our offices; but I think it is becoming more common to turn away such resellers.)
I wonder what the reaction would be if it said, "Lease Now!" instead?
And then being able to extract from a display buffer seems like a good skill to have.
(Windows)
https://github.com/leadedge/Spout2
(Mac)
you want a device that will not cost too much if you screw up ripping it apart. There was a good sized discussion regarding multiline LCD displays here on HN if we dig about we may find it. I think you should have an idea how its done but i dont want to extrapolate too much for the sake of the platform [HN] you could make a PIC device or any other stamp computer like arduino to manipulate the control switching and read the data bus out to a file thus translating one character at a time. it could be done in the 50's way using a row of toggle switches and a debounced "doit" button to send a binary command to the display controller but 10 fingering is slow in return for simplicity, thus automate the task with a device such as arduino or pic F84
SERVER-- if you can set up a local webpage and know how to code html as a minimum you can set up a local server, the next thing is if you want to let it touch the internet connection, so operational security is a first consideration. next is your ISP and how they filter your connection [or not] with some ISPs they want to "protect you from the web" so you have to workaround that, often using a nonstandard port will do it like setting your webserver or ftp server or smb[carefull!] server to ports like 1337 or 21337 as an example. You will also need to port forward your router to whatever internal IP your server is using, one port per IP for each server. next is working with DNS or not. If you have static address you can just memorize the public IP that leadsto your router and tack the port number on the end such as 192.168.1.80:1337 as an example for an internal address or the public address such as 2o7.1o7.o7.7:1337 {not a real IP!} for example. if you want a kewl DNS there are places where you can get a DNS subdomain or real domain if you have money for it. i use http://freedns.afraid.org/ often for this so i can use a name and it helps with the issue of dynamic IP.
Instead of figuring out what the public IP is for my router every time the lease goes stale, freedns will update the DNS entry to point to the new public IP.
Its not a massive undertaking as i can rip it all down and put it back up in about 15mins [slow but i hate running],
by hand, but it is an undertaking until you get settled in the topography and commit it to memory.
You can set up for an HTTPS certificate and lock things down a somewhat for MITM attacks that dont have time to break the encryption. <<
In its "media" volume it holds my movies, books & papers, and music that have been de-DRMed (if necessary, I always prefer buying non-DRM products). Each medium has a slightly different method of de-DRMing. My toy search engine only indexes the books/papers though.
Is RAID the only redundancy?
I have friends with FreeNAS / QNAP which are clearly technically superior, but I wanted to minimize work / maintenance of which I already have enough of in my life.
Case in point: If I wanted to run a VPN server on it too, I could install the official VPN Server package and configure it in their (excellent) web UI. It offers OpenVPN, L2TP/IPSEC and PPTP. I could also however install their Docker package or Virtual Machine package and set it up myself in the command line. Or possibly look up a community-built package that provides a Wireguard VPN server.
Since I had some hardware around from an older PC upgrade and I'm generally curious and experienced with hardware and software configuration I rolled my own for now.
Whichever route you go, don't forget to use something like Plex to organize your audio/video collection and access it from a multitude of devices. It's like your very own personal Netflix.
There's a lot of near brain dead point and click options.
Did you also go through that phase where you had people asking you why you bothered collecting content because of Netflix streaming anything you could ever want? Followed a few years later by seeing content slowly get stripped from Netflix and spread out across multiple other streaming services, and suddenly you have people asking you if you're still running that personal server...
Know what "plays for sure"?
VLC.
You could add this paragraph to the introduction of many other subjects: healthcare, education, for-profit prisons, etc
Edit: To clarify: when you claim markets are bad, maybe don't engage in "market" behavior for your own benefit, while encouraging the use of force to deny others the same benefits.
And, if you do believe in markets (as virtually everyone does, for themselves anyway, even avowed socialists and communists) -- but you have a problem with corrupt markets, then be specific. Say "I disagree with Mercantilism masquerading itself as a free marketplace", or "regulatory capture and rent seeking by those aligned with government is corruption".
Don't say stuff like ... this. It reduces your credibility.
Where does duress fit into your overly simplistic view of markets?
Don’t get me wrong. There may or may not be a bunch of things wrong with the highly regulated (read: lobbiest controlled) and inefficient (almost insurmountable barriers to entry) medical industry — but using that as an argument against “markets” in general?
Weak.
Just imagine a thousand, or even just 100, years from now people want to find out what we read and did; of course by then all current DRM license servers will be gone.
I read the same books to my kids that my parents had read to me, I have books that people gave me, or books that I found at book-giveaways... The author mentions this all.
We've been duped.
I do purchase such books, but only if I know that I can strip the DRM from them and convert them to a format that I can use normal software to read.
This is a perfect time for the companies to do stuff like make DRM digital goods go "poof" cause everyone (including the .gov) seems to have bigger things to worry about.
• downpour.com
• libro.fm
• audiobooksnow.com
Selection isn't as good as Audible, but it's more than decent between all three stores, with titles from many different publishers. I posted about this in a bit more detail a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20450647
Also, as a last resort, Google Play has most of Audible's content but DRM free.
This is fantastic!
https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7572879#export_... > Some audiobooks may not be available for export. Open the book's details page, scroll to the Additional information and check under "Export option."
Still, very good to know that Google Play is an option in some cases!
Which is not to say that DRM is peachy-keen fine and wonderful, just that he's probably not the best spokesperson for the opposition to DRM.
Edit: for those who, for some reason, think my comment unworthy: "The ‘invisible hand’ has an iron grip on America " https://fortune.com/2014/08/13/invisible-hand-american-econo...
I've now bought a blu-ray player 3 times from Cyberlink. What's going to happen to my blu-ray player when they go out of business? I doubt I'll be able to get it to play blu-rays at all unless I find a crack somewhere. The software I need to play the media I own is DRM'd lol.
Similarly for works created collaboratively as corporate works. The original creators never had an ownership interest, but simply saw wage compensation.
The only media that's almost completely sick with DRM is video. You practically can't find DRM-free video legally. Only pirates provide it DRM-free. Stupid if you ask me, since DRM never could and never will prevent actual copying. So instead of being so backwards thinking, video industry execs should start selling it DRM-free. Otherwise it's only their loss.
But I wouldn't count on normal sense in their reasoning. MPAA cartel is way too corrupt to do things right. DRM isn't even about profits for them, it's about control, i.e. power (since it's paired with anti-circumvention garbage).
There have only been a few times when I've purchased a book or audiobook with DRM. Removing that DRM was trivial with the right tools.
Basically, DRM sucks, but I'm willing to forgive it for streaming content, since you're paying for access to a catalog and not a specific product.
Secondly, even if you can say, renting has value if you rent the same thing for lower price than buying, it's only reasonable if you still have the option to buy the same thing (DRM-free).
But it becomes a major problem, when someone only provides renting of digital goods and you can't buy them. In such case DRM on streaming isn't any better. I.e. for example Google Stadia or Netflix exclusives would be such example.
But as for DRM, I view it in the same way we didn't technically own DVDs [1]. We purchased access to the film, but not the film itself -- except now its done with far more complex methods that change every few years.
> When consumers buy a DVD or Blu-ray disc, they are not purchasing the motion picture itself, rather they are purchasing access to the motion picture which affords only the right to access the work according to the format’s particular specifications (i.e., through the use of a DVD player), or the Blu-ray Disc format specifications (i.e., through the use of a Blu-ray format player). Consumers are able to purchase the copy at its retail price because it is distributed on a specific medium that will play back on only a licensed player. In prior exemption proceedings, the Register and Librarian have recognized that there is no unqualified right to access a work on a particular device. (pg 4 - 5)
The benefit of physical media is that you'll pretty much always have access to it so long as you have a method to consume it.
I agree that DRM isn't good, but I don't see this problem as anything new -- just the next step for the content manager's control over their owned content. Sadly, it's the consumer that loses.. but that's also not new. The only difference between the license for DVDs and bluray vs DRM is that DRM is enforceable, typically by time.
None of this speaks to DRM in gaming. Of all forms of entertainment, I think the DRM there has the greatest consequence to the consumer -- but I'm also not as familiar with that market.
[1] https://www.copyright.gov/1201/2015/comments-032715/class%20...
Something like Netflix is surely intended as digital renting. I.e. you can rent the entire catalog, for some period of time. When you stop your continuous payments, you can't use it anymore.
Really? I'm still waiting for my check. Somebody call me.
I know this his article is a rant, but that particular statement calls into question the veracity of anything else he says.
Maybe. Maybe there is a bribe somewhere involved in a 200+ person introductory class. Maybe.
No one in their right mind is going to offer or accept a bribe over 30 books at $150 each. The biggest "bribe" I ever get is that the publishers often send me a free copy of a book. And, if I ask for one, it probably won't be free, I'll have to send it back.
Most EECS professors I know of are keenly aware of the price of textbooks. They do NOT go out of their way to make things difficult. And, if we pick a book, it's a book you are going to make use of again in your career. We also place it on reserve in the library, and we avoid the digital lock in which generally causes us as much grief as it causes the students.
Maybe this is different in the non-technical fields.
https://www.the-scientist.com/profession/textbook-adoption-h...
> Many professors and departments encourage such practices, which can be viewed as either bribes or legitimate marketing ploys. Richard McKenzie, a professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine, was appalled at schools' requests for inducements to adopt his textbook The New World of Economics (Homewood, Ill., Irwin Publishing Inc., 1989), written with Gordon Tullock. "A department at a Southwestern university chose our book and two others, and put them up for auction," says McKenzie. "They would adopt the book with the biggest side payment." So McKenzie began talking to publishers' sales reps and quickly learned that monetary enticement to adopt a book, although not rampant, does happen, and not just in economics. In science, these extras are encountered in large introductory biology and chemistry courses--but less so in physics and geology classes, which tend to attract fewer students.
Yeah, that's going to be ripe for abuse.
Professors taking bribes at universities overseeing 30 books? Or even 300? Please. You'd have to be a complete moron to risk your professorship over that.
Perhaps an untenured lecturer in a big intro class, though, might be persuaded. Most of them are paid terribly poorly, and losing a job but gaining $5,000 in cash might be within the realm of possibility.
Unfortunately it was my math and science courses where expensive textbooks and access codes reared their ugly heads. I took a combined differential equations and linear algebra course that used a full-priced textbook that was specifically printed for my university, meaning that when it was time to resell it, the usefulness of that textbook was restricted to students of my university instead of nationwide or perhaps worldwide. The worst was the first quarter of physics. I had to use an awful online homework platform called Mastering Physics. I hated it with a passion, and ended up getting a very low (but passing) grade the first time I took the course. I ended up retaking the course with a retired professor who didn't use Mastering Physics; he preferred handwritten homework submissions.
DRM made a promise to business that it would control content in ways that would let them extract more money from users and make it much harder for them to copy or use the content outside of approved uses.
DRM has lived up that promise and more.
It's been so successfully lucrative this promise and similar systems of control may expand to ink, coffee, tractors, phones etc etc.
Sounds like a promise kept.
1. If you think it's harder for users to copy or use content outside of approved usage, choose your favorite TV show, and type the name of the show with the text "s01e01" into Google. You'll find links to stream it in low quality or torrent a high quality MP4.
2. Meanwhile, try downloading a book from Amazon and transforming it into epub so you can read it on a different reader. If you manage to figure out how to do that, please let me know.
It's not at all clear that the minor difficulty of 1 prevents so much lost profits that it outweighs the profits lost from 2. So it's absolutely not clear that DRM has resulted in extracting more money from users.
Sure. Use Calibre's "DeDRM Tools" plugin, decrypting the book with your personal key, and you'll be able to convert it to any format.
Which is to say, this is a cat-and-mouse game. There is a way to defeat Amazon's encryption for now, but there may come a day when we can't, and when Amazon cuts off support for all devices and applications that do not run their latest encryption.
I'm kinda surprised that they continue to even support MOBI, given that it's not originally their format and much easier to extract the EPUB out of than their homespun solution.
This tool allows removing the DRM from Audible books. [2]
[1]: https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2019/03/30/dedrm-tools-6...
You're gonna be ad-blasted, have inconsistent video quality, and be given a million popups.
Also, the availability is not nearly what you think it is.
https://www.google.com/search?q=battlestar+galactica+2003+s0...
30 seconds and I can be quite sure there are no ads, malware, popups, and impeccable video quality.
They're all still being seeded with enough bandwidth to max my 100+ Mbps cable connection, too.
If you're seeing ads and popups, you should get an ad-blocker and update it. No one should be seeing these in 2019. The quality I noted, but I also noted that you can torrent higher-quality video easily.
> Also, the availability is not nearly what you think it is.
> https://www.google.com/search?q=battlestar+galactica+2003+s0....
I clicked your link. Second page of results, first result, was a link to DailyMotion where the full 54-minute episode was available to stream in quality as good as it was in 2003.
I suspect the fact that this shows up on the second page of search results instead of the first is a success of DMCA threats against Google, not a success of DRM. But I'm sure if you added some combination of keywords like "torrent", "stream" or "free" you could get an illegal copy to show up as the first result.
I'm not encouraging anyone to do this. I encourage everyone to pay for content with money, preferably in the most direct way you can so the creators actually get the money. I'm just saying that DRM only affects people who want to do things the "proper" way. People who don't want to pay for content can easily bypass DRM with a Google search.
There is a very large number of freely-available books through Library Genesis and other sites, approaching 5 million. Some are newer, but I find this most useful for turning up old and hard-to-find books, generally published between 1925 and 2000.
More recent books are frequently available in ripped digital formats. Earlier can be found through the Internet Archive, WikiSource, and Project Gutenberg. A large number of the scanned-in books are actually very likely out of copyright due to failures to renew registration, but the fact cannot readily be determined.
There's a project that's taken machine-readable US Copyright Office records to find such works. The Internet Archive don't yet make use of this though per an email discussion a week or so back, that's in the works, though no announcement or dates have yet been made.
What's tremendously frustrating to me is the HathiTrust archive, which has access to scanned copies of library works, but won't make these generally available to either the general public or anything outside a small set of research libraries (your local public library, or even community college or small liberal arts school doesn't qualify). Again, frequently works that are out of copyright (known-public-domain works cannot be viewed or downloaded), hoarded for no reason.
It wasn't the last time I tried it, but I'd be happy to hear if this has changed.
I don't own a Kindle, which some people are saying is required for the Calibre method, which might have been the issue I had in the past.
I do a lot of dump-to-markdown then re-tag to preferred formats, largely using Pandoc. That's more intensive, but highly effective.
From the article:
> Thanks to a technology called “Digital Rights Management,” sellers and buyers could negotiate a subset of rights and a reduced payment for same... In other words, we were told that we must reject the promise of unfettered digital in favor of locked-down digital, and in return, we would enter a vibrant marketplace where sellers offered exactly the uses we needed, at a price that was reduced to reflect the fact that we were getting a limited product. We got the limited product, all right – just not the discount.
I've never in my life expected, or witnessed, a company to reduce prices once they had a stronghold on a market. To assume this would be different with DRM or other consumer-limiting tech is idiotic.
So yes, it's a broken promise.
Here is their mission for clarity. "Digital Content Protection LLC (DCP) is an organization that licenses technologies for protecting premium commercial entertainment content."
There is not a single word about protecting consumers in this.
I would be interested in seeing an agreement anyone reached with any DRM licensing entity that was geared towards protecting consumers. The entire thrust of DRM was not to protect consumer rights, and every agreement these groups have come up with under which they undertake to promise various things is in line with that desire for control as far as I am aware. I'd love see a counter-example - and if we found one I would encourage using that scheme, but I am not aware of any.
Apple and Amazon have both pushed in various ways for broader user rights which have paid off commercially (apple made digital music much more usable than earlier efforts and as a result I think that helped their success). Apple's music store (not Apple Music) also pushed relatively successfully for DRM free offerings.
I'm not on HN enough to be as timely as I'd like - apologies for delay in response.
The big push in the rollout phase was around getting a lot of players to agree on a standard and hash out the $ flows for the tech etc. So my impression at time was again producers and also component makers were target of efforts and system design work.
Can DRM be used to offer certain things (all you can eat music for $10/month / tons of prime video for cheap)? Sure - and it can be used for that. Similarly with things like unlimited books. I have no recollection of any consumer protection promises - just that a variety of offerings might become available which they have.
Again though, some of the example promises might be helpful so we can discuss specifics.
See paragraphs 5 and 6.
The promises DCP LLC makes are very carefully laid out in the HDCP License Agreement and related documents. They primarily target content producers, not consumers, and seek to assure them of a relatively robust control system that can be shown to prevent users from doing things the producers do not want.
It's very clear - control over the content or bust. Enforcement is reasonable strict. Even to make HDCP components, to integrate components etc etc - all is carefully outlined. If you read these docs it will be CRYSTAL clear that the promise is not around preserving any user rights.
To make the new discs more palatable, Adam Sexton of Macrovision Corp., which makes copy-protection technology for music and movies, says they should be loaded with extras, such as live recordings or music videos. Consumers should expect to receive more when they put the disc into a computer, not less, said Sexton, a marketing vice president.
https://web.archive.org/web/20030920055153/https://www.mcall...
That's what I've come up with by digging into old mentions on sites, in HN discussions, and Google Books. Actual benefits discussion is very hard to find, and criticisms began quite early.
The McCalls article was linked from TechDirt:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030911/0217252.shtml
Update:
There's also Macrovision's response to Steve Jobs, following Apple's decision to exclude DRM from the iPod (arguably a major factor in the latter's popularity, and path-paving for the iPhone):
DRM increases not decreases consumer value -- I believe that most piracy occurs because the technology available today has not yet been widely deployed to make DRM-protected legitimate content as easily accessible and convenient as unprotected illegitimate content is to consumers. The solution is to accelerate the deployment of convenient DRM-protected distribution channels—not to abandon them. Without a reasonable, consistent and transparent DRM we will only delay consumers in receiving premium content in the home, in the way they want it. For example, DRM is uniquely suitable for metering usage rights, so that consumers who don't want to own content, such as a movie, can "rent" it. Similarly, consumers who want to consume content on only a single device can pay less than those who want to use it across all of their entertainment areas – vacation homes, cars, different devices and remotely. Abandoning DRM now will unnecessarily doom all consumers to a "one size fits all" situation that will increase costs for many of them.
-- Frank Amaroso, Macrovision CEO
(Excerpted from the longer source.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20070306004546/macrovision.com/c...
"DRM advocates getting nervous about consumer backlash"
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/09/drm-advocates-ge...
At a conference convened by the overlords of DRM, Sony vice president Scott Smyers admits that he circumvents the copy protection on DVDs (CSS) in order to make backups for personal use. Apparently Mr. Smyers doesn't agree with Hollywood or the Register of Copyrights, both of which argue that "backups" can readily be had in the form of new copies you can buy at the store. The corporate hypocrisy is obvious: what the corporate parent demands (DRM that prevents DVD copying), even its own employee disregards. We can't blame him.
That’s not the context of Macrovision’s response. It’s not that Apple “excluded” DRM from the iPod. The real history.
2001- Apple did introduce the iPod with no DRM in 2001 but it made it hard to copy music from it.
2003 - When Apple introduce the music store, it added DRM support to the iPod, but for the time, and easy built in way to circumvent it - burn the music to a CD and re-rip
2007 pt. 1 - Every digital music store was struggling because their DRM wasn’t compatible with the iPod. The music industry wanted Apple to license FairPlay. Apple refused and Jobs posted his “Thoughts on Music” letter on Apple’s front page where he said instead of licensing FairPlay, if the music industry allowed all digital music sellers to sell DRM free music, they would have cross platform compatibility.
The Macrovision letter was in response to this.
I'm inclined to think he has some domain knowledge in this subject.
I'm pointing out that the DRM chain is built on a very large set of very detailed promises between the parties involved. The existing promises are for the most part public and can be read by anyone. I'm not aware of ANY language requiring ANY type of meaningful pro-consumer behavior. The promises are all about SECURING content and control by content PRODUCERS.
DRM took that away and said you will consume on terms that make money above and beyond the original sale. All that DRM has done is make it difficult for normal people to consume, and created an aversion to the tech as most people are keenly aware of the loss of autonomous access to something.
The whole problem with DRM is everyone got used to it and has started to ignore how bad it can be...
I include myself in the group of people who have gotten complacent. I'm good about not buying DRM music, but I put up with it with respect to streaming.
And I have thousands of dollars at this pointed tied up in DRMed eBooks. At some points I've been good about stripping the DRM and making a backup but haven't done it in years now... got complacent, so it's good for him to make a big deal out of this. I'd definitely be super upset if some other companies pulled a microsoft and erased my DRM eBook library.
Ironically I am pretty sure I have at least one of his books I bought from Amazon with DRM applied to it!
When the WIPO treaties were being lobbied for, Netflix didn't even exist, Amazon was a tiny internet bookstore that people made fun of and Apple was a slowly dying proprietary workstation company. The authors, TV networks and record companies who lobbied for the DMCA didn't do it so those companies could eat their lunch, but that's what happened.
It turns out that a studio has a lot more negotiating leverage dealing with many competing retail stores than with a small number of big and powerful tech companies whose customers are locked into their platforms by DRM.
It did what Sony and Paramount expected it to -- entrench the middle men -- only the old incumbents are not the middle men it entrenched. And if they would wise up to that and stop pretending they're the beneficiaries rather than additional unwitting victims, it would be a lot easier to undo this colossal screw up.
https://blog.vidangel.com/2019/08/23/update-family-movie-act...
Note: I am a shareholder and have a substantial intetest the outcome of this battle.
1. Polish ebook/audiobook stores. In the polish electronic book market, DRM doesn't exist. Instead, it has been replaced with watermarks, which are prolific. Almost every ebook out there has one. I've seen some clear warnings displayed at checkout, so that people know what might happen if they share a book on line. This is a pretty good compromise. You can read the bookwhenever you want, you're not dependent on any server, you can read on any device you want to read on, and you can even share it with a trusted friend. However, if someone pirates the book (and someone will, regardless of DRM), it's much easier to track them. DRM is an obvious barrier to overcome, and usually no traces of the original downloader are left after stripping it. Watermarks, on the other hand, can easily be forgotten about, and, if done well, even hard to detect. This is not that easy to achieve in ebooks, as they're fundamentally made of text (though you can embed them in covers, images etc), but for audiobooks, movies or music, it's pretty trivial.
2. Streaming. Some say DRM for music streaming is absolutely needed, but I disagree here. For those who want to do it, downloading music from streaming services is pretty trivial. Playlist migration tools from one streaming service to another exist and are widely available, and ripping music from Deezer, on a mass scale, is also pretty simple. A tool called Deezloader exist and can get anything from Deezer, and their database is pretty similar to what other music services have. It's not as easy to find as it used to be (currently residing on a wiki on notabug.org and a Telegram channel as far as I know), but it's certainly doable. I could use it to get all my music out of my Spotify in 10 minutes... but somehow I still didn't. I, as well as other people, value the recommendations, the instant search, the syncing of libraries between devices and the social functions too much to bother. I know people who use it regularly, mostly to i.e. rip stuff out to play in a car that only accepts mp3s on pendrives, but they stil are active users and subscribers of streaming. People who don't care that much usually use youtube and rip using shady websites anyway. That's pretty onvincing evidence that removing DRM wouldn't change much, at least for me.
3. Piracy. Piracy exists. It existed and it will,, regardless of DRM. DRM doesn't change the piracy landscape in any substantial way, and removing it won't change it either. Making the files magically easier to download won't mean that they become magically easier to host. Those who want to host them now can do it already, i.e. by downloading existing torrents. The people who actually might benefit from DRM stripping are consumers themselves. Pirates will still do their things, but we, the consumers, would be able to do much, much more.
For example. Hardware DRM (TPM/dongles/etc) is near impossible to crack, or worthless if you did crack it. Try and find a contemporary version of Steinberg/Avid software that has been cracked - to my knowledge it doesn't exist, at least not in a usable form.
I've also heard of some content where DRM increased revenue by a moderate integer factor.
On the other hand, I'm also aware of content in the same market that saw significantly increased revenue due to piracy, and other content where legitimate users pirated because it was easier to access than the legitimate content!
It's all a balancing act over how much your users can tolerate and how much benefit you see. There's no one solution for all digital content, and sometimes none is the best business decision. I will say that people deciding to use DRM are not stupid and have better numbers than the author of this article. The big guys know exactly how much money they would lose by abandoning DRM. In a smaller shop it's more of a guessing game, but that's just because we have less information and forecasting ability.
There are lots of arguments against drm but this seems like a weak one.
Yes, I do.
I realize that Cory doesn't like the idea of capitalism. But consider for a moment: the free market offers you a choice. You can choose to buy a "libre" book, or you can choose to buy a DRM-locked down e-book for the same price.
Why do people buy the DRM-locked e-books? Because they don't care about the DRM-restrictions, and prefer to have the space-savings associated with a digital file.
That's all it comes down to. Cory Doctorow can wax poetic about why old-school books are better (and maybe they are better for many people), but for all e-book buyers out there... e-books are worth the tradeoffs.
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Now, I certainly think there's some market-problems going on in the book world. Amazon and Apple engaged in price fixing a few years back, Microsoft DRM shutdown their Zune service, terminating the songs that many people bought, etc. etc. Plenty of issues abound that should get fixed.
But a lot of this blog post seems to be complaining about choices that other people are freely making, and fails to understand WHY those people are choosing e-books over the alternative.
Do these people actually know a) that e-books are DRM-locked and b) what DRM-locked implies to their ownership of said e-books?
2. Most Republicans favor DRM because the Chamber of Commerce favors it.
3. The primary proponents of DRM in the Chamber of Commerce are groups the Republicans hate: the RIAA, MPAA and a few others.
4. Republicans sign on for things like DRM and copyright extension because they think they're "good for business".
5. Point 3 says Republicans could have an interest in weakening some kinds of intellectual property protection. They are prevented from doing this by their ideology (Point 4).
6. All that said, writing a whole piece that will encourage republicans to double down on that ideology [1] is not doing the world a favor.
[1] Doubling down on ideology is what people do when you make fun of their ideas. They just yell louder. This has been the heat source for every flame war that has ever been.
This is a longshot. I'm not pretending it isn't. But if it did work, looser IP laws would fall clearly on one side of the political spectrum, making it possible for them to get enacted in time. When they aren't on either side of the spectrum, there's no chance.
2) Why do you seem to be more angry at the party you think earnestly made a mistake rather than the one who whored out to a special interest group.