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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

One factual error that the article makes is that DRM'd content is harder to pirate. That is simply not the case; every piece of content ever released is easily pirate-able. The only thing that DRM does is hurt legitimate users.

Also, I was kind of upset by the "letter" that the person who uploaded the torrent wrote. "Art is meant to be shared"? Why bother justifying it with something that sounds stupid when you could just say nothing or say, "I thought people might want to get it this way, so here it is". Depressing.

And finally, I never realized that Louis C.K. was so mainstream. I thought his humor appealed to me and maybe three other people. Oh well :)

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"One factual error that the article makes is that DRM'd content is harder to pirate. That is simply not the case; every piece of content ever released is easily pirate-able. The only thing that DRM does is hurt legitimate users."

That's hardly a "factual error". I can email an mp3 to my friend and have them play it. I can't do the same with a DRM'd song. Is that not harder? Instead I have to make extra efforts to strip the DRM or find a non-DRM'd version elsewhere. For non-technical users, it might actually be "hard" to pirate DRM'd content.

While the article could/should have taken care to make the subtle point that you allude to, I find it's phrasing less disingenuous than yours.

I think the point the parent was making is that all it takes it one person stripping the DRM and the content is on the Internet (torrents, usenet, private ftps, etc). It might not be easy to share person-to-person (for non-technical users), but if one just searches the Internet the content would be there somewhere.

Non-technical users are almost every single user in the world. So, if DRM prevents just those people from being able to simply email a video to a friend, then it actually is preventing most "pirating".

It prevents person-to-person sharing for non-technical users of the original content. The real question is: How hard is it for a non-technical user to find and download a pirated version from the Internet?

It's the difference between:

  Hey! This track is awesome lemme email it to you.

and

  Hey! This track is awesome. Google for a pirated version
  of it!

Most people I know outside of programming circles would find the latter to be WAY too much bother.

How much of the world lives in programming circles? Is it large enough for the labels to bother suing users? Regular joes/janes are more resourceful than you give them credit for.

Almost everyone on the internet doesn't know what a torrent is, and would stop at trying to email it to a friend. The larger share of the market IS being prevented from sharing by DRM.

They don't have to know what a torrent is to search for "How do I watch season 4 episode 2 of MY_FAVORITE_SHOW for free?" and eventually find a torrent or working video stream.

>That's hardly a "factual error". I can email an mp3 to my friend and have them play it. I can't do the same with a DRM'd song. Is that not harder? Instead I have to make extra efforts to strip the DRM or find a non-DRM'd version elsewhere. For non-technical users, it might actually be "hard" to pirate DRM'd content.

If by piracy you mean the kind of content sharing that everyone has been participating in since the 1970s, then sure. But if by piracy you mean torrenting a hundred albums, then absolutely not. The only kind of 'piracy' DRM hurts is the kind everyone likes and nobody wants to ban.

>nobody wants to ban.

Except for the industries. They absolutely do want to ban this kind. Almost every single person on the internet is non-technical and doesn't even know how to torrent. If DRM prevents them from emailing a friend a copy, then DRM is doing exactly what the inventors want it to. That's the largest market share.

Also, emailing a song or video to a friend is far easier than handing a person a DVD, CD, or even a casette tape used to be. The old kind of sharing was tolerated because it still used to be easier to go buy an album than to get a copy. Today, that's not the case.

re: DRM, I wouldn't call it a factual error. The article didn't imply that it's not possible, it just said it was harder. And I'd argue stripping DRM (no matter how easy it is) is, is in fact harder than not bothering.

re: Popularity, I thought so too, until I had to wait on a long, long line to see him in Caroline's over two years ago. I was lucky enough to snag tickets to the Beacon theater show (that he's selling now) and it sold out in minutes. He also did 3 consecutive shows in Brooklyn, NY, tickets to which were announced the day of practically and not a single person I know got tickets (and many, many tried). I heard lines wrapping the block more than once. I've never seen this kind of commitment to a comedian.

>And I'd argue stripping DRM (no matter how easy it is) is, is in fact harder than not bothering.

But it's never, ever, necessary, not when gazillions of scene groups strip DRM from a work and upload it as soon as it hits the market, if not before; sometimes they just get hold of the studio version. It might make some obscure video games harder to pirate, since it's much harder to strip DRM from code than from data, but video? No way.

DRM makes it harder for me to put legitimate content on a device I own, but it makes it no harder to pirate that same content.

You may be correct that DRM makes it "no harder to pirate that same content"...but it DOES make it harder for people to transfer files to each other through email/CDs/USB keys.

To you, it may seem trivial to load up a torrent program and spend some of the day browsing the trackers, but this is not at all trivial to the average person.

Think about it...DRM can be circumvented on iTunes music by burning it to a CD, giving someone the CD, and then ripping that CD. Or just burning to CD and ripping to your own computer and THEN distributing the files. Yet iTunes has been a huge success because people either do not realize this or because the few extra steps is not worth the effort.

Small extra steps make a huge difference between what is theoretically doable and what people actually tolerate doing.

> Yet iTunes has been a huge success because people either do not realize this or because the few extra steps is not worth the effort.

Please be careful attributing the success of iTunes to DRM.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay:

- Steve Jobs said that Apple didn't want to use DRM but was forced to by the music labels, who wouldn't provide the music w/o DRM.

- Apple announced in Jan 2009 iTunes was moving to DRM-free music.

Ah, you are correct. It is more correct to say that iTunes was a success despite DRM.

However, I did not mean to assert that DRM was iTunes's key to success, even if Jobs's actually wanted DRM. I'm only saying that significantly fewer people would pay 99 cents a song if sharing music was as easy as buying it off of a centralized source and sending it around by email.

DRM is a pain in the ass for all the honest people. But its role in making sharing less-than-frictionless for the average user probably pushed a good number of people to just sign up for an iTunes account to pay the measly $.99

iTunes music hasn't been DRMed in about two and a half years now, I think. And honestly, things have moved quickly. When iTunes music was still DRMed, I think we were still in the process of transitioning away from CDs as a playback medium.

That said, I think the biggest reason iTunes has succeeded is because it's easier to buy the damn song than it is to go hunt it down. I suppose if someone emailed you the song file directly that'd be easier, but only marginally. When it's equally easy/easier to do “the right thing”, I think most people tends toward doing “the right thing”. The problem with DRM is it usually actually makes it harder to do “the right thing”. Oops.

For you, maybe. I've found AAC being proprietary is enough to make people buy iPods. Hell, I'm pretty sure you can convert it to MP3 within that piece of shit iTunes.

AAC isn't proprietary, at least not any more than MP3.

I suppose not, but my point is I think inconveniences are relative to the user.

> And finally, I never realized that Louis C.K. was so mainstream. I thought his humor appealed to me and maybe three other people.

You've spotted his genius. Like 90s-era Nine Inch Nails or Metallica, he is the popular act that feels subversive.

Reddit has this vibe too[1]. It's worth a fortune.

[1] I know, you liked it before it jumped the shark, etc etc.

> I never realized that Louis C.K. was so mainstream. I thought his humor appealed to me and maybe three other people.

Well, he does have his own show on FX.

FX is the home of non-mainstream comedies.

Anything on TV more widely available than public access is, almost by definition, mainstream. Even the non-mainstream shows are mainstream, their selling point being that they're "non-mainstream."

If a show doesn't make big dollars for the network, it doesn't get on in the first place. Almost everything you see and touch today is mainstream, and if you think it isn't, it's because it's been marketed to you as non-mainstream.

I don't think that's quite fair. Some shows are more obscure than others. I'd use Parks & Recreation as an example of a "marketed as non-mainstream" show. It's not as popular as The Office, sure, but pretty much everyone has heard of it.

Louie is a bit different. Most people haven't heard of FX, and of those that have, most people haven't watched Louie. So while not obscure like "one copy of this book was ever published", it's not "mainstream" like Seinfeld.

Actually, I think if you look at the ratings Comedy Central has more obscure comedies. I am assuming that "non-mainstream" translates to small audience. Keep in mind that while Sunny started out as a cult hit, it's about to become the longest running live action comedy on cable. In contrast, last Thursday The Daily Show did worse than Sunny, The League, and Beavis and Butthead.

And if you compare to broadcast, all of cable looks non-mainstream.

>And if you compare to broadcast, all of cable looks non-mainstream.

That part is surprisingly less true nowadays. Pawn Stars on History this week got a 2.1 18-49 rating. Community on broadcast NBC got a 1.5.

While it may be true that all DRM is pointless in an ideal world there are cases where it actually works.

Good counter-examples are Autodesk's products (their DRM/dongles stand up for 6+ months) or the PS3 that took years for people to be able to play pirated games.

"every piece of content ever released is easily pirate-able"

Tell that to the guys trying to crack propellerheads Reason 6.

To save anyone else the googling: Reason 6 requires a dongle.

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