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#5 Safety (guaranteed freedom from malware, etc.)... was the one thing that legally purchased media had an undeniable edge in over pirated media.

Disagreed. Sony rootkit was on the legally purchased media. DRM on streaming services can do all kind of stuff without users consent. DRM built into hardware with cameras can do even weirder stuff (just note the crazy DRM idea patented by Microsoft regarding detecting the people in the room). Since DRM is a black box, you never know what it can do. There is completely no reason to trust that it will respect your privacy and rights. Therefore DRMed media has no edge over pirated media at all.

Safety requires transparency (for the user), as well as trust in the used technology. DRM by its very definition is non trustworthy and non transparent, it's the antithesis of that. It's totally opaque precisely because it attempts to hide something from the user. Because ironically, DRM proponents don't trust the user! User is treated as potential criminal by default. How can users in situation when they aren't trusted, trust the DRM vendor in return? They can not, and they should not! Trust can be only mutual. I.e. DRM always implies something shady and risky. DRM proponents should be treated as potential criminals by default in return. And what do such criminals usually hide in their code? Malware.

I think that was the OP's point really. But you're right in that it has already happened with DRM - rootkits are just the natural next step in this direction.

"It has already happened" means it was discovered. Since DRM is by definition obscured, we don't know what wasn't found. Insecurity and malicious code is to be expected from it. Their attempt to legalize it only reveals their original intentions.

Yeah, but it's relatively restricted right now, to the point that the vast majority of consumers have no idea it exists. If this is enshrined in law as a bona fide policy, it will become much more widespread - perhaps to the point that Joe Public notices.

So this is different - in degree if not in kind.

I think OP was talking about average-Joe's understanding of safety. The "if I buy original version, it won't have viruses on it that break my computer". This is true so far, DRMs or not, and people trust legal media. But the moment this trust gets broken, there will be little reason to go to shop instead of Pirate Bay.

Actually, there's been at least one instance of legally purchased media installing spyware, the Sony rootkit scandal that's already come up in this discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootki...

Yeah, and there are lots and lots of instances of illegaly gotten media installing spyware. You don't need a perfect track record to be the safest option.

The difference is, that it's a common knowledge not to trust pirated materials. But it's not a common knowledge not to trust DRMed ones.

My point was that such trust is misplaced and baseless. Since the distributors of the original DRMed media don't trust the average person (thus the DRM), there is no reason to trust them in return (and even are reasons not to trust). Though most people just don't realize it.

You left out one important point:

6. Convenience.

I believe that the content industry is relying on a sufficient number of people still finding it easier to buy a DVD/Bluray rather than pirate. For technical people, pirating is already sometimes more convenient for reasons that you stated.

There is also a

7. Ethics

Some people do not find pirating ethical under any circumstances, and will inconvenience themselves to avoid it.

Ethics is really important for me, but rootkits makes the official distribution as ethical as the pirated content.

Some people also think using animal products isn't ethical and inconvenience themselves to avoid it. But you probably don't want to build a mass market business on that.

For the record, I don't pirate music anymore. Spotify has made pirating too inconvenient.

I'm not sure the comparison is just. Using animal products isn't illegal.

I don't think ethics overlaps much with law.

Seriously? Theft, Assault, Civil Liability etc.. I think there's a significant overlap between Ethics and Law. Our systems of laws are based on the work of philosophers studying ethics, of course there's a huge overlap

There's also offshore tax havens, political action committees, and patent trolls. Some unethical things are legal.

There's also underage sexting, media piracy, cryptocurrencies, and marijuana. Some things aren't globally agreed upon as ethical or unethical, but the law still attempts to address them.

Identifying the overlap is difficult.

people create laws to enforce ethics, but ethics and laws and law often don't overlap because law gets tinkered with less than ethical people and one man's justice is another man's horror.

I agree with you, they definitely don't match exactly. But I was arguing that they overlap: Some parts match, or at leats cover the same ground.

Aw, come on, don't sound like a troll. Don't argue for the sake of arguing. THere is a big overlap between ethics and laws. Just because some items don't overlap doesn't warrant such a statement.

> Some people also think using animal products isn't ethical and inconvenience themselves to avoid it. But you probably don't want to build a mass market business on that.

Vegan products are mass market commodity goods like any grocery. Just because vegan goods consist of a smaller slice of all grocery and food sales doesn't mean you'd be a fool to make a business out of it.

Point. But I don't think the MPAA and RIAA are after the market of "people who find it more unethical to pirate than they find it inconvenient to consume legally"

And that's the problem - you might as well keep pirating as Spotify isn't helping any artist while users think they're doing the noble thing.

But people don't listen to music to benefit the artists (even when they purchase a CD or whatever) -- they do it for themselves.

Artists make the vast majority of their money on tour, which is more or less unrelated to the choice of distribution channel, except that a more prolific channel results in more people attending a show.

That point is brought up often, but don't forget that while touring might work for your average indie rockband, it's not as easy for obscure ambient, experimental musicians. Music that is primarily intended for home listening is a lot harder to sell as live performance.

Again, I don't intend to offend the users of those services - just saying that Spotify, rdio and co. alone won't work for many artists.

Spotify is legal and the artists on the platform are on there of their own free will (or their publishers will who they signed that right away to).

They could decide that they on want to steam on another platform if that is a better deal for them.

Absolutely, and many smaller artists and indie labels chose not to offer their catalogue on those platforms.

I didn't intend to offend the users of streaming services. I subscribed to rdio myself, only as a tastemaker though - I still buy a lot of lossless music.

Gabe Newell of Valve Software has famously said that piracy is a distribution problem, and I fully believe he's right.

> “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work,” Newell said. “It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”

Steam single-handedly killed even the temptation to pirate games for me, because it's ridiculously convenient to just fire up Steam, click a button, and have the game delivered to my desktop at multi-megabit speeds without any obnoxious DRM getting in the way of me being able to play. Pandora, Spotify, and most recently Google All Access make music piracy a complete non-issue for me, because I don't want to have to spend time chasing down a song or even futzing with iTunes - I just punch something into search and it's playing. Netflix and Hulu provide so much content that I can't watch all of it - while they don't always have the most recent content, they have a lot of it.

Provide me a service that is a. affordable (Steam Sales and $8/month for movies or music are excellent models here, content folks) b. convenient (click button, enjoy content), and c. reliable (no explanation necessary) and I won't have any incentive to pirate content.

I'm convinced that the people who can afford stuff but pirate it anyway do so because of distribution problems in getting that content legally. The people who pirate stuff who can't afford it, or wouldn't buy it if they can are arguably even a net benefit - they aren't lost sales, but they increase the reach and visibility of the product. In either case, it's not really worth worrying about them (though the studios sure do love to gripe about them as if they're all lost sales), which leaves us with one very easy solution - have the best distribution channel available, and people will pay for it. At that point, piracy is about as solved as it'll get from an economic standpoint.

Agreed, I find the ethics of the recording industry extremely distasteful. Whenever I pay for music I feel like I'm giving money to a mobster.

> However, let's not forget that every piece of code they write and every root-kit they successfully deploy will soon be taken advantage of by black-hats, quite probably in ways that will cause damage to systems completely unrelated to media playback of any sort.

It will be stupidly easy to execute; if the malware shuts down computer when it detects illegal download, the only thing an attacker needs to do is to trick the computer/user into downloading illegal content. And that's it. Though this simple trick doesn't let them steal data or take control of the computer, there are many uses an attacker can find for just killing the machine. Blackmailing, social engineering, or just disturbing some crucial business operations. I can even imagine 4chan folks trolling people like this for fun.

4chan yes, but remember most black hats are operating for profit. They don't want to shut down your computer. They want to root it so they can use it in their botnet, or maybe log your passwords and credit cards.

You're right, though there is some profit in shutting down computers. Even right now there's a proliferation of ransomware[0] [1] that locks out machines. I've removed several of those from computers in last two years and even once been paid to do this.

Moreover, if computer-locking DRM malware becomes commonplace, a market for cheaper-than-police unlocking will emerge, with incentives favouring hacking the DRM to then earn money on fixing it.

[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransomware_(malware)

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_security_software

> It is tempting to give RIAA and MPAA the rope to hang themselves with, sit back, and laugh. However, let's not forget that every piece of code they write and every root-kit they successfully deploy will soon be taken advantage of by black-hats

Wouldn't it be the opposite? Like a free pentest? Malware they come up with would be widely available (included in the price of any movie) for dissection.

BTW Next release of Qubes[1] will need an "entertainment" AppVM.

[1] http://qubes-os.org/trac/wiki/QubesArchitecture