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Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious
I agree with you, but it takes only a few of proved cases where legal customer gets unjustly prosecuted to discredit all subsequent accusations of illegal distribution based on using embedded metadata as evidence. So publishers would have the strongest pressure (do that or you'll die!) to do a good work.
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I'm not sure that will happen though. Look at all the cases where people have been accused of copyright infringement based only on an IP, with no checking whether that IP was actually really downloading or just faked as part of the seed list.
Had all those cases gone to court perhaps it would have changed quicker, but a lot of people may have just paid up the pre-fine amount to avoid going to court even if they were innocent over fear that the court case would cost more to defend themselves.
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I also want to make it clear that I don't like DRM systems of any kind, not even my hypothetical "social DRM". If everyone of us were honest and correct, no DRM (and no door locks...) would be necessary.
However, I'm trying to imagine a system that can actually work in the real (post-Internet and post-infinite digital copying possible) world for:
(1) ensuring that authors fully get the fruit of their work;
(2) avoiding that media buyers are held hostages of media distributors through abusive licensing policies.
Neither of these happen with current DRM schemes. More precisely: they fail at (1) and they intentionally do the contrary of (2).
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2 isn't just applicable to media buyers. The publishers and authors can find themselves locked into a vendor because that vendor has hit a given market share and that vendors customers will resist moves to other platforms because they cannot transfer their content.
Would people be willing to use iTunes match and other cloud streaming services for their own music if they'd been prevented from importing all their currently bought cds/mp3's into the system and instead had to rebuy everything.
Publishers are imo helping retailers gain power over them.
Really when it comes to DRM there's only one question to ask:
Are you trying to stop casual sharing amongst friends/family or wide scale sharing?
DRM will only limit the former it will never limit/stop the latter. If standard DRM is used to enforce casual sharing limits, then we're back to vendor lock-in and making life difficult for your customers. If social DRM is used, we run the risk of innocent people been targeted for distribution.
That leads me to believe the only viable option is no DRM. Perhaps small scale sharing should just be accepted and laws adjusted to make it easier for companies to pursue large scale piracy, with fines relative to the level of evidence gathered and certainty of involvement? However, that would imply involvement of the police or some other official investigative body and that in itself could open another can of worms
