11-13-2012, 04:23 PM | #316 | |||||
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And I like detailed discussions like this one, which remain civil despite disagreement. Much of this thread could serve as an example of how to have sensible disagreements on the internet.
Now, I'm pulling some quotes out of order to tie together related ideas, but hopefully I won't pull them out of context in the process. Feel free to point it out if I do so unintentionally. Quote:
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Which brings me to something else (doesn't it always? ) Right now the system is (some feel) unfavorably skewed toward the publishers and content providers. However, "give copies to how many people you want" can easily slant things sharply in the other direction because - again - of how ebooks are different from paper books. Right now passing a book on to my mom would require postage cost and some hassle. An ebook? No problem! It's legitimized small-scale file sharing, which would actually likely have a larger impact on sales than piracy currently does. I don't normally side with the publishers on much of anything, but even I have to cringe at how the numbers could add up. Quote:
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I've been interrupted so many times in the past hour as I've tried to write this, I'll just wrap it up here. It's so frustrating when work gets in the way of a good discussion. Also, if there are replies in between that covered any of this, forgive me, it just took me so long to get this typed. |
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11-13-2012, 06:49 PM | #317 | |||||
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Given that I will be responsible for what other people do with my files, I will give them only to those I consider as "completely trustworthy". In this context, this takes a pretty restrictive meaning. "Completely trustworthy" people are those I am absolutely sure will never give copies of my file to other people, under any circumstances, even if they know that they could do that without any risk for themselves. The only thing that will prevent them from giving my files away will be that they care for me. For most of us the number people who comply with this definition of "completely trustworthy" is, I think, very limited. Quote:
Let's say that Mr. X buys ebook or music album "Y". I estimate that for the average Mr. X there are maybe 15 "completely trustworthy" people in the above sense. Of these, 5 live with Mr. X, so are already considered as "lost sales" by media vendors according to today's system (licensing rules such as "you can load this book on up to 5 different devices" mean that anyone you share your devices with can read the book for free). Of the remaining 10 people, I'd say that the number of those who would certainly buy the book if Mr. X or someone else doesn't give it to them reduces to 1: Ms. Z. Let's make it 2 to keep into consideration the fact that Ms. Z may know someone else who bought "Y". (Ms. Z can get "Y" only from people who consider her as "completely trustworthy", i.e. from a very small set of people.) So: 1 or 2 lost sales per actual sale, in exchange for a large reduction in the occurrence of illegal distribution of media AND a much greater customer satisfaction, at least from "power users" who buy a lot of media and thus are more likely to be aware of the limitations that vendors impose to them. As a reference, I think that a similar ratio (1-2) between lost and actual sales applies to paper books as well. Lending pbooks is more difficult than emailing a file, but there's no risk in doing that, so you don't limit your lending to "completely trustworthy" people! With current licensing schemes, I reckon media publishers claim a much higher ratio of lost sales per actual sale. Even ignoring their ludicrous figures (often ignoring the distinction between "willing to download for free" and "willing to buy"), a ratio of 1 or 2 seems good to me, given the mass of pirated media available on the Internet. (Disclaimer: I'm not an expert and these calculations are totally arbitrary: it would be interesting to have some expert provide real data and estimates.) Quote:
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If very few will choose the cool features, it will mean that they are not so cool after all... Last edited by BoldlyDubious; 11-13-2012 at 06:52 PM. |
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11-14-2012, 07:44 AM | #318 |
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Something that had confused me about your proposal is starting to become clear. So just to clarify, under your scheme someone who paid for the book can give it to whoever they want but anyone who received it can't pass it on - is that correct?
Because I think it might be a bit confusing. On the one hand you're encouraging lending/sharing on the basis that that's like paper books, but you have to educate people that the lending/sharing can only go one level - unlike paper books. But it makes more sense of talking about being able to do "whatever you want" and still have "illegal distribution". |
11-14-2012, 08:15 AM | #319 | |
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However, whilst I do not agree with BD about the overall idea, I do think that IF and it's a big IF, the book vendors do watermarking correctly, it would indeed to quite difficult to fake a book as been bought by someone else without either a) having copied that specific book from the person, in which case there's no need to fake it b) broken into the vendors DB and accessed all the information required to regenerate the watermark and hashes embedded in each purchase. That is, if the vendors do a responsible job of watermarking and keeping their internal DB secure, which I have my doubts over. It would be a terrible to see legal customers prosecuted because the vendor failed to adequately secure their systems. Edit: * Just to clarify, I mean any law related to IP infringement. There may be very valid cases in other areas where laws are introduced and apply with minimal evidence and result in fines yet is an acceptable balance. Last edited by JoeD; 11-14-2012 at 09:22 AM. |
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11-14-2012, 09:47 AM | #320 | |
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Under my scheme there is not a predefined and top-down limit on who can give a copy of a file to whom: this would be, in my view, unenforceable and not flexible enough. Instead, it's the mechanism itself that encourages those who paid for a book to give a copy of it only to people who they trust will never share it with anyone else: in fact, if they keep doing otherwise they will almost certainly get some fines on the long run. Nothing except not wanting to put the original buyer into trouble prohibits "second-level" sharing. According to my proposal the work of preventing illegal distribution of content is left to distributed trust bonds between people, not to the fear of (extremely unlikely though terrible) punishment as it is today. The reward for doing such prevention is the freedom for everyone of us to do with our media all the things (or most of them) that we would like to do, and are presently prohibited, illegal or unnecessarily difficult. BTW, thanks to you and everyone else participating in this discussion for your effort to delve into this (now more than a bit on the tl;dr side...). I find this kind of collective brainstorming very interesting and useful to refine ideas. |
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11-14-2012, 09:59 AM | #321 | |
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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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11-14-2012, 10:26 AM | #322 | |
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Secondly, the people who actually commit the "crime" may easily get off scot-free--what's to connect them with MY file that may be several levels removed from their actions? I get blamed for something over which I had no control, about which I have no knowledge. So your proposal in effect means NO loaning to anyone, no sharing with anyone, for fear of the consequences. There is no up side to this--if I let my e-book out of my possession, ever, or let anyone else use my computer where the books are backed up, I could be in hot water someday down the road. With a scheme like this, a consumer would be better off going to a pirate site, getting books for free with other people's identifications attached to them, and then being able to share those books without fear of consequences--it's the original poor schnook who bought the books in the first place who gets screwed. |
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11-14-2012, 10:27 AM | #323 | ||
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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. Quote:
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 Last edited by JoeD; 11-14-2012 at 10:30 AM. |
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11-14-2012, 10:32 AM | #324 | |
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11-14-2012, 10:54 AM | #325 | |||
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What my proposal does is preventing loaning to little-known or untrusted people. I find this an acceptable limitation of what I can do with my media. |
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11-14-2012, 11:11 AM | #326 | ||
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Wide scale illegal media distributors are what media companies fear most (or say they fear most). However, I get the impression that these mass uploaders are mostly amateurs: today it's really really easy (and free) to get media, strip the DRM and upload. With my "social DRM" scheme, wide scale illegal media uploaders would need to pester their acquaintances to get the media in the first place, and would get ostracized as soon as the fines begin... Not being professional hackers and criminals, I don't think these people will bother to remove the metadata (especially if this is not straightforward), and will end up switching to some other hobby. Quote:
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11-14-2012, 11:38 AM | #327 | |
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I don't have too much time right now but I wanted to respond to my vision of the "lost sales" portion. (I do tend to go on so I actually set a timer for myself. )
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Let's use Mary again, because I get confused when I use letters instead of names, and we know and love Mary by now anyway. Mary has an ebook. Her sister Jane wants to read it, and so she gives her a copy with a reminder that she shouldn't go giving it away because if it ends up on the internet, Mary will be in trouble. Jane reads the book, and when she meets with her Green Valley Gardening Club, she tells the other 19 ladies about the book. They all want to read it, but gosh, the book is expensive... So Jane says to them, "Okay, I'll give you copies but you can't pass them around because if they end up on the internet my sister will get it trouble." Kathy, one of the Garden Club members, reads the book, and it sits on her computer for a while, right next to her other ebooks. Her cousin Amy and niece Sue come by and Kathy gives them copies of a few ebooks, including the one she got from Jane. Likely, some of the other members do something similar. One ebook, purchased by Mary, results in 50+ free copies rather quickly. Not a single one ends up on the internet, and no malice was involved whatsoever. You asked them to rely on trust, and they did. Mary never gets in any trouble because it's all person-to-person and every single one of those people would never consider uploading it because that would be piracy! If Mary trusts Bill, she gets a fine, and several thousand people who would likely never buy the book get a free copy. If Mary trusts Jane, nothing bad happens to her, and 50 people who might have actually bought the book get a free copy. Crap. My timer went off. My closing thought (for now) - if "social policing" (or positive peer pressure, if you will) really worked all that well, we wouldn't need traffic cops. It requires that everyone (or most) are susceptible to that sort of thing. I'm not. Fortunately, I'm lawfully good (okay, sometimes chaotic good ) so I'm not a risk in this scenario, but if people are honest about the reality of the human animal, they'd be in catlady's camp - trust no one, just in case. |
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11-14-2012, 12:43 PM | #328 | |||
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It's simply wrong to make the initial owner of the file liable for any and every nefarious use of the file. |
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11-14-2012, 01:12 PM | #329 |
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Since some of my responses have traveled all over the map of this discussion, I thought I'd spend a few minutes of my lunch break to summarize where I stand on the various points.
I am not opposed to social DRM itself. That isn't where my concerns are. My issues are with:
What I would be all for is a watermark DRM system that removes the vendor lock-in by eliminating proprietary DRM formats, and I would be for a system of sharing that transfers the license and makes the recipient the current owner. Mary wouldn't "share" the book with Bill, she would give it to him and he would then be the new owner and the responsible party. |
11-14-2012, 01:18 PM | #330 | |
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I don't trust myself to do that, much less anyone else, especially when it puts me at significant risk. |
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