Social DRM Take 2

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

So then why as in a later post - agree that "orphan works" are bad and every effort should be made to make them available ??

I was referring to the moment of creation of the work here, not the point of expiration of copyright. As an author, I have the sole right to decide whether I will release my just-completed work or not. Once it is copywritten, it is implied that it will be "released" to the public at some point... I'll retain some rights for a time, then it is in the public's hands.

In terms of "orphan works," I'd consider that if has expired copyright, it should be available to the public for consumption, or at least available for public copies to be made.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

On the web as it is designed today, users can (mostly) establish anonymity, so they can steal and have no fear of being identified and caught. This creates more of a casually dishonest atmosphere on the web, and changes the business dynamic radically. Losses (not price, the proportion of stolen goods to sold goods) are higher, and a business must decide whether it needs to take steps to mitigate the larger amount of loss.

On the other hand, the potential market is also larger. If the overall revenues are higher, should the business really spend time worrying about a slightly higher pilferage rate? Particularly when the copy being "stolen" has not cost the business anything to manufacture and does not prevent a future sale to a paying customer?

I'm not saying the electronic file has no value, only that an individual electronic file, if reproduced and served by a third party, has no cost to the legitimate content owner.

Originally Posted by HarryT

But, with respect, if they hold the rights to the material, that is their choice to make, just as paper books frequently go out of print when the publisher decides that sales have fallen to a level at which a new print run in uneconomic. If the author is still alive, and feels that there is still money to be made from a book, they would probably, in that circumstance, request that the rights to the book revert to them, and make new publishing arrangements.

We have to accept that books are commercial property, and rights to them can be bought and sold. They aren't something that we have some "divine right" to.

Well, no. We don't have to accept this. This is something that has been argued at many points in history, and as we've discussed many times, the granting of a limited monopoly by the Statute of Anne and later legislation was intended to stimulate production as a public good, not because it was felt that authors or publishers had some inherent right to control their works.

Books and other creative content become part of the culture they are published in, and after a period of time (and we can debate just how long that time is, but copyrights do expire), they belong to the public. So we can see that they do not continue to be commercial property, with rights bought and sold, unlike, for example, real estate, which can be passed down to heirs. Our legal system has placed creative works in an interesting, separate category from physical property (which can be bought and sold in perpetuity) and services (which are paid for once per instance). Comparisons between creative works and these other categories are limited at best.

Ultimately, I think the Kindle system will only succeed so long as there is not another major platform that people want to use, i.e. Amazon achieves an effective monopoly on ebook readers and content. Otherwise, customer pressure will result in forcing Amazon to drop the restrictive DRM on content just as that pressure has forced Apple into dropping DRM on iTunes content.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I was referring to the moment of creation of the work here, not the point of expiration of copyright. As an author, I have the sole right to decide whether I will release my just-completed work or not. Once it is copywritten, it is implied that it will be "released" to the public at some point... I'll retain some rights for a time, then it is in the public's hands.

In terms of "orphan works," I'd consider that if has expired copyright, it should be available to the public for consumption, or at least available for public copies to be made.

I agree completely with you here - I was just confused since I hear many times the mantra "as an author, publisher, studio... I have the right to do anything I want with my work" and that is used to justify for example refusal to do ebooks, using drm including rootkits - luckily not for ebooks so far, and so on.

Now I am mixed on the "right to refuse to release a book as an ebook" since I am not sure that ebooks are and should be treated differently than another format say like mmpb vs hc, and I have not heard of authors refusing to release their works only in hc, but it may also be argued that ebooks are essentially different - this is a debate we should have more btw - and of course I disagree completely with any form of drm that ensure vendor/system lock in.

As long as we agree that the once a book is released for sale to the public, the public has some rights and a stake in it, I think we can continue a useful argument about this or that...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

I agree completely with you here - I was just confused since I hear many times the mantra "as an author, publisher, studio... I have the right to do anything I want with my work" and that is used to justify for example refusal to do ebooks, using drm including rootkits - luckily not for ebooks so far, and so on.

Well, while I retain the rights, I do have the right to decide whether I want my work to be released in any particular format... or not at all, which would mean no one would see it until it reached public domain.

Obviously, it seems silly to not release your work, but for example, I'd consider it perfectly reasonable to specify that I did not want my books to be printed in a hardback format, due to environmental concerns. Or printed in 1-point type on a T-shirt. It is my choice, however stupid or ill-considered that choice may be.

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

Now I am mixed on the "right to refuse to release a book as an ebook" since I am not sure that ebooks are and should be treated differently than another format say like mmpb vs hc, and I have not heard of authors refusing to release their works only in hc, but it may also be argued that ebooks are essentially different - this is a debate we should have more btw - and of course I disagree completely with any form of drm that ensure vendor/system lock in.

Agreed: We need more discussion regarding exactly what an e-book is to be considered. I see an e-book, as compared to a printed book, as analogous to a television program, as compared to a DVD of that program... the DVD and print versions are solid commodity... and the electronic versions, which carry the same information in a different medium, may have to be considered as a "free to receive" broadcast version, or a paid commodity when received in a particular format (like cable TV).

This is why I suspect that an advertiser/patron model may be the best way to profit from e-books, just as television is thus supported. And if e-books are immediately released to the public someday, then print books may be the equivalent of DVDs, making additional money for the work at some point after the initial "free to receive" release.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Well, while I retain the rights, I do have the right to decide whether I want my work to be released in any particular format... or not at all, which would mean no one would see it until it reached public domain.

Here I think we disagree to some extent. I think that even if you are retaining the rights once you *sell or give away* a copy at least to someone, your rights are not total.

For example you do not have the right to tell me to read your book only on Mondays, or I should be dressed in a blue shirt when I read it, or if it were an ebook I should read your book only on your favorite device, or... That ... is something that by and large until now has been immaterial in the Western world at least once general agreement about copyright were accepted in the 19th century.

I read recently the superb Drood by D. Simmons about the last 5 year of C. Dickens life - general release Feb 09 - and one of the *funny* things there was how Mr. Dickens who was tremendously popular here in the US came for a tour and almost broke down and left booed by the public and press for insisting that he actually gets paid for his work, since US was not recognizing the rights of UK authors and the best they could do was to try and place the book with an US publishers and hope the *legitimate* edition will make some money. Of course in the case of theater it was even worse considering the considerable costs of mounting a production, so there Mr. Dickens did not even try hard sometimes..

Sure later in his life he started getting better royalties from the US due to better acceptance of copyright for foreign authors here, but then he started doing reading tours in which he made vastly more amounts of money than from selling his books - though it's true that they took a terrible toll on his health...

So things change even with respect to author' rights and now I think that we are at a moment when we need to reexamine this issue and answer questions about what is legitimate, what not in ways that are acceptable to everyone

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

I agree companies will keep trying to look for ways to "protect" "their" electronic content against threats that may or may not exist.

Postulate perfect DRM: unbreakable, "future-proof", owned by a single or consortium of companies, the majority of electronic content produced burdened with it.

The losses to all of us are hard to oversee: I do not for one moment believe that corporate entities like that are EVER going to be willing to release content to the public domain, we'll see what is happening now: companies will just "sit" on the content (who knows, it might become profitable again someday), try to extend copyright terms indefinitely (not a new thing), and if they go belly-up, the content goes down in flames with them.

Bleak? Very. And of course, even if we do find an acceptable alternative to DRM, there is no guarantee that some bean-counter in a corporation won't think the whole DRM-deal is more profitable and go ahead with implementation anyway. That is the problem with corporations: you are not dealing with reasonable people, you are dealing with soulless entities aimed solely at making a profit.

That said, I do not believe this "perfect" DRM exists: it is only feasible if you give them control over the content, the hardware, and all the steps in between. Which would be terminally stupid, from both the consumer's as the content creator's point of view.

And in the case of books, unless we go to a 100% ebook world which I don't see happening anytime soon, there will always be the paper book, a band saw, a high-throughput scanner, OCR, and dedicated pirate proofreaders. The quality of these pirated products will only rise over time as scanning/OCR technology gets better and people stuck in this bleak future get 'behind the cause'.

In reference to the myth of the perfect DRM system for books:

Any digital security can be broken. The goal is to make it more expensive to break the security then the rewards for breaking it.

The fundamental problem with any technical solution for DRM on books is that the interface between the written words and the human has to be unencrypted so it will always be possible to exploit this interface. It's also not a lot of data and it is very easy to remove any analog noise and get a perfect digital copy. (Note: Even if someone can encrypt the neural network between the eyes and the brain you would also have to disable all motor function so the person couldn't type out what they are reading. I doubt people would accept that solution so I still maintain that it can always be exploited ).

Consider the following as a worst case method of inefficiently exploiting this interface. You hire two people who can type at 50 words per minute at $20 per hour. Take the resultant text and compare it and manually resolve differences. If an average book is 200,000 words it's 134 hours of typing labour and 30 hours of editing. Adding $40 for the two copies of the books we're talking $3,300 maximum per book to circumvent. I'm purposely using an inefficient method that nobody would actually use.

It's obviously much more rewarding to exploit the DRM directly because you only have to do that once.

My point is it doesn't matter what wonderful new method of DRM technology companies come up with the unit value of the book it's protecting can't be worth more then $3.3K or someone will likely exploit it. If people are angry enough at the DRM they will volunteer their time so the $3,300 become $40.

If you tell an author that "this wonderful DRM technology will protect your book from evil pirates" you should also have to tell them that their book can't be worth more then $3,300. Also note that the example works on paper books as well.

Yes companies will always make promises of wonderful new DRM technologies that can't be broken because their business model is based on illusion and spreading FUD.

Bruce Schneier's book "Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World" is an excellent book on the subject.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Just making clear, I never said, or meant to imply, that DRM can be, or will ever be, "perfect." Just that it will probably evolve and improve over time, as long as there are companies that believe it is a useful tool.

Originally Posted by Barcey

My point is it doesn't matter what wonderful new method of DRM technology companies come up with the unit value of the book it's protecting can't be worth more then $3.3K or someone will likely exploit it. If people are angry enough at the DRM they will volunteer their time so the $3,300 become $40.

That is the real key to workable DRM: Make it so people aren't angry at it... or, at least, see it as worth their while for the content they gain. Save them money... make the shopping and download process faster or easier... give them a slicker product... even convince them it will make them "cool" or get them laid... and most people will overlook the DRM in the process.

"Perfect DRM" is impossible... but acceptable DRM is not impossible to attain. (Hard, sure. But not impossible.)

[acidzebra]

The whole "perfect" DRM thing was just to point out that having bits of your culture owned by corporations with the motive, intent and buying power to extent copyright laws to ensure they retain control forever is probably not a good thing.

As an aside and speaking as an engineer, I'm still a little confused on how for a given amount of digital information, 90-something% of possible arrangements of 1s and 0s are worthless noise and somehow a few % of those combinations are "magic" and worth money. Yes, I am simple that way - it must be that autistic engineering gene.

[Fake51]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

That is the real key to workable DRM: Make it so people aren't angry at it... or, at least, see it as worth their while for the content they gain. Save them money... make the shopping and download process faster or easier... give them a slicker product... even convince them it will make them "cool" or get them laid... and most people will overlook the DRM in the process.

Why would people ever be interested in DRM? It is, by definition, NEVER in their interests. The only parties that could ever gain from DRM are content creators and content owners.
There are some serious flaws in your above thinking. Why would you, as a content creator or owner, offer incentives to people in order to get them to use DRM'ed content but not non-DRM content? What do you stand to gain by having customers use one form rather than another? Nothing, as it happens. You stand to gain if people buy your content, irregardless of whether it comes with DRM or not.

"Perfect DRM" is impossible... but acceptable DRM is not impossible to attain. (Hard, sure. But not impossible.)

There is no such thing as acceptable DRM if there's a feasible alternative to DRM. The math is really very simple: why would I, as a consumer, put up with being treated like a second-rate citizen, when I can do what I want when I want? I'm the one with the money, I get to say how I spend it and what I get for it.

Personally, I don't get why so few in the content-producing industries see the new possibilities as the new opportunities they are. In the 'old' days, in order to get somewhere in writing you had to get published in print. Actual physical books had to be made. No more. Some hack wrote a blog about an escort girl and there's now a tv-series based on it. What was the cost of production and publication? Nothing compared to printing books.
Magnatune is a nice example of how things could be: you go to their site, check out the stuff they have, download what you like and pay as much as you like. They're still in business and have been for a while now. They don't need DRM to do what they do, so why assume that other industries do? A lot of other sites offer stuff for download too without DRM but after payment. Have they gone out of business? Not to the best of my knowledge - heck, even itunes have started doing it. Why should authors be incapable of this? Is there something intrinsic to books that necessitates DRM?

I'm sorry for the rant but I really just don't get it. DRM has been around for a while and it's never worked, in any shape or form: from copyprotections on cds and software, to copy-protection on audio cds and backdoors installed on your computer, to encryption of content ... it's always been possible to get what you want without paying for it and it's never been easier. The content-industry has proven VERY willing to throw tons of money at DRM but they've so far only very reluctantly considered throwing money at their customers (in terms of cutting prices, making their products better, going for the new distribution channels, etc.). Is it THAT hard to see where the world is headed?

Regards
Fake

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Fake51

Why would people ever be interested in DRM? It is, by definition, NEVER in their interests. The only parties that could ever gain from DRM are content creators and content owners.
There are some serious flaws in your above thinking. Why would you, as a content creator or owner, offer incentives to people in order to get them to use DRM'ed content but not non-DRM content? What do you stand to gain by having customers use one form rather than another? Nothing, as it happens. You stand to gain if people buy your content, irregardless of whether it comes with DRM or not.

DRM itself is in no consumer's interests. But if the seller offers the consumer something special they will get by putting up with their DRM--like exclusive content, lower priced packages, etc--DRM becomes acceptable (assuming the customer agrees that the exclusive content is indeed special). The operative theory is, the more special or exclusive content a seller offers, the more they can charge for them... which justifies their use of DRM, to make sure someone who did not pay the premium charge can't get the premium content.

By that measure, there are a number of successful DRM and DRM-type systems out there... the Kindle store... cable and satellite television... etc.

Originally Posted by Fake51

There is no such thing as acceptable DRM if there's a feasible alternative to DRM. The math is really very simple: why would I, as a consumer, put up with being treated like a second-rate citizen, when I can do what I want when I want? I'm the one with the money, I get to say how I spend it and what I get for it.

Right... but "exclusive content" is in many cases enough for people to justify paying higher prices, and dealing with DRM. In the U.S., most men who hear the words "NFL Sunday Ticket" would understand what I mean.

Originally Posted by Fake51

I'm sorry for the rant but I really just don't get it.

Actually, your thread indicates exactly why we're in this situation: E-books are a young commercial entity, there are a lot of methods to sell them being tried, and no one method has proven that much more effective than the others. When one selling method clearly rises to the top, and outsells the others hands-down, the entire industry will throw out everything else and go for that. until then, we have to put up with every selling trick under the sun, including DRM, and wait for the market to settle in and pick one.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by acidzebra

As an aside and speaking as an engineer, I'm still a little confused on how for a given amount of digital information, 90-something% of possible arrangements of 1s and 0s are worthless noise and somehow a few % of those combinations are "magic" and worth money. Yes, I am simple that way - it must be that autistic engineering gene.

As someone who uses a computer you must see the value in the correct combination of 1s and 0s. Without them your computer would not do anything. Is that not "worth" money to you? I assume you paid cash money for your PC and some if not most of the software which runs on it?

Also, being an engineer you must know that those combinations are not "magic" but engineered.

BOb

[acidzebra]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

As someone who uses a computer you must see the value in the correct combination of 1s and 0s. Without them your computer would not do anything. Is that not "worth" money to you? I assume you paid cash money for your PC and some if not most of the software which runs on it?

Also, being an engineer you must know that those combinations are not "magic" but engineered.

BOb

I have a corporate notebook with XP, but I would have never bought it myself and would gladly return it never to use it again (no such luck I am afraid). My home PCs all run various flavors of linux and openBSD. I've given money to various of the open software groups, but I did not view that as paying for a product, they did not ask for it or expect it, and I did not expect anything in return. I viewed it more as supporting a certain way of looking at things rather than a customer/vendor transaction.

The hardware is a different matter, but if it would have been even remotely feasible I would have sourced it myself and stuck it together.

Aside from the latter part of the post being a half-joke, the infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters joke is turned into reality with the internet and computer ubiquity. Given that most of/all of Shakespeare's work in plain text amounts to some 5 Mb or so and much less when compressed, how often do you think parts (I'm not contending the whole) of his work have been accidentally replicated in all the memory banks, TCP/IP streams, and other data transfers that ever happened between and inside computers? And then we have cases like DeCSS - the string of bits that was illegal. I don't know if that weirded you out, but I thought it completely bizarre.

[Fake51]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

DRM itself is in no consumer's interests. But if the seller offers the consumer something special they will get by putting up with their DRM--like exclusive content, lower priced packages, etc--DRM becomes acceptable (assuming the customer agrees that the exclusive content is indeed special). The operative theory is, the more special or exclusive content a seller offers, the more they can charge for them... which justifies their use of DRM, to make sure someone who did not pay the premium charge can't get the premium content.

My point is that this is putting the cart before the horse. You're looking at a market that doesn't behave like markets used to. In order to tame the market and make it behave like old markets you're willing to spend fortunes on DRM. In essence, you'll be making "more special or exclusive content", "lower priced packages" in order to sugar down the bitter pill of DRM ... for what purpose? DRM in itself adds no value to the content-industry, quite to the contrary it is costing them money. The purpose was to sell content, not easy acceptance of DRM, unless I'm much mistaken.
Look at the deal you're outlining above. Would you rather:
a) buy exclusive content at a nice price WITH DRM, or
b) buy exclusive content at a nice price WITHOUT content

It's not a hard choice, is it?

By that measure, there are a number of successful DRM and DRM-type systems out there... the Kindle store... cable and satellite television... etc.

Any solution should be judged by the various alternatives. The fact that the kindle bookstore exists does not make it a success. It's only a success if enough consumers start using it and keep using it. Enough in this equation means "the income generated from the purchases of these users is higher than the income generated through the sale of non-DRM/lock-in content would have been". Is kindle at that point? I have no idea, as I don't know the numbers involved. I know that I would never personally buy a kindle and I would never buy a DRM'ed book either - and a lot of people I know feel the same way. But that's anecdotal evidence and neither here nor there.


Right... but "exclusive content" is in many cases enough for people to justify paying higher prices, and dealing with DRM. In the U.S., most men who hear the words "NFL Sunday Ticket" would understand what I mean.


You need to argue that these people are thieves that - with no DRM applied - would otherwise steal the content. Otherwise, what's the point to DRM? Presumably, the people willing to pay for exclusive content would do so, DRM or not.

Actually, your thread indicates exactly why we're in this situation: E-books are a young commercial entity, there are a lot of methods to sell them being tried, and no one method has proven that much more effective than the others. When one selling method clearly rises to the top, and outsells the others hands-down, the entire industry will throw out everything else and go for that. until then, we have to put up with every selling trick under the sun, including DRM, and wait for the market to settle in and pick one.

Nope, not as long as big content fears the brave new world. The music and movie industries have been ignoring new trends in distribution for more than ten years now - instead of accepting and embracing new markets they have been fighting them, willingly vilifying their consumers and tying them down in every possible way.

Regards
Fake

[Taylor514ce]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

which justifies their use of DRM, to make sure someone who did not pay the premium charge can't get the premium content.

That isn't the case. Sony and BooksOkBoard both offered a title, for the same price (well, US$0.04 difference). I have the Sony. The "premium" part of Sony's content offering would be the seamless integration. Click, Buy, Load, Read.

I opted to forgo that ease of use, and go with an option that didn't save me any money, and caused me MORE work (Click, Buy, Download, de-DRM, fail, post, read, de-DRM again, succeed, convert, Load, Read).

In terms of money, no difference, but if you believe my time has value, then I paid MORE for a book that I could have without DRM.

Locking in content via DRM doesn't allow a vendor to charge premium prices. In my case, at least, my little experiment showed that I will pay (or suffer) a premium to have non-DRM content.

Why? Because it's in my way, and violates what I consider a right: to be able to use, and reuse, content I've purchased.

I'll also note that were I so inclined, I could give away the de-DRM'd book to anyone I wanted, so neither DRM system "protected" the content, in the end.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Fake and Taylor, what you're pointing out is that the "premium content" that is the usual requirement to justify a DRM-type system... isn't too premium in e-book cases, and in some cases, no premium content at all.

I don't argue the point. If these companies want to justify DRM, they have to provide premium content... and so far, they're not, by and large. That doesn't negate the point, but it clearly indicates what they are doing wrong if they plan to make DRM part of their marketing system.