DRM Good or Bad?

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

The fact is, most people getting the free book are only getting it because it is free. They would never have paid for it, and are not a lost sale. They might never even look at it. The author has lost absolutely nothing.

The fact is the person that stole that TV would have never bought it in the first place, and the store has insurance so they really did not loose anything. Sony or whoever made the TV was already paid by the store so they did not loose anything either. Therefor taking the TV is not theft.

You are, IMO, are making a distinction without a difference. While I agree the reported cost of piracy is way over inflated, it is a crime and it does hurt content producers.

DRM is the wrong tool the solve the problem, but the problem is real.

We are going in circles about this, and I will drop out of this debate now in order to cease in playing a part in producing a never ending thread filled with,

"no its not" ... "yes it is"... "no its not"... "yes it is"

[DrNefario]

Ok.

I'm off to get myself a TV.

(I do agree that it is a crime, and also that it is morally wrong, btw.)

[spindlegirl]

I was listening to a CBC radio podcast where the Irish band "Fred" was playing and being interviewed. The interviewer concluded with "If you like their music, buy a cd, go to itunes, or download illegally, because these guys believe in it" The band said, "yeah, we do".

[Justin Nemo]

Originally Posted by spindlegirl

I was listening to a CBC radio podcast where the Irish band "Fred" was playing and being interviewed. The interviewer concluded with "If you like their music, buy a cd, go to itunes, or download illegally, because these guys believe in it" The band said, "yeah, we do".

There are a lot of artists who don't give a rats artichoke for illegal downloads. George Michael was quoted last year as saying that he couldn't spend any more money than he already had, so why shouldn't people get his back catalogue for free. No doubt a dig a Sony records for holding him back all those years. I guess it's fine to say that when you have all the money you can spend, but maybe new artists would think differently.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by gmw

Not paying for what you have taken/used is taking away the income of the provider.

I used thousands of books in my youth that I didn't pay for. Is that immoral too? Was I "stealing" from the author by borrowing all those books from friends, or by buying fifty books for $5 at rummage sales? The author and publisher never got any payment for those, either.

Is the real issue "consuming entertainment without paying the creators"--in which case, libraries are immoral--or is it "creators have a moral right to demand limits to their readership?"

Saying, "but you COULD email an ebook to a thousand people, so you should be penalized just as much for emailing it once," is like saying, "you COULD use that kitchen knife to murder someone, so you should face attempted murder charges for waving it around in your living room." It's talking about crimes that haven't happened, that are possible with the same tools.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

[...]Saying, "but you COULD email an ebook to a thousand people, so you should be penalized just as much for emailing it once," [...]

I didn't say that ... and I don't want to play any more.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by VydorScope

While I agree the reported cost of piracy is way over inflated, it is a crime and it does hurt content producers.

I agree that it hurts content producers, and that it's often a crime. (One of the many tangled problems here is the erratic and inconsistent interpretations of copyright laws, both inside countries and internationally. Establishing "what's really a crime" is not simple.)

I think handwaving past the inflated reported costs is a mistake--without accurate numbers for damages, even if they're rough estimates, we can't establish how *bad* the situation is, and therefore what kind of measures are appropriate to take against it. If digital piracy is costing the entertainment industry billions of dollars, strong measures should be taken. If digital piracy is costing "the entertainment industry" *nothing,* and instead just shifting payments around among authors, game providers, and musicians, that's an entirely different problem--potentially fixable with different licensing and subsidy arrangements among corporations and bypassing the end purchaser entirely.

Solutions need to be designed to fix the problems. And they need to take into account that nobody is guaranteed an income; nobody is guaranteed a successful business model. The methods that worked fifty years ago aren't promised to work in the future--if the real issue is "with such an abundance of books, movies, games, music, and other entertainments, people are less interested in the new ones released this month," that's not fixable by stronger DRM or million-dollar lawsuits.

If the real issue is, "people want to treat digital files like they've always treated entertainment--something they can freely share with their friends and family," again, that's not going to be fixed by DRM. The backlash against "your spouse should buy a second copy" is going to be much harsher than the backlash against "you may not upload this file to your public Dropbox folder & post a link on Facebook."

Sorting out what damages exist and how the new technology blends with consumer culture are essential issues, not sidelines to the question of "how can media corporations continue to raise profits in every new market?"

[mod186k1]

DRM is a bad thing: it discourage honest reader and doesn't stop piracy. Did you ever noticed that the most part (almost all) of pirated ebook are from scanning paper book?

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It's talking about crimes that haven't happened, that are possible with the same tools.

That's been exactly the thing pointed out when Germany criminalised network sniffing and cracking tools: that sysadmins use them on regular basis to check networks they set up themselves didn't count. The argument was: they can be used for crime. As if more than half of the contents of a well stocked physical toolbox couldn't. :facepalm:
With such a logic applied I'm damn happy I haven't been accused of raping somebody - based only on having the tools to do it.

[Muckraker]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I used thousands of books in my youth that I didn't pay for. Is that immoral too? Was I "stealing" from the author by borrowing all those books from friends, or by buying fifty books for $5 at rummage sales? The author and publisher never got any payment for those, either.

The main issue with digital copyright infringement is that an infinite number of new copies are made available without the consent of the content creator. These new copies require minimal effort in their initial creation and zero effort for world-wide propagation. There is no way to compare this to any activity involving physical products.

All of the pbooks you have purchased were created and distributed by the parties legally entitled to. If the publisher does a print-run of 50,000 copies then there are that many copies in existence. A library can loan out a single copy a hundred times but availability is still limited by that single copy and borrowers are bound by the established rules and availability limitations. You have the ability to photocopy a pbook as many times as you want but that takes time and paper, both of which are inconvenient, limited, and result in an inferior product.

Illegal digital distribution creates a brand new copy whenever a new downloader wants one. There is no way to compare this to pbook copyright infringement.

Is the real issue "consuming entertainment without paying the creators"--in which case, libraries are immoral--or is it "creators have a moral right to demand limits to their readership?"

Libraries are a public service 100% limited by supply and demand. If the book you want to read is checked out it doesn't matter how much you want to legally read it for free. Legal ebooks are still "checked out." If the library has five licenses and all five are loaned out then you have to wait, get a friend with a legal copy to "loan" it to you, buy the ebook, or "steal" the ebook.

Saying, "but you COULD email an ebook to a thousand people, so you should be penalized just as much for emailing it once"

The problem of digital piracy is not individuals sending pirated content to their friends. It's about Joe Blow delegating himself as your distributor without your consent. If you want to read a book and not pay for it you are acquiring it from someone who is not your friend. You are acquiring it from a total stranger or, in the example of bit-torrent, 100,000 strangers.

I agree that the crime of "piracy" is overstated and incorrectly applied to individuals downloading something they want for free. DRM and punishing downloaders are lame attempts to address this perceived crime.

The prime benefits of digital content are also its Achilles' heel. The creators benefit from an infinite and zero-cost supply of their products and instant delivery to customers anywhere on the planet. These benefits come at a price, though.

The only way to truly hinder digital copyright theft is to not digitize your product. If publishers/creators decide to digitize then piracy is just a cost of doing business and should be factored in when creating the product, pricing it, and coming up with a marketing strategy.

We can decrease piracy of our content by providing value-add, making the content inherently better than the best the pirates can provide, reasonably pricing it, and making it easier to just buy it than it is to steal it.

Hollywood and publishers of records, books, and software would be much better off focusing their energies on decreasing piracy in those ways than slapping handcuffs on their customers or using archaic, consumer-unfriendly methods to lock down that which cannot be locked.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Muckraker

The problem of digital piracy is not individuals sending pirated content to their friends.

If the entertainment industry believed this, Smashwords wouldn't tell people their spouse should buy a separate copy, and Amazon wouldn't have to fight with publishers over whether books can be loaned for once for two weeks.

The only way to truly hinder digital copyright theft is to not digitize your product.

That's worked so well for Rowling.

If publishers/creators decide to digitize then piracy is just a cost of doing business and should be factored in when creating the product, pricing it, and coming up with a marketing strategy.

No, they don't have to "decide to digitize." Digitization is getting cheap and easy enough that the products are being digitized whether the original producers want that or not. Their only choice is whether to figure out how to get *profit* from the digital versions.

We can decrease piracy of our content by providing value-add, making the content inherently better than the best the pirates can provide, reasonably pricing it, and making it easier to just buy it than it is to steal it.

Agreed. The problem isn't "stopping piracy;" it's "getting more sales." Nobody's book ever hit the bestseller list based on how many times it wasn't pirated.

[JSWolf]

If I download an eBook that I was never going to pay for, who have I hurt?

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If I download an eBook that I was never going to pay for, who have I hurt?

You download an ebook that you have no right to get --- for you the end result is exactly the same as for a thief. You wind up with something that doesn't belong to you. It is different from theft only for the copyright owner, for him/her it may or may not be a lost sale.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Saying, "but you COULD email an ebook to a thousand people, so you should be penalized just as much for emailing it once," is like saying, "you COULD use that kitchen knife to murder someone, so you should face attempted murder charges for waving it around in your living room." It's talking about crimes that haven't happened, that are possible with the same tools.

I agree, that's like saying that driving past a school at 150mph MIGHT kill someone so let's call that a crime. Hang on, err...

Of course over here in England you can shoot a Welsh person with a bow and arrow in Chester, inside the city walls and after midnight. So let's not get too picky about these things (So if your a Wrexham fan make sure you've made it outside the walls after the next York game - It seems to be a little unclear if the Welsh person has to be inside the walls or your OK if the person firing the bow is inside, so I'd steer clear of the Keystones pub as well).

[Justin Nemo]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Of course over here in England you can shoot a Welsh person with a bow and arrow in Chester, inside the city walls and after midnight. So let's not get too picky about these things (So if your a Wrexham fan make sure you've made it outside the walls after the next York game - It seems to be a little unclear if the Welsh person has to be inside the walls or your OK if the person firing the bow is inside, so I'd steer clear of the Keystones pub as well).

Either way works for me