Pan Macmillan: DRM Is Not Evil

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I never said the two were exactly alike... of course they're not.

Not even similar. Cable TV DRM (if you want to call it that) is protecting the service, not the content.

Copyright is still in effect: You can watch shows, you can tape them and watch them later, but you are still forbidden to use those shows for your own profit.

Exactly. The reason you can tape/etc is because the DRM is not on the content. The cable industry does not use DRM to enforce copyright (as the media content industry does). They are using it to enforce their service. Those are two very different things.

I'm not even sure I'd call what the Cable company does "DRM".

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

DRM is just another form of security

No, DRM is not security, and can never be. There is absolutely positively no such thing as a DRM system which can prevent copying. If you understood computer cryptography (most people don't) you would know that the problem DRM is trying to solve is fundamentally unsolvable.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

That's why it's an analogy. Of course the mediums are different! That doesn't mean the point is invalid.

But they are different enough that the analogy is invalid. You're comparing apples and oranges (DRM of the service versus DRM of the content).

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by RobbieClarken

Not entirely true. If your DRM is sophisticated enough that only 1 in 20 customers have the ability to remove it and only 1 in 1000 customers have the desire to remove it then there is a reasonable chance your book wont be decrypted and shared online. However, as ebooks become more popular and sales increase, the chances that noone will share you book will become increasingly slim.

Wrong. DRM has to prevent everybody from removing it, in order to be effective. Once even 1 person removes it, then anybody can share the removed version. Combine that with the fact that there is no way to create a DRM which can't be removed.

DRM as a method to prevent copying is useless.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by ahammer

im game for the netflix of books. (netbooks?... man thats a bad name for it)

How about we name it "Library".

Seriously, many of them are already renting out eBooks.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

DRM is just another form of security, something I am pretty sure you live with every day, if you lock your house, mind traffic lights, use a credit card, own a phone or web account, and shop at stores with security cameras or guards or security strips in the products. It took time to develop that security for those things, but it was done, and people today accept them... I imagine you do too, every day. And if you can live with those, why is it so impossible to believe you could live with e-book DRM?

There's a major difference between a lock on my house, and DRM on my ebook: I can remove the lock on my house, if I decide my home is safe enough. It exists to protect my property from other people's actions. The DRM on my ebooks, however, exists to protect my property from its owner's actions.

I don't know that I think DRM is "evil" (except in the broad sense that waste and inefficiency and deceit are evil), but it, unlike locks on my house or car, is not created for me, the owner of the product. It's created with the flawed premise that it prevents illegal copies (it slows them; it does not prevent them), and it does so by inconveniencing the legitimate purchaser--possibly to an illegal extent.

I can live with DRM. Or at least, I can live in a world with DRM, just as I can live in a world with random strip-searches at airports.

I've flown once since 9-11, and have no intention of changing that; I'm not willing to give up my personal liberty for flawed notions of security. And I don't buy ebooks with DRM for the same reason.

I put DRM in the same category as invasive searches at airports: a lot of people have been convinced this is necessary for security. I am not convinced, and take measures to avoid these limitations on my liberties. I applaud attempt to circumvent them because I don't believe they bring any real security. The more people who know how easy to bypass they are, the more will be upset at the inconveniences, and the more will either protest or take their dollars elsewhere, which is what it'll take to start finding sustainable solutions to the problems.

[ahammer]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

How about we name it "Library".

Seriously, many of them are already renting out eBooks.

I know but I suffer from something called laziness. don't want to have to leave my house.

[LazyScot]

Originally Posted by Alfy

You are quite right when you state that we all live with a certain level of security in our daily lives. But we also accept only a certain level of hassle. I have no problems with shopping malls security walking around and keeping an eye on everything. I WOULD definitly mind being thoroughly searched everytime I leave one, and the shopping mall that would try that kind of policy would see its revenues plummet.

People have talked about using RFIDs to do that, albeit electronically and without you being aware (and/or using that to charge you for goods when you leave the store).

Originally Posted by djgreedo

I want to own what I buy so I can use it again and again on my terms.

I know this sounds like a daft question, but does it mean to you to "own" the content. Put another way, what can you do with it?

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Wrong. DRM has to prevent everybody from removing it, in order to be effective. Once even 1 person removes it, then anybody can share the removed version. Combine that with the fact that there is no way to create a DRM which can't be removed.

DRM as a method to prevent copying is useless.

True, no DRM system can't be removed. But a DRM system could be designed such that it requires so much effort to remove as to not be worth it. And if all it got you access to was one e-book, rather than all e-books protected by that system, then the system is pretty effective.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

There's a major difference between a lock on my house, and DRM on my ebook: I can remove the lock on my house, if I decide my home is safe enough. It exists to protect my property from other people's actions. The DRM on my ebooks, however, exists to protect my property from its owner's actions.

How about the lock on a shop? Or on a vending machine?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by LazyScot

How about the lock on a shop? Or on a vending machine?

I didn't pay for the right to to use, manipulate, give away, or destroy the shop. The issue here is that DRM is a lock on my property, which is under the control of someone who is not me.

When I purchase a book, I gain a great deal of rights over its physical use, and limited rights over the use of its contents. Fair use allows me the right to quote it (sometimes extensively) for educational, review or parody purposes, and the right to make a transformative (but not merely derivative) work based on it. As an owner, I've got the right to shift it to a more comfortable format; I can copy it at a larger size for easy reading, or project it onto a screen if I wish. The legal property rights in the US give me the right to resell the book if I no longer wish to own it, and can find a buyer.

DRM interferes with my rights as the owner of the file. If I want my full rights as owner, I can only get them by allowing myself abilities that I don't have rights to support--the ability to make & distribute free copies, the ability to paste it all onto a webpage, and so on.

I'm not arguing that those should be part of my rights as owner. I am suggesting that publishers figure out how to separate those from the rights customers *do* have by law, because until they do, piracy will continue to grow.

Transferable DRM is a potential solution--unregister one device, register another one. It'd be a bit tricky to implement, because there would inevitably be bugs and lost files and the occasional crashed device, and people would complain. However, it'd be possible, and could be made to work quickly & easily for most cases.

The DRM systems already have ways of doing this; they just discourage it, because they don't want to allow selling or even giving away ebooks to a new owner. They want to use DRM to enforce "1 purchase = 1 reader," which they aren't entitled to by law.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by LazyScot

True, no DRM system can't be removed. But a DRM system could be designed such that it requires so much effort to remove as to not be worth it. And if all it got you access to was one e-book, rather than all e-books protected by that system, then the system is pretty effective.

DRM has to be trivial to circumvent, otherwise it would be impossible for the legal owner to use the content. The only way to make it so that breaking DRM only got you access to one eBook would be to invent a completely different DRM scheme for every book. That's not going to happen. Even if it did, you could still break each scheme.

If a Publisher is banking on being able to come up with a "better mousetrap", they are destined to fail. There are millions of incredibly smart "mice" out there. The more the Publishers try to lock down the content, the more incentive they are giving people to break it. It's an impossible game to win.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by LazyScot

I know this sounds like a daft question, but does it mean to you to "own" the content. Put another way, what can you do with it?

It means the same thing as owning a pBook that you've purchased, and you are allowed to do anything with it that copyright/law allows. Which, currently, is a lot more than most eBook DRMs "allow".

[zelda_pinwheel]

pertinent article on teleread, "The second apology from Jeff Bezos: The one I WISH he’d write in favor of genuine ownership of books".

DRM is a consumer fraud, a loathsome white-collar crime in the moral sense at the least—just a fancier equivalent of stealing a pair of boots. You are only renting, not “buying,” despite what our ads may say or imply. On our site, therefore, we’ll follow the example of Fictionwise as shown in the above image. That is, we’ll spell out the rights that you have or don’t have in your use of books that publishers force us to DRM. Why should we cover up for them? Here’s to informed consumers!

[carld]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Not even similar. Cable TV DRM (if you want to call it that) is protecting the service, not the content.

Actually there is DRM on at least some cable TV content, it's just that most systems don't honor the flag yet. Microsoft Media Center does, and if the DRM flag is set on a program, you can only watch it on the system on which it was recorded.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

No, DRM is not security, and can never be. There is absolutely positively no such thing as a DRM system which can prevent copying. If you understood computer cryptography (most people don't) you would know that the problem DRM is trying to solve is fundamentally unsolvable.

and there is no lock that is unpickable therefore locks are trying to solve a problem that is unsolvable. Do you lock your house? Why?

Dale

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

and there is no lock that is unpickable therefore locks are trying to solve a problem that is unsolvable. Do you lock your house? Why?

But it is not free to distribute a key and I am not sure you can do a key for all locks that you can pick. And the content in a house cannot be duplicated. So I do not see that this is a relevant comparison.