DRM

A DRM Question Worth Asking

February 8, 2010 By Mark 8 Comments

Imposing technological solutions for Digital Rights Management (DRM) is, in theory, a viable way to stop the piracy of online content. In theory. In practice DRM presents a host of implementation problems and customer service headaches because legitimate content owners are punished or disadvantaged alongside thieves.

Because of the gap between current theory and practice, proponents and opponents of DRM attempt to dominate the DRM debate with apocalyptic rhetoric, political gamesmanship, and the kind of righteous indignation that is both an intellectual guilt trip and calculated lie at the same time. Neither side is really interested in what is practical or effective, or even in learning how pirated content is actually consumed by the end user.

The reason they are not interested is because they cannot sell the products they want to sell in a calm atmosphere. It takes fear of nuclear annihilation to sell both bomb shelters and bombs, so both sides in the DRM debate stoke the rhetorical fires and present their hard-line solutions as the truth, the light and the only way. All of which I’ve talked about here, here and here.

Still, it seems to me that there is one DRM question worth asking. Here’s how I referenced the issue in one of those previous posts:

Elsewhere in the clip, Mr. Doctorow makes a good point when he says that books will be copied and scanned regardless of the DRM that publishers employ. I agree. But that’s not necessarily saying something important. Scanned versions of books are almost inevitably going to be less clear than licensed e-books or even licensed digital copies. Yet even assuming someone cracks a DRM-protected book and makes it available for free, the book business has a kind of built-in protection against wanton piracy simply by nature of its content.

Music comes in small files. Movies are dumb — you just stare at them. Books, however, are big, and require active engagement over a long period of time in order to be consumed.

Maybe someone somewhere is downloading two hundred cracked e-books at a whack, then reading the first sentence of each in order to find a great read, but I think it’s unlikely. In fact, it’s unlikely that most pirated books are ever completely read, precisely because a book is relatively hard to digest. This means the ratio of thefts by end-users who intend to enjoy the content they steal to thefts by pirates who intend to profit from the content they steal may be lower in the book publishing industry than in any other medium. Which means the book publishing industry has more to gain by going after traffickers and less to gain by going after end-users than any other industry.

[ Read more ]

The DRM Distraction: Part II

December 18, 2009 By Mark 14 Comments

Speaking Truth to Power
Personally, my biggest concern about piracy and DRM these days is the general lack of a direct response to end-user theft at a moral and educational level. It’s as if the idea of calling customers/users on their thieving ways produces a bigger fear of lost sales in management than does the risk of backlash inherent in any DRM solution. Maybe it’s the direct confrontation that makes people uncomfortable. Or maybe it’s the threat that potential customers will feel management is treating them like criminals.

As a writer I don’t really care what the hold-up is. I just know the one thing everyone is running from is a direct confrontation with end users about their thievery. Only a few years ago Napster tried to make a legal case for peer-to-peer file sharing, the end result of which was that it was laughed at and obliterated by the courts. That Napster, a for-profit corporation, was trafficking in copyrighted material, was blindingly obvious to everyone, yet somehow Napster became an anti-establishment darling. How you become the victim when you’re using America’s youth to legitimize copyright theft for your own corporate profits is beyond me, but they pulled it off.

I don’t think it’s a surprise that many of Napster’s most passionate users were college students who felt they were on the cutting edge of a huge counter-culture movement, even though what they were really doing was stealing other people’s stuff. As long as there is intelligent life there will always be a tide of young minds chafing at restrictions, rules and laws. It’s also probably not a surprise that there will always be people looking to co-opt and engineer youthful exuberance for their own ends, as Napster did.

Just as ardent advocates of DRM are determined to distract you and bully you by constantly beating their self-serving drum (see Part I), so too are anti-DRM voices committed to promoting the DRM issue for their own ends. In the publishing industry the leading anti-DRM voice is Cory Doctorow, although to be sure Mr. Doctorow is not alone in has advocacy of free content or in his hostility toward DRM. [ Read more ]

The DRM Distraction: Part I

December 17, 2009 By Mark 3 Comments

Reality Refresh
Having looked closely at the publishing industry for the past few months, and having worked in both the software industry and the film industry at various times over the past two decades, I’ve come to a few conclusions about digital rights management (DRM). The most important is that there is no clear-cut solution to the question of piracy, and anybody who tells you they’ve got it all figured out is working their own angle. And that includes Cory Doctorow and me.

Like the subject of abortion in the political arena, DRM is injected into every conversation about content ownership and distribution whether it’s directly relevant or not. If you don’t say the right things to the right people about DRM you risk associations and opportunities that might be of value, not because you’re wrong on the merits, but because you’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy by implying that they are not pure evil. At the same time, those people who don’t buy into a black-and-white view of DRM will think you an idiot for not using the impassioned nuts on both sides to your own advantage.

The correct answer to questions about DRM in the current context is not to be suckered into a debate about technological solutions or the prosecution of college students, but to educate and evangelize about the problems that drive the implementation of DRM technology in the first place. Although most end users who pirate content do so as individuals, the collective effect of these individual decisions hurts copyright holders and content creators in very real ways. Yes, some piracy may be sticking it to The Man, but it’s also killing artists that people apparently want to read, listen to and watch. [ Read more ]

The Bigger Picture

October 29, 2009 By Mark 1 Comment

CNET’s interview of Eric Garland, CEO of Big Champagne, has attracted understandable interest over the past few days. Garland talks turkey and sense about how the internet will inevitably impact the movie business, just as it has the music and publishing industries:

What will happen is the studios will exhaust every available remedy and there will be a series of evolutions, meaning they will exhaust one remedy and a new one will present itself. These things will be pursued in tandem. They will pursue technological intervention on the Internet. This goes to the study at NYU that basically says this has had no effect. Ultimately, because they are spending a lot of money and not getting results, they’ll become disillusioned with these vendors. They’ll clean house. But something else will present itself.

I think he’s right about where we are, and I think he’s right about where we’re going in the future, but I think he and almost everyone else stop short of where we’re ultimately headed. And I’m not saying that as a criticism: Garland properly frames his comments in the context of survivability, not ultimate truth. The goal is getting your industry through the transition, after which things will of course continue to evolve.

Still, I think the lines of convergence are pretty clear, even if they still resolve over the horizon. Everything people think they know about the internet is predicated on a set of relatively arbitrary decisions. Net neutrality is one instance, anonymity is another. Flip a couple of simple switches and suddenly the internet doesn’t look like the wild west or a commune, it looks like Big Brother or a corporate bureaucracy. [ Read more ]

The Last of the File Swappers?

April 27, 2003 By Mark Leave a Comment

I was going to buy a book recently via Amazon, but before I pulled the trigger and clicked myself a copy, I remembered that we have an old, venerable institution in my home town called the Public Library. When I logged onto their online catalogue I found they had a copy of the book, and that it was on the shelf at that very moment, so I saved myself the price of admission and checked it out – literally and literally.

This reminded me that not only does my library check out books, but they also have a good video collection, and even a CD collection. Which made me wonder how long it’s going to be before the record companies try to jam Digital Rights Management legislation down the throats of America’s libraries. For the record, I don’t have a problem with people trying to protect their copyrighted property from theft, but there’s also no question that this is a slippery slope. Just as the computer makes it easy to copy works, it also makes it (or will make it) possible to monitor, track, and retaliate against people who may still be within their free-use rights to enjoy a product.

You’ll know the end to the debate is close when somebody (again) takes a run at public libraries.

— Mark Barrett