Wednesday, June 14. 2006
The DRM Cycle
Unless you're reading DRMBlog for the first time, it's obvious that we support liberal fair use rights; however, we do not condone nor do we support any type of piracy. Content owners should have all of their copyrights held intact. Of equal importance are the rights of the user and their ability to access, back-up, and use material that they have legitimate access to whether those items are purchased, borrowed, or in the public domain. If a user wants a copyrighted piece of material, there should purchase of either a physical copy or a licensed copy of said material at a fair market value. The fair market price should be (but often is not) determined by market forces. If the consumer thinks the price is too high, the consumer should choose not purchase the material and select other material – the consumer should never steal the material. Likewise if the owner thinks the price is too low, the owner can raise the price or pull the material off the market – the owner should never steal the rights of the consumer by putting DRM on the material or license the material with an overly restrictive license agreement. This is how things would work in a better world.
As you might have guessed, the current world doesn't run so smoothly. Content owners are often very restrictive with their licenses and over protective of their perceived rights. Often the content owners are very large corporations. These two things combine and lead many consumers to think that content owners are just greedy corporations that will do anything they can to make a dollar while by taking away the consumer's rights. At the same time there is a thriving black market that offers most of this material for very low costs with almost no restrictions. When a consumer is faced with these two options, many choose the cheaper and easier path of pirated media. In response content owners become more protective and restrictive and the cycle continues with more consumers choosing pirated files instead of their cumbersome and overly expensive DRM'd legitimate counterparts.
Originally content owners began to require DRM as a method to help stop piracy. It has been shown over and over again that professional pirates ignore, bypass or remove DRM of all kinds and have non-DRM versions of the protected material available within days of the release of the official material; often, the pirated version is available before the official material is released. So the only people who are hurt by DRM are the legitimate consumers who are stripped of their fair use rights such as being able to make backup copies. The cycle continues to spin, content owners continue to tighten restrictions, and more consumers turn to pirated material.
Case in Point
Last week in Sweden the police raided the network operations center (NOC) of PRQ Inet (prq.se) and seized all of the servers and networking equipment. PRQ hosted 300 business websites, one of which was the Pirate Bay (thepiratebay.org). The MPAA claims that the Pirate Bay is illegal and has convinced the Swedish police that the PRQ owners and the Pirate Bay owners are one in the same. So instead of confiscating only the servers used for hosting the one targetted website, the Swedish police confiscated everything in the NOC. All of the legitimate businesses that PRQ once hosted are out of luck and have no recourse but to wait for the police to release their servers and their data.
So what was the Pirate Bay doing to warrant disruption of so many businesses? According to a press release from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) the Pirate Bay was “one of the world’s largest and most well known facilitators of online piracy”. The Pirate Bay claims in their own words that they are “the World's Largest Bit Torrent Tracker”, which the MPAA says has enabled the “illegal swapping of millions of illegal copyrighted movies, music, software, and games”. The Pirate Bay does not actually distribute the pirated material but serves as a search engine to others that do host the pirated material. The links to the material were provided as torrent files that when opened by a Bit Torrent client would download the material to the user's computer.
According to the MPAA press release the Pirate Bay is the 312th most popular website in the US. To put this in perspective, Best Buy's website is ranked 256 while Circuit City's website is ranked 369. These stores are the number one and number three largest electronics retailers in the US. So shutting down PRQ's servers to get to the Pirate Bay is considered by most copyright holders to be a huge success. The MPAA held a press conference to herald the shutdown and to praise the Swedish police for their work.
The Pirate Bay claims they are operating within the bounds of Swedish law and have done nothing wrong. They plan to continue to offer their bit torrent search engine service and fight what they consider to be an attack on their “rights”. In fact, less than a week later the Pirate Bay is now back online and is experiencing a sizable new influx of users due to all the free advertising that this event has created. It is uncertain how long they will be able to continue operating, but as of now they are more popular than ever before. The cycle continues.
Message to Content Owners
Restrictive DRM repulses your legitimate consumer base. These are the people that pay for your product and make you money. Everytime you tighten the DRM noose, you are strangling your own lifeblood. Those consumers that pull away from you will either stop using your content altogether or they will run to the pirates for what they want. Instead of starting a public relations battle that you cannot win, you should rethink the unacceptable restrictions you are trying to place on fair use. Stop spurning your customers and sending them into the ever-open arms of pirates.
You should concentrate your efforts on stopping the real threat. The real threat to your business is not file sharers but organized crime and local leaks in your pipeline who actually make a profit from piracy. They sell your own wares cheaper and faster than your outdated infrastructure can. Remove your restrictions, lower your prices, speed up your release schedules, and make your products easier to purchase so that pirated versions don't look so attractive to fans. We applaud your recent hastening of DVD releases of movies and the combination CD/DVD audio releases. It is these sorts of changes that will bring customers back to you while chasing file sharers makes you look weak and grasping.
"The bad news is that you're up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you're dead. You're 55 years old and these kids are 17 and they're just smarter than you. So you're gonna lose that one." - John Perry Barlow (Lyricist for 'The Grateful Dead') (Co-founder the Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Authors - Jimmy Palmer and Ginger Cox
As you might have guessed, the current world doesn't run so smoothly. Content owners are often very restrictive with their licenses and over protective of their perceived rights. Often the content owners are very large corporations. These two things combine and lead many consumers to think that content owners are just greedy corporations that will do anything they can to make a dollar while by taking away the consumer's rights. At the same time there is a thriving black market that offers most of this material for very low costs with almost no restrictions. When a consumer is faced with these two options, many choose the cheaper and easier path of pirated media. In response content owners become more protective and restrictive and the cycle continues with more consumers choosing pirated files instead of their cumbersome and overly expensive DRM'd legitimate counterparts.
Originally content owners began to require DRM as a method to help stop piracy. It has been shown over and over again that professional pirates ignore, bypass or remove DRM of all kinds and have non-DRM versions of the protected material available within days of the release of the official material; often, the pirated version is available before the official material is released. So the only people who are hurt by DRM are the legitimate consumers who are stripped of their fair use rights such as being able to make backup copies. The cycle continues to spin, content owners continue to tighten restrictions, and more consumers turn to pirated material.
Case in Point
Last week in Sweden the police raided the network operations center (NOC) of PRQ Inet (prq.se) and seized all of the servers and networking equipment. PRQ hosted 300 business websites, one of which was the Pirate Bay (thepiratebay.org). The MPAA claims that the Pirate Bay is illegal and has convinced the Swedish police that the PRQ owners and the Pirate Bay owners are one in the same. So instead of confiscating only the servers used for hosting the one targetted website, the Swedish police confiscated everything in the NOC. All of the legitimate businesses that PRQ once hosted are out of luck and have no recourse but to wait for the police to release their servers and their data.
So what was the Pirate Bay doing to warrant disruption of so many businesses? According to a press release from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) the Pirate Bay was “one of the world’s largest and most well known facilitators of online piracy”. The Pirate Bay claims in their own words that they are “the World's Largest Bit Torrent Tracker”, which the MPAA says has enabled the “illegal swapping of millions of illegal copyrighted movies, music, software, and games”. The Pirate Bay does not actually distribute the pirated material but serves as a search engine to others that do host the pirated material. The links to the material were provided as torrent files that when opened by a Bit Torrent client would download the material to the user's computer.
According to the MPAA press release the Pirate Bay is the 312th most popular website in the US. To put this in perspective, Best Buy's website is ranked 256 while Circuit City's website is ranked 369. These stores are the number one and number three largest electronics retailers in the US. So shutting down PRQ's servers to get to the Pirate Bay is considered by most copyright holders to be a huge success. The MPAA held a press conference to herald the shutdown and to praise the Swedish police for their work.
The Pirate Bay claims they are operating within the bounds of Swedish law and have done nothing wrong. They plan to continue to offer their bit torrent search engine service and fight what they consider to be an attack on their “rights”. In fact, less than a week later the Pirate Bay is now back online and is experiencing a sizable new influx of users due to all the free advertising that this event has created. It is uncertain how long they will be able to continue operating, but as of now they are more popular than ever before. The cycle continues.
Message to Content Owners
Restrictive DRM repulses your legitimate consumer base. These are the people that pay for your product and make you money. Everytime you tighten the DRM noose, you are strangling your own lifeblood. Those consumers that pull away from you will either stop using your content altogether or they will run to the pirates for what they want. Instead of starting a public relations battle that you cannot win, you should rethink the unacceptable restrictions you are trying to place on fair use. Stop spurning your customers and sending them into the ever-open arms of pirates.
You should concentrate your efforts on stopping the real threat. The real threat to your business is not file sharers but organized crime and local leaks in your pipeline who actually make a profit from piracy. They sell your own wares cheaper and faster than your outdated infrastructure can. Remove your restrictions, lower your prices, speed up your release schedules, and make your products easier to purchase so that pirated versions don't look so attractive to fans. We applaud your recent hastening of DVD releases of movies and the combination CD/DVD audio releases. It is these sorts of changes that will bring customers back to you while chasing file sharers makes you look weak and grasping.
"The bad news is that you're up against a dedicated foe that is younger and smarter that you are and will be alive when you're dead. You're 55 years old and these kids are 17 and they're just smarter than you. So you're gonna lose that one." - John Perry Barlow (Lyricist for 'The Grateful Dead') (Co-founder the Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Authors - Jimmy Palmer and Ginger Cox
Comments
Most of the movie content made available through torrent sites is content still currently in theatres, and not available for sale yet. Shutting down those sites has nothing to do with DRMs, as the content is yet available to consumers.
#1
Random Walker on Jun 22 2006, 10:10
"They sell your own wares cheaper and faster than your outdated
infrastructure can. Remove your restrictions, lower your prices, speed up your release schedules,
and make your products easier to purchase so that pirated versions don't look so attractive to fans. "
Of course content is cheaper on P2P networks, they don't have to pay for the movie production.
To use an analogy, if instead of movies we were talking about cars, then you would be encouraging car makers not to put locks on cars, and praising car theives for selling cars cheaper than car dealers.
infrastructure can. Remove your restrictions, lower your prices, speed up your release schedules,
and make your products easier to purchase so that pirated versions don't look so attractive to fans. "
Of course content is cheaper on P2P networks, they don't have to pay for the movie production.
To use an analogy, if instead of movies we were talking about cars, then you would be encouraging car makers not to put locks on cars, and praising car theives for selling cars cheaper than car dealers.
#2
random walker on Jun 22 2006, 10:20
I know Random Walker is just a troll but I must respond...
----"Most of the movie content made available through torrent sites is content still currently in theatres.."----
Sorry guy but this is very incorrect. The vast majority of content available on torrent and P2P is older content.
----"then you would be encouraging car makers not to put locks on cars, and praising car theives for selling cars cheaper than car dealers"----
Obviously you did not read the same article I did. DRM Blog specifically suggested that the MPAA go after the theives that are actually stealing the content and not the end users who are downloading it.
Your car analogy is way off also. DRM does not equal locks. When you buy a car you get the keys and you own the car and you can do whatever you want with the car - Sell It - Modify It - Destroy It - basically you can use it any way you see fit.
If we were to put DRM on cars then it would be something more like this:
1. You can only use brand X gas.
2. You can only use brand Y oil.
3. You can only use the car on roads approved by the dealership.
You see Door Locks help protect the consumers investment. DRM does what for the consumer?
----"Most of the movie content made available through torrent sites is content still currently in theatres.."----
Sorry guy but this is very incorrect. The vast majority of content available on torrent and P2P is older content.
----"then you would be encouraging car makers not to put locks on cars, and praising car theives for selling cars cheaper than car dealers"----
Obviously you did not read the same article I did. DRM Blog specifically suggested that the MPAA go after the theives that are actually stealing the content and not the end users who are downloading it.
Your car analogy is way off also. DRM does not equal locks. When you buy a car you get the keys and you own the car and you can do whatever you want with the car - Sell It - Modify It - Destroy It - basically you can use it any way you see fit.
If we were to put DRM on cars then it would be something more like this:
1. You can only use brand X gas.
2. You can only use brand Y oil.
3. You can only use the car on roads approved by the dealership.
You see Door Locks help protect the consumers investment. DRM does what for the consumer?
#3
Notso Random on Jun 22 2006, 11:08
Its childish to call someone a troll just because they have a different view than yours
I wrote very specifically about movie content on P2P networks. Most of the MOVIE content (excluding porn) is theatrical window content.
Most non theatrical window content on P2P networks (which is smaller amount) is ripped from DVDs. DVDs could be said to be almost DRM less as they are rippable.
The origonal article stated that pirate networks are cheaper and better than Studio distribution, but the main point of the article seem to be about why restrictive DRMs are bad. I was trying to point out that most of the movie content on P2P networks is theatrical content and is not there because of anything to do with DRMs.
The fact that ripped content from DVDs does end up on P2P networks shows why Studios can not sell content unencrypted or with weak DRMs, because people will put the content on P2P networks, sell it, or use it to support their own business models (ad supported).
The analogy with cars has holes (as was pointed out), but the the biggest difference is who owns the asset. Its okay to lock your car when you own it, buts not okay for Studios to lock their content when they own it. You own the media (disc), not the content.
Its easy to write and complain about DRM, many people do. Why not try to design something better, which meets the needs of everyone (consumers, producers).
I hope this blog is not just going to be DRM is bad because ..... articles, but an open discussion without name calling.
I wrote very specifically about movie content on P2P networks. Most of the MOVIE content (excluding porn) is theatrical window content.
Most non theatrical window content on P2P networks (which is smaller amount) is ripped from DVDs. DVDs could be said to be almost DRM less as they are rippable.
The origonal article stated that pirate networks are cheaper and better than Studio distribution, but the main point of the article seem to be about why restrictive DRMs are bad. I was trying to point out that most of the movie content on P2P networks is theatrical content and is not there because of anything to do with DRMs.
The fact that ripped content from DVDs does end up on P2P networks shows why Studios can not sell content unencrypted or with weak DRMs, because people will put the content on P2P networks, sell it, or use it to support their own business models (ad supported).
The analogy with cars has holes (as was pointed out), but the the biggest difference is who owns the asset. Its okay to lock your car when you own it, buts not okay for Studios to lock their content when they own it. You own the media (disc), not the content.
Its easy to write and complain about DRM, many people do. Why not try to design something better, which meets the needs of everyone (consumers, producers).
I hope this blog is not just going to be DRM is bad because ..... articles, but an open discussion without name calling.
#4
random walker on Jun 22 2006, 19:51
"The fact that ripped content from DVDs does end up on P2P networks shows why Studios can not sell content unencrypted or with weak DRMs, because people will put the content on P2P networks, sell it, or use it to support their own business models (ad supported)."
You just pointed out a flaw in their business model with your cyclical logic.
What you basically said was:
Because encrypted dvds are pirated, they need to keep encrypting dvds or else they would be pirated, which they are already being."
You just pointed out a flaw in their business model with your cyclical logic.
What you basically said was:
Because encrypted dvds are pirated, they need to keep encrypting dvds or else they would be pirated, which they are already being."
#5
Anonymous on Jun 24 2006, 13:29
help me find to article and thesis drm system arsitecture and DRM Under Attack, Weaknesses in MS DRM (wmv adn wma fles), encryption
The author has not allowed comments to this entry
