Some of us knew this 30 years ago [LWN.net]

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 25, 2013 14:30 UTC (Thu) by shmerl (guest, #65921)
In reply to: Some of us knew this 30 years ago by Cyberax
Parent article: Android 4.3

Renting makes sense for physical objects since there is a clearly defined action of "take and give", but doesn't work well for files, since there is no good way of "taking the file back". Either those who lend should rely on honesty of the renter, or they'll turn to sick methods like DRM (malware) to remove those files. I'm OK with the first one (honesty of the renter), but digital distributors aren't, that's why I said that renting in the end doesn't make any sense, since malware is not an acceptable method.

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Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 25, 2013 14:53 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (4 responses)

Honesty of the renter? Ha. People immediately upload all the DVD releases to the PirateBay.

And please, don't overstate the invasiveness of DRM - in most cases it amounts to one binary-only module. And there are plans to remove even it.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 25, 2013 16:29 UTC (Thu) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link] (3 responses)

That's my point. People do it despite any DRM - i.e. those who do it, break the DRM and upload etc. DRM hinders only the legitimate users, not the pirates. So as I said, renting doesn't make any sense, since these services can't come up with renting method without DRM, and DRM is bad by default.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 25, 2013 16:34 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

Again, DRM for rentals hinders mostly illegal activities - like saving a rented movie permanently. Otherwise it's hard to imagine the problems with them.

Rentals are usually made from a device which is going to be used for watching. So no problem with cross-device compatibility, etc.

Well, DRM is also used for subscription-only services like Spotify.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 11:05 UTC (Fri) by ewan (guest, #5533) [Link] (1 responses)

"Again, DRM for rentals hinders mostly illegal activities - like saving a rented movie permanently."

I think the point is that it doesn't hinder illegal activities. If you're just going to ignore the law, you don't rent from a legal service in the first place - you go straight to the Pirate Bay et al. The only effect of DRM is to get in the way of people who've already made an active choice to try to co-operate with the media owners.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 12:17 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And it HEAVILY penalises legitimate users.

Just look at the Sony DRM for example - which would install and activate even if you told it not to! I believe that was responsible for trashing my system many moons ago.

Plus it laid the system wide open to malware ...

Cheers,
Wol