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

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 10:51 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Some of us knew this 30 years ago by shmerl
Parent article: Android 4.3

Can't the goal be simply just to sell something to people?

No, because you can only do it once. DRM ensures that you can sell the same thing dozen of times (once for NES, then for SNES, then for PlayStation, then for PSP, then for Android). Take a look on list of platforms here and notice that Android or iTunes is still bringing them good money.

Music industry lost and was forced to drop DRM because they did a mistake 30 years ago when they started releasing digital copies without DRM. They are pretty much unique in this regard - few other industries are in similar position.

Those who don't want to buy and want to pirate, will do it no matter DRM or not.

Right, but these people are not very interesting. You want to make life harder for them by to reduce their population, but it's hard to receive money from them. DRM ensures that Joe Average will continue to pay - and it does that nicely.

They are less likely to do that with content which is sold DRM free.

Really? How many games can you name which was were put on TPB because it was DRM-free? How many games sold by GOG were spared because "it's not even a challenge"? Puhlease.

If anything music industry story showed that sale of DRM-free digital content makes it hard to sell DRMed content later, nothing more, nothing less.

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Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 12:09 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (3 responses)

Music industry lost and was forced to drop DRM because they did a mistake 30 years ago when they started releasing digital copies without DRM. They are pretty much unique in this regard - few other industries are in similar position.

As we all know, the music industry made several attempts to reintroduce DRM, which obviously doesn't "protect" music already released on CD, but it quite clearly had the potential to "protect" newly released music. Unfortunately, the industry made several mistakes: incorporating rootkits, making non-standard media that wouldn't work in various devices, releasing some works with DRM in some regions and not in others, to name but a few.

It doesn't help that the people in charge of the music industry had their business practically running by itself without any need to exercise any serious judgement - that's what you get when you have a state-enforced revenue stream and free advertising on state-funded media - so that when the time came to make important decisions that would have a serious impact on their future, they were arguably not competent enough to execute a coherent strategy.

There are plenty of other reasons why the music industry has imploded, notably in retail. Specialised music retailers have effectively retreated from music, tried to sell games and DVDs, and where I live have mostly gone out of business. Many of their former customers will not have switched to unlicensed downloads but will have gone to online retailers who offered the choice and convenience that the physical retailers used to do, albeit in their traditional clumsy fashion.

You can see the same phenomenon with book retailing. People still buy books and they can't easily copy and redistribute those books. So why are physical retailers failing? Because they can't offer the choice and convenience of online retailers, even though they can offer the immediate acquisition of the goods. What have many of these retailers done? They have pared down the choice, emphasised blockbusters and things like travel literature, introduced toys and games and other things. Does that draw in the customers they have been losing? Of course not: those people were not interested in toys, games and travel books. And so those retailers will continue their cost-reducing, revenue-reducing strategy until they give up as well.

But notice that DRM is not a credible excuse for the book business. I would argue that it isn't much of an excuse for the music business, either. Customer convenience has been the decider in both businesses, and the traditional custodians of those industries have failed to understand this. But for the music business, DRM is the quick fix that executives hope can bring back the glory days. Well, those days are gone forever.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 12:29 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (2 responses)

> But notice that DRM is not a credible excuse for the book business.

Indeed, books have a long, long history of being The Way of Conveying Information that DRM on them easily maps to well-known instances of dystopias (nineteen eighty-four (revising published books is much easier when e.g. Amazon can recall the old edition, delete your notes and you can't save the old verision), Fahrenheit 451 (You no longer have permission to read this book), etc.)

Movies are sufficiently recent that they don't carry as much cultural cautions that have grown around books (book burnings, libraries, censorship).

Unfortunately, many libraries seem to be abdicating their responsibilities on the DRM front, as are the general public.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 12:32 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (guest, #56877) [Link] (1 responses)

Fahrenheit 451: also, they had only vapid TV shows and electronic magazines (iirc). Indeed, all physical books were banned.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 27, 2013 18:39 UTC (Sat) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Fahrenheit 451 was about more than a dystopia where books get burned; there was a lot of nostalgic and Ludditic feelings expressed in it. Physical interaction was described as inherently better and as being a lost part of the family workings (in 1953!). I think the vapid TV was more a statement that *all* TV is vapid compared (not just reality shows, but also the news, documentaries, etc.) to books and newpapers, family time, and other activities of old.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 15:22 UTC (Fri) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link] (5 responses)

> DRM ensures that Joe Average will continue to pay - and it does that nicely.

DRM doesn't ensure that. If anything, DRM reduces the number of people who pay. As I said, availability of convenient services makes for people easier to pay. DRM does nothing to increase the amount of paying users - it does the opposite (decreases that amount).

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 26, 2013 22:50 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses)

That's nice theory, but it does not pass the reality check.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 28, 2013 6:16 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link] (3 responses)

What reality check is that? Care to share some numbers that demonstrate that DRM reduces piracy? You can't because there aren't any.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 28, 2013 15:24 UTC (Sun) by raven667 (guest, #5198) [Link] (2 responses)

Maybe to explain this another way, the extent to which DRM actually reduces piracy is not terribly important, the _belief_ that it does so by the content distributors _IS_ very important. As long as they believe that DRM is necessary to prevent rampant fraud they will continue to use it and it will be used on the legitimate store fronts for content.

Also, no everyone is comfortable with pirating content at all. I got into Linux and open source so that I could use the best software in the world legally with the appropriate licenses and with a clear conscience.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 28, 2013 22:19 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]

Instead of believing in ephemeral benefits of DRM which they can't even evaluate they should pay attention to the very practical and concrete issue of quality and usability which are reduced by DRM. I thought those are business people and not some wild gamblers who make their decisions based on random beliefs.

Some of us knew this 30 years ago

Posted Jul 28, 2013 22:22 UTC (Sun) by shmerl (guest, #65921) [Link]

But I think they aren't so dumb as to cripple their own products based on some fake beliefs. There is more reason to assume that they use DRM for different purposes which have nothing to do with piracy. And those purposes can't possibly ever be good for end users.