Why I Hate DRM (Example 147,000,000)

Hopefully, Apple will eventually be able to convince the studios to drop their requirements for DRM, as they did with the music publishers. It’ll probably take some time, though.

If you remain totally honest AND don’t spend anymore money on cables/connectors and/or an Apple TV or something, it sounds like you have that $40 lesson.

However, the Carnegie Medal in Literature writer you know (himself) obviously gets those same episodes in the US day-of-transmission in the UK. Without assuming everything that’s going on there, he has mentioned he buys the seasons for himself and copies for friends and family to compensate the show in question, but YMMV. I pass no judgements, make no real assumptions, and offer the above only as an example.

On a slightly related note – you’re in the area, ever consider visiting Gallifrey One, the LA-based Doctor Who convention? It’s nothing like a current comicon or Trek convention, though I imagine it’s what a Trek convention was like very early on. A little more than 1500 con-goers, panels with actors and other creatives current and past, dealers, etc. Use the Googles. We’d love to see you there, Wil.

iTunes was a lot worse before the EU’s anti-trust unit made them give up AAC.
-
In other news, its funny to see Marvel and DC begin heading down the DRM make customers hate you path after watching the music industry fail so badly at it.

I already had this lesson taught to me by the fine folks at Microsoft and the zune videos. The zune videos sold by MS should be compatible with streaming over their media center computers, NOT. Also the DRM attached to these videos won’t allow you to play on another computer (even if you are logged into zune software) It worked intially and then the drm started popping up messages that I don’t own the videos bla bla bla. I played this game for a few weeks with their customer support, now guess where all of my videos come from?? Are you paying attention media companies? I guess common sense has no place in big business (except for Paramount who is starting to figure it out)- rant finished :)

The question is, though, how can we ever hope to change this situation? If everyone always paid on the nose and did it strictly the legal way, what incentive would Apple or any of the other content vendors or producers have to change things? Zero.

I’m not supporting the freetards who just take because they can and for the lols, but those who would pay but don’t because they would rather break the law than knuckle under are probably the ones who will eventually persuade the media moguls to lighten up. It can be done – we now have plenty of music available legitimately in no-DRM MP3 format, precisely because the labels were convinced that they’d bring the ‘I-would-pay-if’ crowd back into the fold by doing so, and by and large that seems to be working. Freetards will always find ways not to pay – they aren’t the reason for the DRM and never have been. DRM is about imposing a use model in order to protect a business model.

The market only works if both sides of the deal have some power. Right now the only power the consumer has is not to buy. That only works if there’s genuine choice in the market, and in this market, there clearly isn’t. The law is disproportionately weighted in favour of Big Media and has been for years. If a little bit of law-breaking will help to change that, I think you could argue that it’s a moral thing to do. Bad laws and bought legislators deserve to be challenged.

All that aside, when you do finally get around to watching S5, you’ll enjoy it. IMHO it’s the best yet.

Well put. When I’ve paid for something, I’d like to be able to use/consume it whenever and however I want because I have acquired that right. DRM takes that away from me or at least seriously restricts it by locking it to one platform.
DRM is one of the main reasons I won’t ever buy Apple products.

You already paid for it, so you might as well just torrent it this one time. You will just be trying to get the product you paid for.

I think this goes bad to any kind of “bad” (bad from my point of view at least) behavior. Trying to legislate and be clever seldom works. Trying to force someone into another behavior also tends to be a failure. Crime rates show us that if nothing else.

Yet we have the media industry, which ironically you Wil are part of, trying to force us, the consumers, which equally ironically means you Wil:), into a behavioral pattern. But what a fantastically stupid pattern they are trying to enforce!

I feel that two things are important. That it’s important to remember that forcing isn’t the way to go, encouraging is. Encourage us with better service, better software, better media, and better deals. Take services like hulu, netflix, and iTunes and bring them from mediocre (for different reasons, from bad software to useless DRM) to awesome. People are buying $499+ iPads, so people can spend money, but only if you, the media industry, makes it compelling in a non-last-millenia-way.

The other thing is related to you Wil, if you are reading. Talk to your friends in the industry, have them talk to their friends, start a movement. It is super awesome to read you guys tweets and the idea of ripping you, Gaiman, Savage, or Prady off feels inherently wrong. You are the people we want to get closer to, it’s your media we want to consume. The creators. Help build momentum to something positive, where I consume in a fair (for both parties!) and fun way!

Don’t blame DRM, blame the real culprits, the thieves who acquire and distribute digital materials by not paying. They are the ones stealing time from your life and money out of your pocket, and most of them think it is their right to do so. In additional to being criminals, how utterly callous and selfish and short-sighted they are. Eventually they will make it so that truly creative materials will be available only to those who can afford to live in online “gated communities.”

Damn straight Wil! Well said.

DRM is crap. It is extremely easy to get pirated material. I purchased all the new Dr. Who seasons on DVD and promptly ripped them into happy files I can enjoy without lugging around the discs. I have no qualms about paying for content; I strongly feel the creators deserve their compensation for all the work put into the product and by doing so, encourage future releases. DRM simply stops non-tech-savvy users, a minority in this generation, from the goods. Now it only servers to discourage lawful purchase.

It’s worth noting that Apple hates DRM as much as we all do. See Steve Jobs’s open letter on the subject at apple.com. Unfortunately, while the music studios have come around to the reality that DRM does nothing but harm, the TV/movie studios haven’t made the leap yet.

As soon as the studios allow it, I would expect DRM to disappear from iTunes video content.

Plug iPhone into iTunes.
Drag DRM’d items you wish to watch to iPhone.
Plug A/V cable into iPhone and TV.
Enjoy!

You’ve bought the product already. Just torrent the files if they’re not working in the format you want. . .

I do things legally too! My friends make fun of me. Then they tell me the reason they won’t buy music on iTunes is because they raised prices to $1.29. Then I tell them the reason they had to raise it is because people like them keep stealing music. They don’t really care.

I absolutely love series 3! But you’ll be fine starting in on series 5. I’d definitely wait to start series 4, though, until you’ve finished 3.

You know what else is annoying? Being good and doing things legally, then having your computer die and having to buy everything all over again! Ugh!

Sounds like the old, the Paladin has a moral objection to a law in the city he’s now forced to work in. Do you break the law? No you can’t. You’d lose your spells/powers and tick off your God. Can you circumvent the law for the greater good? Nup. Half a lie is a whole lie to a Paladin.

You can’t even really break the law in protest. All you’re left with is to follow the law (buy the cables, because frankly, they’ll be useful later anyway), but lodge a formal complaint to the evil government that be.

Or if it’s a longer campaign, use your high Cha to generate a grass-roots movement against this morally reprehensible law, and get it changed that way.

To sum up: yes to cables and effort to change law legally; no to anything else that makes your God look at you askew.

Faithfully Yours,

I AM NOT A GEEK!
I’m a level 8 Paladin!

Wil,

Please outgrow the false notion that sharing digital files = stealing. Digital information is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Everything else non-rivalrous and non-excludable — air, the color blue, over-the-air television — is considered a public good. The only reason digital information is falsely equated with property is that its free exchange *breaks the existing business model.*

The only way to control the free flow of information is to create a police state that monitors all electronic communication seeking ostensibly “owned” content. This is what your beloved content industry is trying to do through their manipulation of the secret trade agreement called ACTA. How can you lament DRM without realizing it is inseparable from the phony claim that sharing digital bits = stealing?

The fact that all digital media is freely shareable worldwide for no cost is not a bug, it’s a glorious feature. It is the greatest public good humanity has ever seen. The solution isn’t to criminalize those who share culture. The correct solution — if the dying content industry didn’t have its head too far up its own assets — is to celebrate joyously and (all together now) FIND A NEW BUSINESS MODEL.

Young people share culture freely and don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about it because they know they’re not thieves. Please, please stop perpetuating the lie that people who share culture freely are criminals. They’ve only been criminalized by our corrupt system that empowers content owners (not creators, btw) to make the laws.

It’s no one’s job to sell me air to breathe. People don’t try to make money for a living in the air business. But there are people who make their living making music or movies or TV shows, and that’s why file sharing is stealing. They worked hard to make that product, and instead of giving them the payment they deserve and need, you’re just going to take it from them. Is it right for me to go to a restaurant and just take the meal that someone has made for me? No, and I’m not going to just take that digital file for free, either. That’s someone’s way of income. I wouldn’t want someone to take mine, so I’m not going to take theirs.

I have to admit that I disagree with everything that has been said. Not about file sharing or pirating (which has always struck me as a strange term since no one is holding a cutlass to the studio heads) but the latest season of “Doctor Who” with Matt Smith is terrible. I’ve watched the show since Tom Baker and feel that Matt is to young to play the complicated role. I feel as if the whole show has had a twilight tween make over. This season has felt like one emotionless stumble after another and the lack of highs and lows has me feeling a bit grounded. One final full circle note, pirating is bad!

Also, remember to add to the list of “types of people” those who would love to pay for things but can’t afford to, and instead turn to what is ostensibly the library that is the internet when they want to borrow some media, because their local library doesn’t happen to carry what they are interested in.

@ DanielAtlanta – Illegal downloaders are not the ‘real culprits’ for DRM being so prohibitive. The studios who use it are.

Illegal downloaders do not ‘steal your life and your money’. They do steal content (sorry Magicpeacelove) but the main loser there is the studio NOT the creator – that is what the writers guild strikes were ALL ABOUT, the fact that studios refuse to give creators a fair share of online revenue.

Some illegal downloaders feel that if the creator of the content is not going to get their fair share of the revenue, then they shouldn’t have to pay for it (not saying it’s right, just saying that’s how some people feel). While the studios do provide a big service to creators (in terms of equipment/space/expertise/marketing etc) it has been proven over and over again that quality content can be achieved without the studios: Dr Horrible, The Guild, Kickass (comic and movie), to name my favourites.

The model of production is changing and the TV networks are just doing whatever they can to inhibit that change because they can’t figure out how to effectively monetise it. Remember, network TV isn’t about quality programming, it’s about a vehicle to ensure people watch commercials. Until they can figure out a way to force people to watch commercials (thanks for trying to create a way to do that Steve Jobs! NOT) they won’t backing online content and will miss out on the market. Hence, they try to demonise illegal downloaders who only want access to their content.

EG: I occasionally torrent shows that are on in the US but not in the UK. Partly because many of the sites I visit are US based and I will hear spoilers, and partly because I don’t want to have to watch 15 minutes of commercials for every hour of TV I watch. When the show is available to buy on DVD boxset, I buy it. The creator gets their few cents, the production studio gets their money and I get a few cool extras. I used to also have the shows on when they aired in the UK in the mistaken belief that this would have some effect on the renewal of the show, but then I realised that US studios and networks only care about US audiences.

“I don’t have to pay for air, why should I have to pay for media content?”

To anyone who’s asking that question seriously, please read some science fiction novels (Heinlein and Varley come to mind) about people living on the Moon, where air isn’t free — because it’s a scarce resource, hard to make, and REALLY hard to keep clean — and see how well your analogy holds up.

I feel your frustration Wil. I just rented some ITunes movies on my Ipad for a trip. Didn’t watch all of them while away, and assumed I could transfer them to Itunes to be able to watch on the PC/TV when I got home.
No Such Luck!
Took me a while to find the small print on the Apple site informing me that movies rented through Itunes on a PC can be transferred to an Ipad, but movies rented directly on Ipad can’t go the other way.
How unfair, pointless, stupid and limiting is that?
I did find some software that would let me transfer the files to the PC, but they still wouldn’t play in Itunes.
You gotta love the DRM.

From one iTunes hater to another (I began my revolt against them in 2005) after having legal copies of files trashed by iTunes, I have found another site that just works with my xBox… Amazon has a lot of what iTunes has and I’ve been able to stream most directly from my PC to my xbox…

Oh and it also streams directly to my Vizio TV from Amazon Video on Demand

Doctor Who series 5 definitely isn’t the best, but I think it’s been getting a little better near the end.

At least you young whipper-snappers have options…

Back in my day (70′s and 80′s), record companies would pick a single or 2 off an album for radio play. If you liked the song(s) you would go to a “store” and buy the entire “album”. All the while you had fingers crossed that the rest of the album didn’t suck.
The only way you heard any of the other songs on the album was either hearing them from someone who bought the album or attending a concert.
90% of the time the other songs sucked. You paid $8 – $10 for 1 or 2 decent tracks.

Yes, albums were around 10 bucks so if you figure in inflation, music is stupid cheap now and you don’t have to get the B sides.
Now, get off the lawn you meddling youngsters!

This is the exact reason why I *refuse* to buy music from iTunes.. or anywhere else online, for that matter.
Every single thing I’ve ever purchased properly on iTunes I’ve ended up losing because the DRM fucked me over in one way or another. I learned my lesson there quick- I always buy actual hard copies of my media now. If I’m going to spend a good chunk of change on media I want to be able to play it in whatever manner I deem fit.

I’ve also gotten off the itunes bandwagon. I made the mistake of buying a movie, that won’t let me burn it to an actual DVD to watch on my TV. Now I’m stuck with only watching it on my computer, or downloading a torrent and buring that (which should be within my rights, as I now own it, I just can’t really use it).

As for Doctor Who, they do run the current season on the Syfy channel, 2 weeks behind the British broadcast, or you can watch them at the BBC website if you change your web proxy so it thinks you are in the UK (if you’re not). You can also watch them online at various sites thru streaming video, usually within a few hrs of broadcast. Now downloading required. Just ask Mr Google to show you where

To offer a purely pragmatic solution for your xbox based viewing (rather than talk about rights and wrongs of DRM).
Use the XMBC iview plugin…. and
http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-boxee-iview/

watch it on iview :
http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/index

Which raises the question. If as an Aussie I can watch this for free on the ABC, why can’t I watch the same same content from a different source for free. I am a simple person, thus confused.

>without paying anything to BBC.

that’s because they don’t want you to just pay the BBC, you’re supposed to also pay Apple, Microsoft (for using the Xbox that you already own), whoever made your TV, whoever made the cables that connect your mac to your xbox and your xbox to your tv, and whoever made the chair that you’re sitting on. And if you’re wearing glasses, you have to pay them for letting the images through.