DRM Destroys Value: Why Years Old, But DRM Free, Devices Sell For Twice The Price Of New Devices
from the DRM-protects-who,-exactly? dept
Nothing takes value out of a product faster than DRM. Digital rights management has expanded into places where no "digital rights" should exist. What once was something clumsily inserted to "protect content creators" has now become a catch-all term for anything a manufacturer does to ensure that the end user never truly owns the product they purchased.
A small scanner in a coffee maker ensures you'll never use a competitor's coffee, even though purchasers thought they were purchasing a device rather than being sucked into the undercurrent of a revenue stream. The application of inkjet-esque DRM to a souped-up cat litter box means a $200 purchase will be outperformed by its $5 equivalent should you happen to run out of proprietary cleaning solution.
DRM takes purchases out of purchasers' hands. It nullifies the right of first sale by allowing the company -- not the end user -- to determine how the product will be used.
Public Knowledge's John Bergmayer points out that not only does this screw the customer, but it devalues the product itself.
Back in 2010, I paid $99 for an Apple TV--technically, the Apple TV (2nd generation). Recently, it stopped receiving software updates, so I decided to put it on eBay. I was surprised that I was able to sell a piece of four-year old electronics for $161--it's not often you make a profit on old devices.A 2nd-gen Apple TV isn't a collectors item. It's just worth more to people who want something more from their Apple TV than Apple is willing to give them.
The reason for this is simple--tinkerers have figured out how to jailbreak the 2nd generation Apple TV, but not the 3rd gen one, which is the one Apple currently sells (also for $99).Despite its name, there's nothing criminal about jailbreaking a device, although plenty of device manufacturers would argue otherwise. Jailbreaking returns control of the purchased device to the purchaser, and certain companies expend far too much capital and effort ensuring they can regain control with the next iteration. These same companies are either unable or unwilling to understand that products a purchaser can control are worth more than those boxed in by DRM.
A device that a user can modify, add capabilities to, and freely install software on is more valuable than one where she can't. And people are willing to pay for that capability. Pre-jailbroken Apple TVs are selling for around $230 on eBay right now.Brand new: $99. Last generation -- jail broken and untethered: more than twice that.
Certainly, most of the buying public is happy with dumbed-down devices forever enslaved to their makers. Diehard hobbyists, hackers and fans are a market to be courted, but very few companies do so, no matter how "forward-looking" they claim to be when touting their latest products.
Amazon's Fire TV, a direct competitor to Apple's offering, suffers from the same problem, but the company is even more aggressive in its thwarting of jailbreaking. Not only did a firmware update brick rooted devices, it also prevented rollback to earlier firmware versions. What value does that add to the product? What benefit does a purchaser derive from a move clearly meant to lock them into Amazon's ecosystem -- one in which the "purchased" product makes every effort it can to sell them even more stuff?
The market is there for goods you can actually OWN. Products are meant to be controlled by the people who purchased them. The insertion of DRM reverses this long-standing relationship, allowing companies to control purchasers -- and expecting them to pay (sometimes repeatedly) for the "privilege.".
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Filed Under: apple tv, drm, jailbreaking, resale value, secondary market, value
Companies: apple
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Re: Property
Consumers want a product, not a relationship.Subscribe: RSS
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Property
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Re: Property
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Re: Re: Property
Selling to Consumers:
Consuming products generates revenue
Consuming relationships generates ill-will.
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Re: Property
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Re: Property
They don't even want to work to get them. They want sheep who're already willing to be sheared. They've done their market research and learned there's lots more sheep out there than informed consumers, so they can do without complainers like us. It inconveniences them not one bit that I'll never buy anything they're offering, because there's plenty of marks out there willing to fall for this BS.
I imagine we're derided as "high maintenance" in their board rooms. We used to call this crap "planned obsolescence", where stuff was designed to fail soon after the warranty ran out. That wasn't good enough for them. Instead, they want us to be paying rent and upkeep continually after the purchase. Unacceptable. I refuse to play. I will not buy intentionally crippled tech. I'll also do everything in my power to lambaste anyone foolish enough to fall for this crap.
If any of our politicians were worth a plug nickel (ie., cared about their constituency), this disgusting practice would have been outlawed years ago. It's fraud. I buy a coffee maker, then I find out I need to buy the coffee from you too? I'll take my money back please, and please go out of business, and please take any other lieing bastards like you with you!
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Re: Re: Property
They're just looking for quick and dirty fucks. "High maintenance" is out of their league.
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If I can't jailbreak it, I don't buy it
I took it back to the AT&T store and returned it, explaining that I needed the S4 instead, and exactly why. Also, that I will no longer be buying my phones from AT&T, as it the problem was due to what AT&T did to the device rather than the device itself.
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Re: If I can't jailbreak it, I don't buy it
Fiio's allowing users to mod the interface of the X5 is one of the reasons (sound quality and format support being the others) I went for that device over others.
Kobo's support of the basic .epub format is why I went for a Kobo e-reader over a Kindle.
If the device ain't flexible, I ain't interested.
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Re: Re: If I can't jailbreak it, I don't buy it
I'm perfectly happy with my bare-bones flip phone from 07, and i wouldn't even have that if work and family didn't require it, but i find that i am a rarity in that regard. There are enough people out there who will keep buying whatever there is to buy no matter how absurd that the corporations will keep tightening the noose and eventually people like me will be left in a desolate wasteland of consumerist insanity with eyes worn out from constantly buldging at the draconian things society will accept in order to keep up with the joneses.
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Re: Re: Re: If I can't jailbreak it, I don't buy it
Break it.
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Oh, there is value for customers
Amazon will be able to offer content cheaper to the customer if its content providers are reasonably sure that customers will have to pay for every view and not be able in any manner to enjoy content more than once without paying extra.
Of course, many of today's offerings are such that you will not voluntarily watch them more than once anyway, but probably some houseguest would and be warned off purchasing a viewing of his or her own.
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Re: Oh, there is value for customers
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Re: Re: Oh, there is value for customers
He is a little off, but they sure look for each opportunity to put a talon or two into you.
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Re: Re: Re: Oh, there is value for customers
You can totally watch amazon video on Android, but you need to use their app to do it.
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Recommend a DRM-free ink-jet printer?
I have several old laser printers that I won't get rid of, because I've already learned how to get around their silly DRM.
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Re: Recommend a DRM-free ink-jet printer?
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Re: Re: Recommend a DRM-free ink-jet printer?
Lexmark then sued under the DMCA non-circumvention clause when someone broke the DRM. They lost.
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*"I was actually planning to buy a fire tv until I learned that you could no longer root it. I don't want to have to forgo updates just to be rooted. So I guess Amazon doesn't need my money."
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Because they expect you to have enough brains to proofread and "Preview" prior to "Submit"! Idiot.
Physician, heal thyself.
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FWIW, I seldom (if ever) have any trouble understanding you. Others, not so much.
/rant
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Because there's enough dishonesty and trolling in some parts around here without some people being able to retroactively change what others see them writing.
Even intelligent people make mistakes and typos, but the honest ones among us shouldn't mind admitting and correcting them, even if it can be a little annoying.
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hurts my soul
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Re: hurts my soul
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because the pirates steal from the bottom line; and that affects raises.
the developers, with a desire to see their quality work reach great heights, allows a DRM wrapper to be placed around their weeks of unpaid overtime and late nights.
when the product doesn't achieve greatness, because hot features were swapped with the mediocre DRM module, developers shows a sad face.
And the company can chant its new mantra - "As long as the DRM works, we aren't losing customers"
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Re: Re: Re: hurts my soul
They are, but most developers are well aware that the lies are lies. The issue is that the developers don't get to make those sorts of decisions. They are given the requirements and have to implement them, whether they like it or not.
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Most developers don't have that luxury, though. Where I am currently employed, there are a couple of hundred developers. It would be very difficult to pull off something like that here.
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Of course it devalues the product
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Re: Of course it devalues the product
If I am a hardware manufacturer with DRM coming out the buttock, I will still laugh all the way to the bank when I can keep selling my increasingly inferior crap. I wouldn't get any share of second hand anyway so why should I care about that, except for suing and in other ways discourage such unwanted behaviour?
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It amazes me that anyone sells anything these days. Why would anyone buy this crap? I much prefer old stuff that still works. Why buy new stuff that doesn't, or that only barely does dependant upon ...?
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Sometimes it's not only DRM that does this
Example in point: iPod Nanos. I love my 5th gen nano, but the newer ones are twice the size and dropped half the useful simple things in an effort to cram more useless "spiffiness" into them. The result: used 5th gens sell for considerably more than new 6th gens on Ebay. When mine finally dies, I will go there to buy one rather than fork out $150 for a new one from Apple.
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http://snow3rd.com/
The Apple TV 3rd gen. is already hacked...
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DON'T USE SNOW3RD
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Re: DON'T USE SNOW3RD
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If you could only buy gas at one chain of stations, only have service performed by the dealer, only listen to approved radio stations, and only drive in cities the manufacturer sanctioned---all under a possible penalty of massive fines and jail time---would you buy the car?
Maybe you would, who am I to say? (Maybe you think it's a really cool looking car and that outweighs the restrictions.) But if nothing else, it better be a lot cheaper in exchange for all that.
Not a perfect analogy, to be sure. But it hits at the value aspect of the argument, I think.
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If the car were cheap enough, then maybe. It would have to be cheap enough to be considered disposable, since I certainly wouldn't be getting it serviced. $500 new, perhaps?
But what I would never buy is a car that can be disabled by the manufacturer if they decide they don't want them on the road anymore, they don't like me, or any other reason.
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Isn't that basically a built-in feature these days with new cars? They all have some form of OnStar/SYNC/UConnect/etc. in them don't they? I'm pretty sure the ability to kill your car and lock the doors with OnStar exists even if you don't pay for the service.
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So Onstar works for the law, but not y'all.
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This is true, and is one of the main reasons why I don't buy cars made in recent years. Some day I won't have that option. Fortunately, for now anyway, it is trivially easy to disable those systems. When the day comes that I have a car that includes one, I'll just disable it.
It is almost a certainty that if the day comes when these systems are not trivial to disable, some car expert will figure out a way to disable it anyway.
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It's only a matter of time before cars become much like printers and game consoles, proprietary systems designed to reap profits on the back-end. It's no secret that Tesla makes more money selling a replacement [proprietary] battery than selling the car.
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Perhaps, but the important point there will be people doing it anyway. And if I can't find anyone, I'd probably just take a stab at it myself.
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Part of the appeal of the PS3 was that the military was building a super-computer using OtherOS, while tinkerers were building apps in Linux that could utilize the controller and output to your TV
DRM - and its laws - allowed Sony to one day Remove OtherOS because it didn't like how one tinkerer tinkered.
That's right - the product changed after purchase because the manufacturer didn't like the direction of the tinkering.
Sony "regretted the mistake", and compensated everyone with a free game.
So, DRM is more complicated than buying a car you can only service at an authorized service station. You describe perfectly the TOS or License to use said product(s).
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A free game that most of their customers already had....
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Onstar = FBIstar
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What if that special gas costs 50% more than normal gas? You may end up paying a lot more over the life of the car even with the initial 50% discount.
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Just say no!
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value for money
Also I have htc desire from anout 3/4 years back. Advice please
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value for money
Also I have htc desire from anout 3/4 years back. Advice please
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Re: value for money
To my knowledge, however, the Note 4 is rootable. I've had both (Note 2 and 4) and find the 4 is a significant upgrade over the 2. The screen is amazing, the camera is fantastic, and the S-Pen is far more useful and accurate. So far the battery life has been better, and I'm a fan of the "Private Mode" with fingerprint unlock to secure private data but leave the phone able to unlock quickly for normal use.
Granted, I haven't rooted my phone as I've found the default interface works fine for my purposes and any advanced features I want are easily covered by Tasker even without root. Rooting is only useful if you're going to use it for a specific purpose, otherwise it's really a waste of time.
I appreciate that it's available, and if I found some software that could only be used rooted that I wanted, I'd root in a heartbeat. But between Tasker and the fact that Wi-Fi tethering no longer requires root (I use my Note 4's 4g to give internet connection wirelessly to my Nvidia Shield Tablet) I haven't seen much point.
Overall Android is only restrictive if you're a power-user interested in the absolute limits of your device. For the average user you probably wouldn't even notice the difference between your rooted and standard phone, and even for power-users there's a surprising amount you can do even without root. I wouldn't worry about it, but it's nice to have the option.
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Re: Re: value for money
It's pretty much mandatory if you are at all concerned about securing it. You have to root in order to install a firewall, for instance.
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Onstar
So whether you subscribe to Onstar or not. Onstar still makes a profit off you, the car owner. As the old saying goes. Your personal information is the product being bought, sold, and traded for profit. In this case it's your real-time location information.
Onstar might even be uploaded how many times you exceed the speed limit and sell that data to insurance companies for profit. It's hard to tell what's being uploaded with cellular modem and GPS equipped cars. I personally rip all the antennas off new cars I buy. I hate my personal life being the product being sold.
If I need GPS navigation. I use a GPS device which can only receive a signal, not transmit one.
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I ditched my Fire TV for other streaming devices
I would never again consider a streaming appliance that locks me into a seller's ecosystem (Apple TV being the worst). That defeats one of the major benefits of streaming, which is choice.
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