AP's Attempt At DRM'ing The News Shuts Down

from the total-failure dept

Plenty of people rightly mocked the news a few years ago that the Associated Press was working on a plan to "DRM the news." The idea was to put some sort of licensing mechanism together to get news aggregators to pay to promote their news. This seemed incredibly dumb for a whole host of reasons. It added no value. Its only purpose was to limit the value for everyone in the system by putting a tollbooth where none needed to exist. When it finally launched last year to great fanfare in the newspaper world, under the name "NewsRight," we pointed out that, once again, it made no sense. Basically, the whole focus appeared to be on getting bloggers and aggregators to pay for a license they legally did not need.

Since the launch... we heard absolutely nothing about NewsRight. There was a launch, with its newspaper backers claiming it was some huge moment for newspapers, and then nothing.

Well, until now, when we find out that NewsRight quietly shut down. Apparently, among its many problems, many of the big name news organization that owned NewsRight wouldn't even include their own works as part of the "license" because they feared cannibalizing revenue from other sources. So, take legacy companies that are backwards looking, combine it with a licensing scheme based on no legal right, a lack of any actual added value and (finally) mix in players who are scared of cannibalizing some cash cow... and it adds up to an easy failure.

Filed Under: drm, journalism, licensing, news
Companies: associated press, newsright

Will Wright Says SimCity Launch Was 'Inexcusable'

from the from-god's-lips dept

While we recently discussed how EA's silence has managed to push the backlash over the SimCity launch debacle into the background, anyone at all familiar with the story realizes what a complete botch it was. The initial backlash was bad enough, but it was made all the worse when company executive after company executive came out of the woodwork to excuse, obscure, and otherwise make misleading comments about the more egregious aspects of the launch failure. The most frustrating of these was the insistence that the online requirement for the game was in no way a form of DRM, it was a simply a matter of vision in core gameplay, and anyone confusing the two doesn't understand the gaming software business.

You know who does know a great deal about that business, however? The creator of the Sim City franchise, and legend, Will Wright. And when asked to comment about the latest iteration of the franchise, which he didn't have a hand in, he spoke quite plainly.

"I feel bad for the team", he says. "I could have predicted - I kind of did predict there'd be a big backlash about the DRM stuff."

Yeah, that's Wright telling EA that they should have seen this coming. He goes on to say that he actually enjoys the game quite a bit, but adds in some fairly harsh words for the anti-customer method of the launch.

"That was basically inexcusable, that you charge somebody $60 for a game and they can't play it. I can understand the outrage. If I was a consumer buying the game and that happened to me, I'd feel the same."

To understand the gravity of a legend like Wright making these comments, it would be as if the leaders of the world went on a world tour telling you how great the entire planet was in every way and how you had only them to thank for it being so mega-awesome, all the while war, murder and famine occurred around you. Then, just as you were getting fed up with the lies and BS, whatever God you might believe in parted the heavens, poked his head through, and said, "Hey, not bad, but you guys kind of f%@#ed the whole thing up."

Filed Under: drm, simcity, will wright
Companies: ea

The Fight Over DRM In HTML5 Should Represent The Last Stand For DRM

from the time-to-get-past-a-bad-idea dept

Back in January, we noted our disappointment with the news that there was a proposal underway to add DRM to HTML5 (called "Encrypted Media Extensions" or EME), backed by Microsoft, Netflix and Google. It was further disappointing to see web creator Tim Berners-Lee defend the proposal, saying that it was necessary or "people will just go back to using Flash." While the W3C has tried to defend this position by saying that it's not really about DRM -- and has said it will convene a group to "investigate how to keep the Web maximally open" -- there are still pretty big concerns about this proposal. And it seems quite clear that DRM and locking up content is at the heart of it.

Netflix, perhaps the biggest supporter of the proposal, has noted that it cannot support HTML5 until such support is added, and made it clear that the DRM part is what matters.

The video content we stream to customers is protected with Digital Rights Management (DRM). This is a requirement for any premium subscription video service. The Encrypted Media Extensions allow us to play protected video content in the browser by providing a standardized way for DRM systems to be used with the media element. For example, the specification identifies an encrypted stream format (Common Encryption for the ISO file format, using AES-128 counter mode) and defines how the DRM license challenge/response is handled, both in ways that are independent of any particular DRM. We need to continue to use DRM whether we use a browser plugin or the HTML5 media element, and these extensions make it possible for us to integrate with a variety of DRM systems that may be used by the browser.

This seems disingenuous. While Netflix and its studio partners may like DRM, there is no reason that it actually "is a requirement for any premium subscription video service." Lots of professional content and marketplaces work without DRM. Yes, some will copy, but most don't seem to bother. There is no reason that this needs to be built in, and there are many consequences for doing so.

A variety of groups are now speaking out in response to all of this and hitting back against the plan. The EFF's Peter Eckersley and Seth Schoen penned a detailed explanation for why this is a bad idea:

In the past two decades, there has been an ongoing struggle between two views of how Internet technology should work. One philosophy has been that the Web needs to be a universal ecosystem that is based on open standards and fully implementable on equal terms by anyone, anywhere, without permission or negotiation. This is the technological tradition that gave us HTML and HTTP in the first place, and epoch-defining innovations like wikis, search engines, blogs, webmail, applications written in JavaScript, repurposable online maps, and a hundred million specific websites that this paragraph is too short to list.

The other view has been represented by corporations that have tried to seize control of the Web with their own proprietary extensions. It has been represented by technologies like Adobe's Flash, Microsoft's Silverlight, and pushes by Apple, phone companies, and others toward highly restrictive new platforms. These technologies are intended to be available from a single source or to require permission for new implementations. Whenever these technologies have become popular, they have inflicted damage on the open ecosystems around them. Websites that depend on Flash or Silverlight typically can't be linked to properly, can't be indexed, can't be translated by machine, can't be accessed by users with disabilities, don't work on all devices, and pose security and privacy risks to their users. Platforms and devices that restrict their users inevitably prevent important innovations and hamper marketplace competition.

The EME proposal suffers from many of these problems because it explicitly abdicates responsibilty on compatibility issues and let web sites require specific proprietary third-party software or even special hardware and particular operating systems (all referred to under the generic name "content decryption modules", or CDMs, and none of them specified by EME). EME's authors keep saying that what CDMs are, and do, and where they come from is totally outside of the scope of EME, and that EME itself can't be thought of as DRM because not all CDMs are DRM systems. Yet if the client can't prove it's running the particular proprietary thing the site demands, and hence doesn't have an approved CDM, it can't render the site's content. Perversely, this is exactly the reverse of the reason that the World Wide Web Consortium exists in the first place. W3C is there to create comprehensible, publicly-implementable standards that will guarantee interoperability, not to facilitate an explosion of new mutually-incompatible software and of sites and services that can only be accessed by particular devices or applications. But EME is a proposal to bring exactly that dysfunctional dynamic into HTML5, even risking a return to the "bad old days, before the Web" of deliberately limited interoperability.

In response to all of this the Free Software Foundation and Defective by Design launched a campaign against DRM in HTML5, and last week delivered a petition to the W3C against the plan (though you can still sign the petition) and awarded the W3C "the best supporting role in The Hollyweb.

The simple fact is that DRM doesn't work and has tremendous unintended consequences that tend to harm legitimate buyers of works. It decreases their value while doing little to stop infringement. Lots of people have realized this for years, but it's true that many in copyright-heavy fields still live under the delusion that DRM actually does something useful. And, it might: the only thing that DRM effectively does is give legacy players a veto right on new and innovative technologies.

That's really not something the W3C should be supporting -- nor, frankly, is it something that Netflix, Google and Microsoft should be supporting.

Business models for content work just fine without DRM. It's time that the industries producing content finally recognize that. Music has mostly gotten there, but clearly the movie industry is still behind the times on this one. If HTML5 provides enough value without DRM, Netflix and others will figure out how to adopt it eventually. The benefits of using it will just be too powerful to avoid, even if some freak out about the lack of built-in DRM. The industry needs to get over its silly obsession with DRM and to move forward with more compelling technologies and innovation.

Filed Under: drm, html5
Companies: netflix

Tor Books UK Says Ditching DRM Showed No Increase In Piracy

from the of-course-not dept

We've never quite understood the purpose behind DRM, and have said so many times. It doesn't stop infringement, because the DRM is always cracked, and the crack always leads to a clean version. And once you have a clean version, it's available everywhere. Those who want to infringe will do so. So, in the end, the only thing DRM does is (1) annoy legitimate buyers and (2) lock in certain platforms such that the ebook platform providers (hello Amazon!) have much more power than the publishers. Given that, I've been amazed for years that the ebook world hasn't moved more strongly towards a DRM-free world, which the music industry was eventually forced to embrace (with little corresponding harm). A number of smaller publishers have embraced the promise of DRM-free ebooks, and a year ago, Tor, publishers of lots of popular sci-fi works, made plenty of news for going DRM-free in both the US and the UK.

Zac Morris was the first of a few of you to point us to a blog post from Tor UK talking about the impact one year later with the key line being:

As it is, we've seen no discernible increase in piracy on any of our titles, despite them being DRM-free for nearly a year.

Given the point we made above, this is hardly surprising. In fact, it seems almost silly to look at all the fears some had about the move to DRM-free. In fact, it looked like Tor was a lot more worried about it than its authors. As the blog post notes, when it carefully approached its authors, including some best sellers, they were eager to support the move, with many applauding the publisher for taking that step, rather than being anti-consumer. Tor notes that the very fact that both its customers and authors seemed aligned on this issue made the decision much easier to make in the long run.

Of course, the real question now is who's next? I'm still amazed that any publisher thinks that DRM is a good idea. Now Tor's provided more evidence that removing it doesn't increase infringement rates. So, in one single move, publishers can provide significantly more value and convenience for ebook buyers, and take some of the power away from Amazon without any risk of greater infringement. It's astounding that publishers aren't pushing each other aside to make a similar move.

Filed Under: drm
Companies: tor books

Attention Game Developers And Console Manufacturers: 'Always On' Is NOT The Same As 'Always Connectable'

from the for-starters,-one's-an-imposition dept

Game publishers and console manufacturers have been feeling some intensified heat from customers about "always on" requirements. (SimCity, anyone?) Microsoft has been battling rumours that the new Xbox will need an internet connection to function, an issue greatly magnified by some unfortunate tweets by its (former) Creative Director.

Ubisoft has played the villain quite frequently in recent years, lacing its single player games with DRM requiring (at minimum) an initial internet connection at bootup. The CEO of Ubisoft Montreal (Yannis Mallat) seems to be perfectly fine with "always online" next gen consoles, stating simply, "I would say that a lot of people are already always online through other devices. I would suspect the audience is ready."

It almost seems like a logical statement, but Mallat is making some huge assumptions about what the public is "ready" for. A console that won't do anything without (at the very least) phoning home isn't one of them, as indie game developer Rob Fearon (a.k.a. Rob Remakes -- creator of DRM, a game with absolutely no DRM) points out in his rather devastating response post.

Look, we really need to start making the difference clear here. Lots of people are always connectible through other devices not always online. My iThing is always connectible, my computer is always connectible, my Xbox360 is always connectible. None are always online. Neither do they require me to be online to be functional.

Those pushing for this sort of "innovation" continually point to the fact that many people spend a great deal of time on the internet as an indication that the public is dying to purchase a console that requires an always-on connection, even though no console has ever required that in the past. If this half-assed assumption/analogy fails to do the job, they trot out several others. Rob has answers for each and every one of these industry-tropes-in-the-making.

"Steam requires an internet connection."

Even Steam which is for the most part like a rock, that falls on its arse occasionally. Thing is, if Steam falls on its arse occasionally then that’s OK because I don’t need to be connected most of the time providing I’ve got a nice offline mode to rely on.

"Your phone always needs to be 'connected.'"

My phone is always on, yeah. And there’s loads of times where I can’t use my phone because the signal drops, the phone goes a bit bonkers for some reason, I’m in a lead lined shed like I think our local Asda is or something. I dunno. Thing is, my one big “always on” device has more time where I can’t use it than anything else I own. This is something to aspire to? Something that’s not always functional like my phone?

"Cable/DSL? That flows right into your house like water from a tap you can't shut off, right?"

Always on, except when it isn't. No one has 100% uptime. No one. Even the services behind these consoles, like Xbox Live, experience downtime. What then? A console that needs to connect to play a game is effectively shut down because the underlying platform is undergoing routine maintenance/hacking.

There's no comparison that results in 100% uptime, or any percentage that's going to satisfy someone who's just shelled out $500 for a paperweight that contains all the hardware and software to play games but simply won't unless something on the other end gives the thumbs up.

I’m not really convinced I want a console that’s as always on as my phone is. I’m not really convinced I want a console that’s as always on as my cable is. Because I want to just be able to play my console. I don’t want to buy into something that has less uptime than what I already have, I don’t want to buy something less likely to let me play when I want.

This is what people are worried about and this is why they're irate. If a console manufacturer decides to add this requirement to its hardware, it will be going against the wishes of its customers solely to satisfy its own agenda(s). That agenda may be to push its online services harder. That agenda may be to reduce piracy. That agenda may be to cut out the secondhand market. All of these agendas cater to the desires of the manufacture. They do absolutely nothing for the end users.

Ubisoft's CEO thinks the audience is ready. It's a bullshit statement. Certain game developers and console manufacturers might be, but the audience certainly isn't. But it's more than a self-serving bit of PR speak. It's a statement of intent.

[W]hen someone says “we think the audience is ready” you can read that as “we’re doing it anyway” really.

Keep that in mind when you hear statements from developers and console manufacturers about the public's apparently secret love for always-connected devices. Their "read" on the market is nothing more than them signalling a desire to put the customers' desires dead last.

Filed Under: always connected, always on, consoles, drm, video games

EA Shuts Down Social Media Games Without Refunding Money

from the lessons-about-always-online dept

Fresh off their victorious repeat of "Worst Company In America" Consumerist award, which the company brass explained away by reminding us how killer-awesome they are, Electronic Arts is now taking steps to mend the wounds with their customers. And by mending the wounds I mean taking down more games on social media sites in which those customers have spent real-world money for in-game currency, without any promise for refunds. So it's less mending wounds and a little more tossing salt on them, I suppose. Per EA's blog:

Today we are informing players of the difficult decision to retire some of our Facebook games: The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society. For players who have enjoyed our games, we will be making a special offer to introduce you to a PopCap game. You’re a valued fan and we want to make sure you get a smooth transition to PopCap. More details about that offer will appear in-game soon.

Yup, those of you who bought currency for game X can either enjoy an offer for game Y, or else you can always have fun by pounding a bunch of sand. Now, it is true that game shutdowns were always a possibility, and perhaps even an inevitability, when it came to social media gaming, but there's a better response to be had from EA than offering store credit on games that the customer may not want at all, especially for a company in such dire need of even a dash of good PR. Still, there's a larger lesson to be learned here, and that lesson is you should run screaming from always-online requirements with every opportunity to do so. Per the original PC World article:

If you have no interest in Facebook gaming, these closures may not seem so tragic. But keep in mind that the push toward online-only games doesn't stop with Facebook or with massive multiplayer games that have always been susceptible to shutdowns. EA's SimCity requires a server connection, which has caused all sorts of problems with the game's launch. The same was true for Activision's Diablo III. What happens when the publishers of these games don't feel like keeping them up and running anymore?

What happens? Let me refer you to the aforementioned pounding of sand. There are some types of games where this is more understandable than others. Games that rely primarily on social constructs and multiplayer come with an understanding that they can't go on in perpetuity. But when the primary game mechanic is not social and the company still requires a connection? Well, that's just holding you and your money hostage, friends. And with the rumors of always-online console requirements, gamers need to be aware that it might not be a game their purchasing with their hard-earned money. They may only be buying borrowed time.

Filed Under: customer harm, drm
Companies: ea

Ubisoft uPlay Launcher Exploit Strips DRM From All Publisher's Games

from the oopsie dept

Ubisoft's history of DRM use has been...interesting. One could nearly write an entire book on how to fail at DRM using nothing but examples from the company. DRM that allows hackers to take control of gamers' machines. DRM punishing only paying customers when Ubisoft decides to move their servers. DRM that is, seriously, comprised of f$#%ing vuvuzelas. What you'll notice as a trend in these examples, however, is that at least Ubisoft was content to punish only their own customers or themselves, depending on the situation.

Not so, any longer. Their uPlay client for PCs was built so poorly that a simple tool developed by hackers can fool the client into thinking users already own copies of games, allowing for completely DRM-free versions of games from other publishers to be downloaded for free from their platform. As an apparent sign of solidarity by Ubisoft, they also managed to offer up their own unreleased game via the exploit as well.

The vulnerability is allegedly present in the uPlay launcher, which when exploited gives DRM free access to gaming titles from almost all game publishers including the likes of EA Games and Square Nix. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, which hasn’t been released yet, is lying on Ubisoft servers which hackers have downloaded. As a proof of the exploit, hackers even posted an 1 hour 30 mins long footage of the game.

Typically, when one does something over a long period of time, one gets better at it. Ubisoft appears to be an anomaly in this respect, going so far backwards on the practice of DRM that even their own client software can strip it out with but a little assistance from hackers. Nevermind how stupid and useless DRM is to begin with; now publishers can't even trust the software that is supposed to deliver it. With enemies of DRM hidden everywhere, even in inanimate software, perhaps it's time to give it up entirely.

Filed Under: drm, failures, uplay, video games
Companies: ubisoft

EA COO: We Get Votes For 'Worst Company' Because We're Awesome And Voters Are Homophobes

from the uh-oh dept

Following the SimCity launch debacle and recent ridiculous comments made by EA's Label President, it's beginning to look like we're seeing some kind of inter-company contest amongst EA executives over who can step in it the most. The company is somewhat recently infamous for being voted "The Worst Company In America" in a poll by The Consumerist and, congratulations, they have made the final match-up in that same poll again this year (voting ends tonight). I can certainly understand that executives for the company aren't too pleased about this chance at repeating the "award", but certainly cannot understand why their COO would come out with one of the most obfuscating attempts to create a sympathetic narrative ever devised.

Yet, that's exactly what Peter Moore did on EA's site, in a rambling half-pushback semi-admission on the company's missteps that ultimately concludes that EA is super-freaky-awesome and homophobes are generating The Consumerist's poll results. Seriously, just look at how he begins.

The tallest trees catch the most wind.

That’s an expression I frequently use when asked to defend EA’s place in the gaming industry. And it comes to mind again this week as we get deeper into the brackets of an annual Web poll to name the “Worst Company in America.”

He goes on to equate EA with the Yankees, Lakers, and Manchester United, suggesting that the company only gets so much criticism because they are so awesome and successful. It's a very interesting position to take, given the company's stock has plummeted by roughly 60% in the past 5 years. That number alone shouldn't be taken as a tell-all, of course, given how the financial crisis generally effected most industries this past half a decade. Considering that the company has had a net-income positive result once in that same time span, on the other hand, with outlook for 2013 being negative, I'm not sure the positioning of the company as some kind of perennial industry force holds much merit. Still, the complaints in the polls haven't been focused on revenue, so let's let Moore tackle those questions head-on.

Some of these complaints are 100 percent legitimate – like all large companies we are not perfect. But others just don’t hold water:

He then lists of these non-water-holding complaints, beginning with the idea that SimCity's always-online component is DRM (he notes that EA has said repeatedly it isn't, which means it's so, I guess), then that Origin isn't successful (ignoring the massive security flaw), then he takes on the tons of people who hate playing games for free (wut?), Madden cover athletes (right game, wrong complaint), and then he finishes with my favorite of the list, a massive voting backlash against the company because of its inclusion of homosexual, bisexual, and transgender characters in their games.

In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games. This week, we’re seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America. That last one is particularly telling. If that’s what makes us the worst company, bring it on. Because we're not caving on that.

See, Peter, the thing is that if you're trying to combat the idea that your company is the most horrific of them all, it's probably best not to attempt to falsely co-opt the plight of those actually suffering true prejudice against their nature just to drum up sympathy. As someone fairly in-tune with both gaming news and politics, let me assure Moore and everyone else reading this that any attempt at backlash over gay characters in games like Mass Effect was a complete non-starter. In fact, there seemed to be a much bigger backlash against the earlier games not including those characters. It's one of the things I'm most proud of my generation, that the tide is finally turning against bigotry for our brothers and sisters in the LGBT community. Moore's attempt to use their suffering to shield EA from criticism is beyond shameful.

Adding to that shame is the complete dodge-job the post commits on all of the actual criticism against EA. Reasons for the polling last year cited the day-one DLC use and EA's notorious tendency to gobble up smaller developers and murder them to the despair of their fan base, along with their stranglehold exclusive sports licensing. As Consumerist itself notes:

Instead, it looks at EA’s history of buying up smaller, successful developers with the intention of milking — and arguably ruining — the intellectual properties that made these acquired companies so attractive. It also discusses EA’s exclusivity deals on popular sports games, that some say effectively sets the bar for retail prices for the rest of the gaming industry.

Then there’s the issue of microtransactions, in-game purchases that EA has made no secret are at the center of its business model. Many customers believe that EA’s view of microtransactions isn’t to simply charge customers a little bit of money for something that is additional, but not integral, to the core game, but rather to put out broken or deliberately incomplete games with the ultimate goal of selling add-on content that should have been included in the $60 price tag to begin with.

Add to the continuation of those practices the failure and lying about SimCity and it'd be a bigger surprise if EA didn't find itself amongst the most hated companies again this year. And if there's anything they could do to position a subsequent run in 2014 better than trying to milk the plight of the LGBT community, I can't imagine what that would be.

Filed Under: criticism, drm, peter moore, simcity, worst company in america
Companies: ea

EA Labels President: DRM Is A Failed Strategy, But SimCity Didn't Have Any DRM

from the wait,-what? dept

I must admit that there are times when I become very concerned about whether or not I can actually read. Or, more concerning yet, whether I have the proper capacity to imbibe reality at all. This, friends, is surely one of those times. Barely a week removed from Super Meat Boy developer Tommy Refenes alerting Electronic Arts to the fact that their own DRM hurts their bottom line more than any amount of piracy, still in the midst of what some might call the wind-down curve of the SimCity fiasco, and with examples like Spore and their single-use codes still in my mind, I find a statement made by EA Labels President Frank Gibeau that seeks to unmake all of those thoughts.

At a developers conference, Gibeau revealed his belief that DRM is a completely useless tool for game developers. Then, to make sure that my brain was as confused as possible, he made sure I knew that SimCity didn't have any DRM component to it.

"DRM is a failed dead-end strategy; it's not a viable strategy for the gaming business. So what we tried to do creatively is build an online service in the SimCity universe and that's what we sought to achieve."

I'll wait for your own cerebellums to cease attempting to commit suicide before beginning with the obvious rebuttal: wut? EA, notorious purveyor of DRM, now says that DRM is a failure. They also insist that requiring an always online connection for their SimCity game to function out of the box was never about DRM, it was about making the game an MMO.

"I was involved in all the meetings. DRM was never even brought up once," Gibeau told GI.biz. "You don't build an MMO because you're thinking of DRM—you're building a massively multiplayer experience, that's what you're building. If you play an MMO, you don't demand an offline mode, you just don't. And in fact, SimCity started out and felt like an MMO more than anything else and it plays like an MMO."

Except, of course, when it doesn't. In fact, if the game can be tweaked to play offline and is essentially the same experience, then your game is almost exactly nothing like a massively multiplayer online game. This, particularly from a company that as been caught with its hand in the lying cookie jar already, is an instantly dismissable pile of BS.

But, SimCity aside, I would issue a challenge to Mr. Gibeau. If in fact you and your company believes that DRM is a "failed strategy", then I am sure we shall never see any form of DRM in your games moving forward. Who wants to take bets on that one?

Filed Under: drm, frank gibeau, simcity, strategy
Companies: ea

True Purpose Of DRM: To Let Copyright Holders Have A Veto Right On New Technologies

from the why-they-fight-so-hard-for-anti-circumvention dept

A whole bunch of people have been submitting Ian Hickson's writeup on the true purpose of DRM. Given how many people have submitted it, perhaps you've seen it already, but there are some really good points in there. His main thesis is that the debates over DRM tend to focus on the wrong thing. The anti-DRM crowd points out that DRM does not and cannot stop copying. Supporters of DRM say that's not true. Hickson agrees that DRM does not stop copying, but he argues that the purpose of DRM has never really been about stopping copying, but about gaining control over software and hardware tools that play content:

The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations.

The purpose of DRM is to give content providers leverage against creators of playback devices.

Content providers have leverage against content distributors, because distributors can't legally distribute copyrighted content without the permission of the content's creators. But if that was the only leverage content producers had, what would happen is that users would obtain their content from those content distributors, and then use third-party content playback systems to read it, letting them do so in whatever manner they wanted.

He provides a few examples, such as how DVD players force you to watch "unskippable" ads, how services like Netflix can try to limit you from watching the same movie simultaneously on two devices, and how if you buy a movie on iTunes, and want to then watch it on a non-iPhone, you'll have to buy it again. As he notes none of those things are really about copyright violations.

In all three cases, nobody has been stopped from violating a copyright. All three movies are probably available on file sharing sites. The only people who are stopped from doing anything are the player providers -- they are forced to provide a user experience that, rather than being optimised for the users, puts potential future revenues first (forcing people to play ads, keeping the door open to charging more for more features later, building artificial obsolescence into content so that if you change ecosystem, you have to purchase the content again).

If you're wondering why copyright holders are soooooooo desperate to have anti-circumvention provisions in copyright law, this is why. In the past, we'd pointed out that it didn't make sense for the movie studios and record labels to be so focused on anti-circumvention/digital locks, since if people are violating copyright law (such as by reproducing or distributing copies), existing copyright law already covers that. So why add in a separate provision all about circumvention -- and then be so focused on making sure the same provision exists in all laws around the globe? It seemed silly, because the only "additional" benefit it seemed to be providing was to outlaw legal forms of copying, since everything else was already covered under existing law.

However, Hickson's argument explains much more clearly why anti-circumvention provisions are seen as an absolute necessity. It has nothing to do with copying, and everything to do with controlling the players so as to limit the kind of innovation they can provide. It's basically a de facto veto power over new technologies. And, really, that puts a bunch of other statements in context as well. Remember how former Copyright Register Ralph Oman was saying that new player technologies should be illegal until Congress approved them? Yeah, same basic thing.

All of this shows a legacy copyright industry that is so focused on holding back innovation so that they have a veto right and control over the pace of innovation. That, of course, is bad for the economy, bad for the public and bad for society. Innovation is important in growing the economy, and due to silly laws around DRM, we are purposely holding it back.

Filed Under: control, copyright, drm, ian hickson, purpose