Rise Of Industry - Official Soundtrack Download Xbox
Beatris Ninh
There are more than a few reasons digital rights management (DRM) has been largely unsuccessful. But the easiest way to explain to a consumer why DRM doesn't work is to put it in terms he understands: "What happens to the music you paid for if that company changes its mind?" It was one thing when it was a theoretical question. Now it's a historical one. Rhapsody just had the next in a line of DRM music services to go--this week the company told its users than anyone with RAX files has unil November 7 to back them up in another format or lose them the next time they upgrade their systems.
Corporations claim that DRM is necessary to fight copyright infringement online and keep consumers safe from viruses. But there's no evidence that DRM helps fight either of those. Instead DRM helps big business stifle innovation and competition by making it easy to quash "unauthorized" uses of media and technology.
Unfortunately, the side effect in this less-than-successful attempt to fight piracy is the hours it takes users to retrieve, rip, and back up their music when a services shuts down, is sold, or simply decides DRM wasn't the right way to go (sometimes in as little as five months). The following is a brief history of the rise and fall of DRM in music services.
October 1998
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes DRM circumvention and circumvention tools illegal.
December 2001
Rhapsody unlimited music streaming subscription service launches with songs restricted by the company's Helix DRM.
October 2001
"Beale Screamer" cracks the Microsoft Windows Media DRM and posts a how-to on the sci-crypt Usenet board along with code for stripping the DRM from Windows Media files. In his message, he writes to music companies, "Give us more options, not fewer. If you try to take away our current rights, and dictate to us what we may or may not do, you're going to get a lot of resistance." To users he writes, "Please respect the uses I have intended this software for. I want to make a point with this software, and if you use it for purposes of violating copyrights, the message stands a very good chance of getting lost."
There is a new BIOS standard evolving which is called UEFI. Microsoft is trying to get the hardware manufacturers to include a "secure boot" feature whereby a computer can only run the OS first installed and never be switched to a different OS.
I predict that if Windows 8 machines ship with UEFI's secure boot enabled that the history of secure boot will look like a sped up version of the history of DRM as described by Ruth Suehle. As the cracking and counter measure battle over secure boot unfolds Microsoft will leave many Windows 8 users stranded with unusable Windows 8 operating systems that they have already paid for. At the same time second hand cracked machines will sell for more than second hand uncracked machines. Second hand machines that have been subjected to Microsoft's counter measures will be worthless.
In a way, we've already seen that happen with gaming consoles. For a while, there was a slight premium secondhand market for modded Xbox 360s. Then Microsoft started banning users with modded boxes from XBox Live, and suddenly you could pick up a modded Xbox pretty cheap on craigslist.
Unfortunately I don't think that what's happening with Windows is going to matter to most users who purchase a machine and never try to muck with the OS. It will, however, send Linux users and other DIY folks away from the big hardware vendors and over to those who sell boxes meant for or pre-installed with Linux. Could be a boost in business for people like ZaReason and System76.
The reason for the premium on modded consoles was because they play pirated content. no less than 1000 of these systems show up daily on eBay and are considered easy low-hanging-fruit to ban users for.
Microsoft hasn't completely closed the DRM door on the Xbox360 however, as users still pirate software, they just don't use their modded console online. JTAG hacking is still a problem and xbox live leaderboards are still completely useless.
This will never be solved as the problem exists on every game with leaderboards (including STEAM games,) cheats just proxy the connection and change the data without having to modify the system they are playing on.
Basically the pro-DRM argument is as follows:
- Anti-piracy
At this point I don't see why game developers even bother to produce physical media. They can easier control the piracy level by having the games only downloadable from their own servers or as the master seed in a torrent. Movie studios and Music publishers can learn from this.
- Anti-cheating/modding
Any game with an online component needs to have the entire chain protected to protect the integrity of the multiplayer game environment. Nobody wants to compete with cheating players when they know they can't beat them legitimately.
Both points are largely addressed by "Freemium" content and DLC, which can't be acquired by cheating, only by spending real money by having an account with the publisher. However these games are largely made less fun when you instead end up competing with people with deeper pocketbooks. 1% of players pay for the other 99% of players who never buy anything.
The Anti-DRM argument on the other hand:
- Mostly touted by people who don't want to pay, or feel that content is overpriced for it's value. As there's no competition, there is no way to introduce market forces except by piracy. There are people who have no qualms about buying bootleg chinese-made purses, shoes and DVD's because they are cheaper, they don't care if the owner is being ripped off.
- Opensource proponents
There's actually two factions of opensource people, the louder bunch, which believe DRM will intentionally prevent the use of opensource and homebrew alternatives. However this mostly comes as a just a guise for piracy. (You'll often see the "homebrew" argument presented for mod chips, when their real agenda is piracy or cheating. Go ahead and look for Wii's and Xbox's modded and running Linux) Then there is the less vocal but more legally sound group which are the GPLv3 Licence enforcers. The GPL guys don't like DRM because of interoptability concerns primarily because of patents on DRM make them illegal to create free alternatives and free implementations to proprietary and expensive software products.
Only in very few cases does the homebrew argument add up. The WRT54G router is one of them, where the router originally runs Linux, and the GPL operating system allows it to be a much better router from third party firmware.
Part of the reason we see dirt cheap DVD players is because CSS was broken. The Chinese-made DVD players that play any region of disc undermined all the expensive region locked DVD players. Software on PC's also can play any region.
You can even prevent media piracy by embracing the fans desire to share translations. The fansubbers can release free subtitles to any language video on the PC, if only it were made easy to use. iTunes and Zune could and should add a way for subtitle bolt-ons during the purchase.
The ANti-DRM argument you've made is admittedly a straw man of readily discounted arguments. It is, of course, convenient to present only the weakest arguments if one intends to dismiss the position. The Anti-DRM argument (for me) is *actually*:
I play games. I've paid for my games. My favorite games are 10-20 years old. (Yeah. I know. "What do you play that on, old man? A Commodore 64?" Well, sometimes, yes; I have one right here.) It's called "having an attention span".
(1) No one promises that DRM servers are going to be around 10-20 years from now. So you can bet there won't be any analogs of me in the current population of gamers, because all of their games won't work by then.
(3) I also won't waste money to buy another computer to be rootkitted by every online game service that comes along. I have a hard enough time controlling the security of my home network. (I repair other people's computers. Sometimes their security practices are less than stellar...) Intentionally adding invasive, obstreperous blobs of code to my computer would be dumb. So I don't.
Why do I like CDs? They'll last as long as I will. I can be certain that I can play them 'til the day I die. I don't have to rely on third parties to keep servers running, or to make hardware, or to not screw up the hardware I use to play them. (I've built a CD player from discretes. It's not as hard as one might think.)
Why do I sorta' like DVDs? They'll last as long as I will. I can probably play them until the day I die. I don' thave to rely on third parties to keep servers running. I *do* have to rely on third parties making hardware to read them because the DMCA makes it illegal for me to break the DRM that I can't individually license. So there exists government enforcement that limits my ability to make a player for this media.
Why will I never own a Blue-Ray player? I don't trust Sony to keep their DRM servers running. I don't trust Sony or their licensed publishers to not randomly decide that I no longer have access to media I own. I have to rely on Sony and others (e.g. Oracle) to continue to license DRM and other software to make working players. It is overwhelmingly likely that Blue-Ray disks will become unplayable, shiny disks during my lifetime, and paying for that is dumb.
So I *am* anti-DRM. But, ..., I *do* pay for the stuff I run. I maintain a meticulously licensed universe of software at home. Because I *actually* know about the licenses of the software I have, I'm far less likely to trust the DRMed and close-sourced stuff, for the reasons I've described above. This stuff is tools. Some of it is tools for entertainment and some of it is tools to get something done. In either case, paying for tools that require someone else's permission and continued good will to work is dumb. And I minimize the amount of this kind of dumb that I am.
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