Alright, I think everyone knows how I feel about it. DRM sucks.

That being said, how many of you really know what the DRM nazis are pushing for? Does the word "licensing" mean anything to you? You see, the way the entertainment industries see it you didn't "buy" their CD, DVD, or video game. You purchased a "license" to listen to it or view it and have entered into a pretty shitty contract with them.

The only problem is that so far they haven't had a way to enforce that contract and they're looking at finding ways to do so through DRM. You see, the way they REALLY want things to work is like this... You download a song from iTunes and it goes on your iPod. That's it. You've licensed that song to play on your iPod and can't transfer it anywhere else. Want to burn it to a CD? Sorry. Fuck you. License it again. Want to listen to it on your PC? Sorry. License it again. Etc.

Now, with movies their brilliant plan is to limit it to like 5 or 3 or 1 (or whatever arbitrary number they decide on) number of viewings, but it's not going to be a lot. Got a movie you like to watch every weekend with your buddies? Well, they want to charge you over and over again for that privilege. The way they see it they're getting raped in the ass every time you watch Harold and Kumar go to White Castle after only paying $20 for it.

DRM to me is one of the shittiest things to be created, and I can't wait to see it continue to fail miserably.

My issue with DRM is mostly technological.

Most implementations require a central location to validate your right to use a product, and if that location is not valid, most implementations default to not allowing the use of said product.

Thus, when Wal-Mart and Yahoo shut down their stores, most customers were going to be left with no way to use media they had purchased, because the DRM servers would have been turned off.  That was resolved in the end, but through rebates to re-buy music, not anything to do with the technology.

And just so you know, I understand and agree with your perspective.  There's the simple fact, though, that people are buying DRMed music, and so content providers will continue to supply DRMed music.  Probably the buyers don't know any better, so your message is a good one in terms of consumer education. 

More of it, I think. Everything should be DRM'd.

My shoes could be DRM'd. My clothes, my house, even the food I eat. Think of the possibilities. Licence everything!

Then I could DRM my excretement. That'd be awesome.

They can DRM it all they want, there will still be people that simply convert it to another format and use it all they want, and there's no way to stop that, really, beyond creating some kind of internet totalitarian state.  Which they keep trying to do and failing at, as you occasionally see the odd internet provider suddenly try to "lock down" on piracy, and then suddenly lose all of their business to another provider that doesn't care about DRM.

Like what's happening with AT&T right now, only even more stupid.  They may have just committed suicide, by suddenly rewriting their TOS to ban accounts that access streaming television/movies/music, and even sets the stage for similar action against things like Skype, from what I heard.  And I have AT&T, because their dsl is the only broadband internet access I can get in this town.

But I'm hoping that this will go the same way all other similar situations have, and that some other provider will sweep in to catch all of the customers that suddenly drop AT&T.  Their service is shit, anyway.

But I'm hoping that this will go the same way all other similar situations have, and that some other provider will sweep in to catch all of the customers that suddenly drop AT&T.  Their service is shit, anyway.

It certainly won't be Time Warner or Comcast, who are beginning to roll out caps across the nation (TWC is specifically focusing on Texas this year).

Who will they turn to next?

Oh god, I just read an article about what you're talking about.  And the problem is that there are too many small towns in Texas that don't really have any competition for broadband.  AT&T DSL is all I can get here, unless Charter finally gets off their ass and gives us digital cable/internet access, but I'm not a big fan of Charter either, really, their (analog) cable TV is horrendous., but the only option where I live, besides Satellite, which I can't get.

Oh god, I just read an article about what you're talking about.  And the problem is that there are too many small towns in Texas that don't really have any competition for broadband.  AT&T DSL is all I can get here, unless Charter finally gets off their ass and gives us digital cable/internet access, but I'm not a big fan of Charter either, really, their (analog) cable TV is horrendous., but the only option where I live, besides Satellite, which I can't get.

^^ this is the problem and will become more of a big deal in the longer term.

CONSUMER ARGUMENT:
Our internet services are monopolized by a small number of carriers who have basically divided up various regions and serviced them to be non-competitive.  You can pretty much only guarantee you will get good service in a neighborhood with more than 1 provider.  When I lived in Northern Michigan, Charter Cable was the only high speed provider and it dropped several times a day, was out for days at a time, poor service response times, all kinds of horrible issues, but there was no other carrier to switch too.  When I lived in Southeastern Michigan, we had Comcast but it was shit, so we canceled it and went with a company named Wow-way cable and the service was flawless.  It's all about having competition to provide services.  In places where this doesn't exist, telecom companies will get away with extravagant bullshit.  If there isn't good competition there won't be good services.

CORPORATE ARGUMENT:
The other issue is that Americans are used to paying for unlimited internet but the bulk of that traffic has gotten much larger with the advent of streaming video and bittorent and the telecom companies are shitting their pants thinking about every new person pulling gigs of transfers every single day.  The thing is that Basement Jimmy who downloads and streams 24/7 even while he's sleeping and Grandma Bitty who logs on her computer once a week to check her email pay the exact same for internet even though the bandwidth they use is probably on a ratio of 100000:1.  That said, the corporations sell package of internet on the promise that you get "XX up / XX down" rates but they can't actually provide that if everyone is using the maximum capacity of their network.  They are also making money hand over fucking fist right now, so I have a hard time sympathizing.

Well here's the article I read:

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Time-Warner-Cable-Expands-Metered-Billing-101655

As usual, Britt tries to suggest that Time Warner Cable's existing flat-rate pricing model isn't "viable" enough to fund essential infrastructure upgrades. That's simply not the case. The company has been very profitable under the flat-rate model, and they've consistently found creative new ways to generate additional income, such as with DNS redirection advertising, which creates a revenue stream out of your URL typing mistakes.

In reality, Britt is pursuing metered billing because it gives him a way to monetize and/or control Internet video, which poses a very serious long term threat to his cable television revenues. The pressure to shift to metered billing also comes from investors, who obviously love the idea of charging consumers more money for the same (or less) service in an age where the cost of bandwidth and network hardware continues to drop. Keep in mind that Time Warner Cable has yet to officially announce DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades in a single market.

If I'm understanding this correctly, they're not shitting their pants because they're losing money from bandwidth supply costs, they're shitting their pants because they suddenly realized that they didn't go with a more dishonestly lucrative business model from the get-go, like the cell phone companies did when they first came out, and now they see all of these streaming websites (Like hulu and their infamous high-profile commercials) getting to make fucktons of money and are trying to horn in on it.

Shitty thing is, stuff like this will kill websites like hulu, just because people will be preciously counting their bandwidth meters to make sure that they can get Shrek XXVII in 1080i HD.

Why are you people confusing DRM with Net Neutrality?

It's just as evil though. And charging you more for the bandwidth you're already paying for is only the tip of the iceberg. Comcast, Time-Warner's, and Verizon's evil plans also include charging websites themselves for allowing customers to reach them. The way they see it, google has had it too easy with all this free internet traffic, and now it's time to pay the piper. And if they don't play ball? Then you get to the pleasure of using some shitty ass search engine who will. Or they'll just provide their own hunk of garbage with their own ads.

Oh yeah, they're reserving the right to shove as many bullshit ads down your throat that they want.

Say goodbye to the Internet as you know it.

Why are you people confusing DRM with Net Neutrality?

Fuse brought up AT&T's TOS, I bridged to TWC's caps, and Liib nearly got us to net neutrality with his basement/grandma comparison.

but even Net neutrality is a little different from what we're talking about right now.  net neutrality is an argument around traffic shaping and prioritization.  I think, right now, we're just talking about bandwidth caps, and tiered services.

which, frankly, the rest of the world has been dealing with already for over a decade.

The way they see it, google has had it too easy with all this free internet traffic, and now it's time to pay the piper. And if they don't play ball? Then you get to the pleasure of using some shitty ass search engine who will. Or they'll just provide their own hunk of garbage with their own ads.

Or, Google will activate all of the dark fiber they've been buying up, and launch their own ISP.

Imagine, Google running an independent backbone, with WiMAX or 3G/4G distribution within a city.

Have some faith in the new religion, krsna...  Google will keep us (and our information) safe and warm.

DRM is intrusive but people can still choose freely between DRM and non-DRM'd formats.  The free market still has some fold over control of DRM whereas ISPs/net Neutrality I think are a more pressing issue because many people do not have competitive choice in their high speed internet market.

Many DRM'd software have hurt their sales dramatically.  One example I can think of is Spore (the creature creator/evolution game from the guy who did the Sims).  Numerous people flat out refused to buy the game when it came out because of the horribly intrusive DRM contract (could only be installed on 1-3 computers or 1-3 times total and had severe limitations on use), and those who wanted to pirate it did so even with the DRM in place -- I pirated it with very little problem (can't be patched and can't use online content -- but it's single player and the release candidate version was fine so who cares?).  Therefore, DRM served two purposes: 1) it hurt sales or disappointed customers who were legitimate buyers and 2) it did not deter pirating of the software in the slightest.

DRM'd music is one reason I haven't bothered with an iPod/iTunes/iStore.  My girlfriend has all that shit and bitches to me constantly about it and I just figure it's not worth the hassle at all.  I have a car stereo and CD player, tons of music on my computer, and Winamp.  Despite having listened to MP3s and stuff for a lot longer than most people I just don't find it necessary enough to carry around an MP3 player, maybe that's strange I don't know.  But when you buy in to the i-Everything model you are subjecting your ownership rights to their model.  I would never purchase music or film that had limited license on my use of it.  If that were the case I'd rather just not own it.  I'm not paying per view on a DVD that I own.  These industries already make so much money that the public would not tolerate that kind of backpost ass-fucking.  If you see more of that you will just see more of the rise of the other hand -- piracy.

Piracy arises from market inefficiencies, when there is a huge disparity between what something is worth and what it is being sold for, or when something is not being sold in a way which it is demanded by consumers.  People know that most media is readily available and worth very little.  You can find non-iStore sold mp3s for as low as 10-15c a song legitimately - which means that a composite CD by value of media is worth no more than 3$ total.  So why pay $15 at a store for a disc with a lot of colored inserts?  It's similar for viewed media, but I think a lot of the streaming media online is really breaking that up and that is the big threat right now to the corporate giants, the YouTube/Hulu effectively takes CONTROL of what content is viewed away from them and puts it in the hands of the consumer.  They make all of their money from the constrained control of what is viewable and how it is viewed and making this more free and egalitarian hurts their bottom line.

A lot of these phenomenon are occurring simultaneously right now so I hope that it shakes out fairly in the interest of the consumer, and that if it doesn't, that alternatives arise which undercut the corporate control model which has wrought these inadequacies.  I think in terms of DRM/content the consumer will retain control because of their purchasing power, in terms of Net neutrality, the non-competitive telecom companies will win unless strongly restrained by the government (Obama has issued a pledge to Net neutrality but in 4 years or 8 years he will no longer be president and the telecoms have time on their side that his successor might not be so favorable to the idea or could be bought with the right price or promise of political advertising on their vast networks).

American corporations are too big.

Didnt you (as a people) get the message already?

I pirated Spore also, with the superficial reason of protesting the DRM stuff, but the reality of the situation is just that I'm broke.  Edit: It got boring after an hour anyway.

You don't have to go Ipod to have an mp3 player.  I recently bought a kickass Sansa E260 mp3 player from woot.com for 25 bucks, that's just as good as an Ipod, and even has the circle-ring-menu thing like an Ipod does.  I love it, especially after I flashed the Rockbox firmware onto it.

Eitje: If google can get Internet traffic to their backbone that would be great, however getting the infrastructure in place would be a hell of a lot of work.

I don't think very many people really know how badly the telecoms want to fuck us in the ass on the Net Neutrality issue. There have been instances where they've paid people to crowd the public out of hearings on the issue.

I'm sure that when they finally get around to putting this evil plot into place many customers would be happy to jump ship to a less thieving provider, but there are no alternatives. We're pretty much all on lock down, unless somehow somebody like google steps in to save the day.

Let's ponder Sony for a moment, who publishes a lot of music. They also make CD ROMs. They also make CD burners. AND they were one of the first people to market with MP3 players.

And what else do they do? Oh yeah. They prosecute you for using the shit they made.

It's similar for viewed media, but I think a lot of the streaming media online is really breaking that up and that is the big threat right now to the corporate giants, the YouTube/Hulu effectively takes CONTROL of what content is viewed away from them and puts it in the hands of the consumer.

The MPAA definitely took notes as the RIAA was fucking up at the beginning of the decade.
Hulu is the network's way of beating piracy, and it's working a lot better than anyone could have expected.

Bringing things back on topic:  Did you know that Hulu uses DRM?  It's true!  The DRM is built right into the flash player, though, so you'd never know it's there in normal usage.
Not all Digital Rights Management solutions are bad (I'll reference Steam for this); just the majority of them.

Eitje: If google can get Internet traffic to their backbone that would be great, however getting the infrastructure in place would be a hell of a lot of work.

I don't have the interest to find the articles now, but there's a lot of info out there about Google's investment in dark fiber and the requisite nodes.
And that fiber is just for world-wide connectivity.  Locally, you'll find Google's fingers in a lot of things.  WiMax (available in Philly!) is one of a few solutions which takes data distribution out of the hands of the wire owners.

Sattelite is an option also.

Sattelite is an option also.

Satellite only works as a downstream feed.  To originate the upstream requests, you would either need a transmitter, or a landline through which to send your request.

The set up my other half worked on rolling out to rural areas involved 2 way transmission.

An ex of mine living up the bush was a subscriber to the company that my G/F worked for, said it worked excellently. She had a dish on the roof of her house.

well, there you go. 

good thing i didn't say that was impossible!

They might as well change the law now so that copyright is indefinite and they own your memories of any media you consume.

For real.

They might as well change the law now so that copyright is indefinite...

What do you think they've been doing for the last 80 years?!

Man, copyright law concerning the music industry is so fucked up. Let's say you own a bar. Not only is it illegal for you to play your private CD collection over an entertainment system, but it's also illegal for you to play the RADIO over an entertainment system (if it has more than like 4 speakers or something ).

Ghey.

unless you pay licensing fees, of course.

The venue I work at got screwed having to pay those licensing fees.

I think it was over a sample at a dance party or something, because pretty much everyone who plays there is way into the DIY thing.

Not only do they start sending letters demanding money, but they ask you to hand their information out to the local bands so they can get licensing fees for them, too.

Totally gay.

Don't even get me started on the music industry.

But back to the original point: The movie biz has already implemented limited use through pay-per-view, but they tried to move into the dvd market a few years ago. The format was divx and you only got x number of views from a movie before you had to pay for it again. Naturally when people understood what was up, divx players went bust quickly.

Ironic that the divx format was further developed by outsiders and eventually became the most popular format for movie torrents.

Yeah, that was because of the real reason that the divx industry fell apart.  They pulled the plug when they realized that people were ripping the movies from divx discs and putting them up on torrent sites.  Power to the People!