Ooh! "What to do with the rest of my evening" problem solved!
Wait, Windows only? What kind of bullshit is that?
You gotta love a place that advertises "Jane Austen's greatest downloadable hits".
It's a shoddy kind of "purchase" which forces the purchase to reside on one computer with at most one transfer to a mobile device.
Yeah, it's not for everyone. I watch movies on my computer anyway, so it works for me.
What I meant was, if you've purchased it, you should be able to do as you will with it. 'Cause it's yours. Fuck DRM!
Look at Ben, breaking out with the passionate opinions!
The download is the same price as the DVD. Which doesn't seem to make sense. Nor do their predicted download times:
Estimated Time To Begin Watching
Cable (6 Mbps)| Cable (3 Mbps)| DSL (1.5 Mbps)
2.5 min | 5 mins | 67 mins
This does seem pretty cool, though (DRM issues with the purchased stuff aside). Now all they need to do is combine this with a Netflix-style flat monthly fee, and we're set.
What I meant was, if you've purchased it, you should be able to do as you will with it. 'Cause it's yours. Fuck DRM!
I don't know how serious you are, but you know this doesn't really make sense, right? They don't first sell you the movie and then tell you what you may or may not do with it, they sell you something of which the DRM is an integral part--which is to say that the movie sans DRM is not on offer, and never belongs to you.
Surprisingly, very few companies make their products available with DRM as an optional add-on.
Take your anti-capitalism over to the impecunious theologian's.
That is weird, MF. Wonder if that should have been 6-7.
I don't think it's anti-capitalistic to think that when you buy something, it's yours. And I find your argument in 12 pretty specious; first, DRM isn't an "integral part" of anything, except perhaps business plans. Second, if there were an integral component of your vacuum cleaner that made it disappear back into the warehouse after two weeks (or, say, if you tried to use it to vacuum a different carpet), you would think that that was a pretty weird sort of "purchase" you made, even if you knew all along that's what would happen, no?
That would depend on how much I paid for the vacuum.
I, of course, have nothing to add to this thread or comment to make except to say that Descent was OMFG great tonight at home.
I'm kidding about anti-capitalism (kinda), but "DRM isn't an "integral part" of anything" is question begging. Amazon isn't selling you "a movie," they're selling you the ability to watch a movie under certain conditions. You want them to sell you the ability to watch a movie without conditions, but your ticket to the movie theater isn't good for unlimited shows either, except there the DRM is trickable teenaged ushers instead of hackable code.
And you can bet that if they made a magic vacuum cleaner that one person could buy and simultaneously share with the rest of the world, they would also make a way to retrieve it.
Amazon isn't selling you "a movie," they're selling you the ability to watch a movie under certain conditions.
Maybe for the rentals, but for the sales this is very objectionable. You're buying a copy of the movie, not leasing it. You're not allowed to distribute coprighted material to others, but you're supposed to be free to do whatever the hell you want with it in perpetuity for personal use--not letting you watch it on a normal DVD player is absurd.
Isn't what you're buying technically not a movie but a license to use some digital information under specified terms?
There are things about this that suck, but I don't think "buy" vs. "rent" really captures it.
if they made a magic vacuum cleaner that one person could buy and simultaneously share with the rest of the world, they would also make a way to retrieve it.
Isn't this, in its own way, a form of question-begging? That is, they sell you the right to watch the movie under certain conditions because they made a way to do that in order to limit your ownership of the movie.
21: Right. There's definitely such a thing as sucky DRM, with absurdly restrictive terms, but restrictions in and of themselves aren't aren't evil, unusual, or precluded by having made a "purchase."
Sure, it's a license that you're buying, and you're not allowed anything more than personal use under it--you're not buying the creative work itself. The same thing holds when you buy a book, that's a license too. However, the book's publisher relinquishes any authority to dictate what you do with the book once they sell it to you. It's why second-hand shops and rebinding of books are both legal, and why you can photocopy them to your heart's content so long as you don't give the copies to others.
There is a substantive difference between buying and renting a copyrighted work, and it relates to who can decide how the work is used post-transaction. In a sale (even of a license), the restriction is traditionally limited to making illicit copies for distribution.
The technical issues of the ease with which digital materials can be copied is of course a new wrinkle, but limiting legitimate personal use isn't the way to address that.
When I buy an academic paper, I also buy the right to submit it under my name to less prestigious journals. Anyone who says otherwise denies A = A.
Did you like the movie, ogged?
Indeed, fuck DRM. Because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which made circumventing any kind of DRM a federal crime, manufacturers and media companies have free reign to criminalize the longstanding practices of their customers and competitors. When I say "longstanding practices", don't think "filesharing", think, "reverse-engineering", or better, "buying ink cartridges from third parties". All they have to do is stick a little chip in there and you're locked into Scru-U Ink, Inc. ink for as long as you care to use your printer legally. (Note: this has already happened.)
There's reason enough to oppose DRM just from the point of view of a shat-upon customer, but if that doesn't suit you, consider that it's also anti-competitive, or that a decent chunk of the criminal code is being shaped unilaterally by middle management somewhere.
Ed Felten has a careful and completely non-polemical discussion of the issues here and elsewhere on his blog. (See linked article for further references.)
An argument about fair use!!!
The shit Sony et al does, however, is no where near as bad as Elsevier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier
In the end, I'm fairly sanguine about the future of copyright and DRM. First, there will always be a small group of hackers that reverse-engineer any DRM. I'm savvy enough to find out how to circumvent DRM. Second, I think the average customer is eventually going to freak out and complain about DRM. I think whether she knows it or not, the average customer really desires the fair use doctrine. Time- and media-shifting (recording something to watch later or transfering a CD to some future medium) might be more restricted in the future, but customers will demand it.
Of course, I thought the average American was going to freak out and vote Bush out, so maybe I'm too optimistic.
See, SB knows what's up. I was going to use the ink-cartridge example myself.
Is anyone even a little sympathetic to the idea that ogged likes unbox, and there's little chance that Amazon offers unbox (at least not at the same price point) without DRM?
I'm not defending that idea, I'd just like to hear someone engage it, rather than just complaining about how DRM sucks ass (which it unquestionably does).
Clearly ogged likes unbox, but in liking it and promoting it, he's giving moral support to the Klan.
I don't know what DRM is, so I don't have any opinion about that. But a movie is a non-rivalrous good - your consumption of it doesn't limit anyone else's consumption of it (fireworks shows, national defense, clean environment are other examples). If producers can't limit your access to a non-rivalrous good and make people purchase them separately, they won't produce it. That leads to market failure - demand won't be met because suppliers can't extract the willing price from people. When you give any other example of a good that you purchase (like a book, which is rivalrous during your use, 'cause no one else can read it then, but non-rivalrous after) make sure that you are comparing another rivalrous good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_goods
They purchased a movie for however many hundred million dollars it took to film it. Like Ogged said, you're just buying the right to watch it under their terms. They would likely sell you the unlimited right to it for just a little more than it took them to make it.
They would likely sell you the unlimited right to it for just a little more than it took them to make it.
But we're not talking about unlimited (e.g. public performance) rights. We're talking about clawing back the same rights we had with respect to, say, VHS tapes.
Megan, thanks for the econ 101. But no one is suggesting a world devoid of IP-rights, where movie producers can't make a return on their investment. No one is really saying you completely "own" the movie when you purchase a copy, and can start selling it in the streets and licensing action figures based on the characters to be included in Happy Meals. What is at issue is the scope of the fair use exception. Because we want to provide producers with incentive enough to make films (and other non-rival works), but at the same time we need to recognize that any restrictions we place on their use also limit utility. Once a movie is in extistence, the utility-maximizing outcome is to distribute it as widely as possible as cheaply as possible (currently: free), since each additional use/viewing is basically "bonus" utility (as there are no more production costs). So sure, we want to incentivize producers, but only "just enough". It's a balance. At some point the "incentive" value of stronger IP protections will be outweighed by the utility-loss resulting from the restrictions on use. This is what the "fair use" exception in copyright law has always been about -- allowing consumers the freedom to use their purchases in a variety of utility-boosting ways, without giving them "too-much" freedom in ways that could disincentivize producers.
I suspect DRM in beginning to cross the too-restrictive line, but I'm not really sure. I know I won't download .mp3s anymore, because I can't stand dealing with it.
On preview, what bridgeplate said.
Why did my name disappear? I typed it twice, I swear. I blame the damn preview, which I will now NEVER USE AGAIN. 33 was me.
I also had a line in there to diffuse the snark in my first sentance, which wasn't intended to be as hostile as it came out. (Sorry!) I guess it dissappeared because I put it in those little carrot-bracket thingys?
Oh. But the limitations of the VHS format (clunky, slow, requires a physical object) were enough of a barrior to free distribution that movie sellers thought they could make money even with VHS tapes out there. With easy, free dispersal an option, people aren't gonna want to be in the business of selling a non-rivalrous good. What other option do they have for extracting some price of viewing from every watcher?
35: Probably. To get carrot-brackets to show up, type < and > (actually just typing > will work fine for that).
Also, the post with text "Brock Landers" that was posted by "138 was me" made me happy.
But the limitations of the VHS format (clunky, slow, requires a physical object) were enough of a barrior to free distribution that movie sellers thought they could make money even with VHS tapes out there
They still wanted to pass all sorts of stupid laws, you know. And the same proviso for music tapes didn't stop "home taping is killing music" (fortunately, a modicum of intelligence did). Why should we believe the MPAA/RIAA this time, when they still seem to be making shitloads of bad movies and music?
little carrot-bracket thingys
PS- I'd like to submit this in evidence back in the school/education thread. I bet the people who went to good schools know what those things are called.
I like Felten's "Property Rights Management" (PRM) for its recognition that cripple-chips are beginning to sneak into ordinary household products.
I emailed DeLong and asked him to comment on this, so I probably shouldn't say anything else that will be shown to have been stupid. Just to note once again that of course there can be bad DRM, and that the DMCA is a horrible law, and the MPAA/RIAA generally suck, but, we still need DRM.
Sorry for the Econ 101. But w-lfs-n was comparing movies to vacuum cleaners, which made me think that the distinction between rivalrous and non-rivalrous goods (which isn't intuitive) hadn't occurred to him.
Why should we believe the MPAA/RIAA this time, when they still seem to be making shitloads of bad movies and music?
Um, 'cause Tower Records is going under, and when the owner (it's a Sacramento-based chain) came to talk to a seminar at Davis, he said that he couldn't sell music that people can get for free? Because it is self-evidently easier to send music and movies across the Internets than it is to mail mix-tapes to your honey?
I am surely not an expert on this, so if I'm rehashing the basics, I don't want to waste your time. We likely agree that there is a balance point between incentivizing producers and maximizing the utility of a product already made. I bet we could even come close on where that point should be. But really, I have no objection to being able to buy a very limited one-time viewing of a movie, especially if it could arrive on my screen within a matter of minutes.
we still need DRM.
Well, no. DRM hinders law-breaking (by way of completely preventing fair use) only among casual customers—those without technical inclinations—that is to say, almost everyone. But because we're talking about media, and the whole point of media is to be experienced as text/sound/moving pictures at the customer end, those with any technical inclinations at all will always have a way to turn the media into unhindered digital files. (Opponents of fair use call this, disingenuously, the "analog hole", as if it could ever be "plugged".) The net effect is 1) no greater ability to control the production of pirated copies, plus 2) the elimination of fair use for law-abiding, non-technical customers—which is to say, almost everyone.
In fact, according to some Metafilterians, the already-existing DRM-unlocking programs for WMV work on Amazon's offering.
Also, my understanding is that most of the actual damaging piracy is performed by pretty big syndicates, not by 15-year-olds using whatever the filesharing program of choice is these days, and those guys are going to have a lot of technical expertise.
But that doesn't mean that treating everyone else like a criminal isn't a good idea.
But really, I have no objection to being able to buy a very limited one-time viewing of a movie, especially if it could arrive on my screen within a matter of minutes.
Neither do I. I did it from "On-demand" on my cable box last night. I honestly don't see how that's significantly different from what's going on here. (And I don't think anyone who opposes DRM has even attempted a response to 29.)
Also, I thought 31 was a response to 29 rather than to w-lfs-n, because I automatically assume people are responding to me because I and the things I say are so very important. Sorry for coming across like an ass.
I don't have any objection to being able to rent a movie for one viewing, but I'd prefer it to be called just that.
Nope, w-lfs-n has all my attention, all the time.
I didn't think you came across like an ass. I think that at least you and I agree that Unbox wouldn't be offered without those restrictions on its use.
I'll grant (just this once! clip-n-save!) that DRM can be used in evil and, charitably, non-evil ways. But the uses to which it's been put overwhelmingly slouch toward evil, and the folks pushing it have an astonishing amount of political and market power. So I find myself a wee bit radicalized in my opposition.
Unbox wouldn't be offered without those restrictions on its use.
I'm not getting this in light of 11 and 20. The 'purchase' price for Unbox is the same as the purchase price for a DVD. But for that price you get a much inferior product which for instance can't be played in the DVD player you have hooked up to your TV. And the actual DVD costs more to produce and distribute, I bet.
If they can make money on normal DVD sales, why can't they make money on same-priced downloads that don't have these ridiculous restrictions? I don't see any reason for the DRM to be any stronger than that of a DVD -- which I don't know much about, but I do know you can play them in DVD players and computers.
I have no objection to being able to buy a very limited one-time viewing of a movie, especially if it could arrive on my screen within a matter of minutes.
I don't think there's anything wrong with this either, my problem is that they have the same restrictions on the full price unlimited-viewing copies.
I admit that BoingBoing is a bit of teh lame, but omg, ogged, you're totally fuXX0red. Now that Amazon has complete control of your computer, what shall they do with it?
From the link: I once attended a DRM negotiation where an MPAA vice-president said, "Watching a show that's being received in one room while you're sitting in another room has value, and if it has value, we should be able to charge money for it."
55 -- did you understand what he meant by that? Because I did not.
Well, it's BoingBoing's fault for reading the damn thing. See how happy I am? That's because I didn't read it. I watched my movies, and someone else can fight the good fight. (I did, however, disable the Unbox service, so it doesn't run unless I manually start it, which I only do for the few minutes that I need to download a movie.)
56: I think what he meant was that if you can receive a transmission in one room, but view the transmission in another (I don't know if he meant because you're standing in the other room or because you've got another monitor or computer there), he should be able to charge you.
57: how do you know it's not running?
58 -- You mean like cable TV? That is "received into" "one room" of your house (the one where the cable enters the wall) but you might watch it in a different room (the one where your television is, with suatable extensions made to the cable). I don't see where the value is being added.
59 -- If you open your Services application in your control panel you can check the status of installed services and turn them on and off. Assuming -gg-d is using a Windows platform.
Righto, clown man.
And, if you're really paranoid, you can run a handy dandy utility like Process Explorer to see precisely what's running.
I don't see where the value is being added.
You'd rather have to watch the teevee in the room where the cable enters the house? Total addition of value!
I sympathize with you, ogged, and maybe you're right (process explorer shows no unbox processes == no unbox processes running), but at this point, I think back to the thing a couple years ago when Sony's music CDs installed what were essentially rootkits when you played them, and I start to think that maybe a bit more paranoia is warranted here. Know what I'm saying? It's within-the-realm-of-possible that simply checking that process monitor isn't enough -- at any rate, BB has given me enough heebie-jeebies that I'll never be using that thing on any machine that I own.