The Clicker: Digital content -- why the sense of entitlement?
By Stephen Speicher 
posted September 22nd 2006 11:57AM
posted September 22nd 2006 11:57AM
Stephen Speicher contributes The Clicker, an opinion column on entertainment and technology:
There is something that I've never really understood when it comes to the digital entertainment debate. That is: where do people get their sense of entitlement with regard to content? Don't get me wrong -- I understand the hatred of DRM. I too have been bitten by incompatible formats and locked-down systems. I understand the digital claustrophobia one feels when in the bear hug warm embrace of DRM. DRM is often a nasty (if necessary) evil, and its existence nearly always degrades the user experience. I understand all that. What I don't get is the sense of entitlement people feel for the content itself. After all, it's not really our content. At the end of the day if that's how content owners choose to sell it, isn't that their right? Isn't ours simply a choice of to buy or not to buy?
Somewhere along the line people started to lose perspective in this whole DRM debate. Somewhere along the line people started to categorize music, movies, and other forms of entertainment as exempt from the normal rules of commerce. Well -- that's not quite true. It's not that people gave blanket exemptions to entertainment "theft." It's that for some odd reason, people determined that they were the ones who should choose what was right and wrong when it came to the buying and selling entertainment content. Instead of the all-too-familiar set of rules for selling goods (i.e. the seller and the buyer mutually agree on the terms of sale; if either of the parties doesn't agree, there is no transfer of goods) consumers felt perfectly justified in writing their own personal rules. Often times, merely because they could.
Law-abiding, moral people do things with entertainment content that they wouldn't dream of doing with physical goods. Can you imagine walking into a restaurant which you knew to be overpriced, eating, and then leaving without paying just because the you felt the place was a rip-off and not worth the prices they charged? Worse yet, can you imagine doing it the next day also? Of course not!
Yet people feel no such compunction about appropriating media content without paying anyone for it. Why is this the case?
The entertainment industries would have you believe that the dreaded "perfect copy" is responsible for people illegally acquiring and sharing content. That is to say, because this new digital world offers heretofore unprecedented levels of quality in bootlegs, people steal. Frankly, that's a load. It confuses the cause and the effect. Sure, the existence of perfect copies has made the piracy problem more wide-spread and tougher to "fix," but people's disrespect of "entertainment value" happened well before the internet was even a glimmer in Al Gore's eye.
We all did it when we were younger; we'd pay to watch one movie, and at its conclusion we'd scurry down the hall and pop into another. "Why not?" we thought. "It's not like we're actually going to pay to see Bio-Dome. Besides, the seat is empty." There is no arguing the logic. It's impeccable. It's clearly a case of no harm, no foul. There's only one problem: that's really not the rule. Believe it or not, there is no "I wasn't gonna pay for it anyway" clause in the commerce rulebook. Nor is there an "I disagree with your terms so instead I'll just take it" clause. Yet, for some reason, when it comes to entertainment -- and the goods become intangible -- these become perfectly acceptable arguments.
The obvious answer is that people have no respect for goods where the marginal cost of production is zero or close to it. It doesn't matter that work went into its production. It doesn't matter that the sales of current goods pay for development of future goods. It seems to only matter what production costs. And, of course, what the consumer's self-proclaimed set of rules are.
I'm always reticent to suggest that people are ever "stealing" entertainment. Despite the best efforts of the industries involved to paint them as such, few of these people are criminals. Yet, they each break the rules and feel very little remorse about it.
So today we'll try something different. Today I'm going to ask you some questions. Do you have different rules for content vs. tangibiles? If so, why do you consider entertainment to be different from say, groceries? What are your personal rules about personal use of copyrighted -- often DRMed -- digital content??
For instance, I have a friend who buys music via an online store and then immediately torrents "clean" copies. Does he have a right to do so? Absolutely not, but he's fine with it. I've spent the last couple days loading up my new 5.5G iPod with movies I've previously purchased. Did I lose sleep over it? Nope. However, at the same time I recognized that I was indeed breaking the rules and it would be perfectly within the copyright holder's rights to slap so much DRM on there that I couldn't do it in the future -- just like it would be perfectly within my rights to not buy the movies if they did so.
I know others who only torrent broadcast shows. Still others torrent shows their cable companies don't carry or carry with bundles they don't like. On the more extreme side, I know people who feel perfectly within their rights to download music because "the label is screwing the artist."
Share your rules with the world. What's the most interesting rationalization you've developed for bending the rules for entertainment content, and why is it ok? I want to know, and something tells me you've probably thought about this before.
If you have comments or suggestions for future columns, drop me a line at theclicker@theevilempire.com.
There is something that I've never really understood when it comes to the digital entertainment debate. That is: where do people get their sense of entitlement with regard to content? Don't get me wrong -- I understand the hatred of DRM. I too have been bitten by incompatible formats and locked-down systems. I understand the digital claustrophobia one feels when in the Somewhere along the line people started to lose perspective in this whole DRM debate. Somewhere along the line people started to categorize music, movies, and other forms of entertainment as exempt from the normal rules of commerce. Well -- that's not quite true. It's not that people gave blanket exemptions to entertainment "theft." It's that for some odd reason, people determined that they were the ones who should choose what was right and wrong when it came to the buying and selling entertainment content. Instead of the all-too-familiar set of rules for selling goods (i.e. the seller and the buyer mutually agree on the terms of sale; if either of the parties doesn't agree, there is no transfer of goods) consumers felt perfectly justified in writing their own personal rules. Often times, merely because they could.
Law-abiding, moral people do things with entertainment content that they wouldn't dream of doing with physical goods. Can you imagine walking into a restaurant which you knew to be overpriced, eating, and then leaving without paying just because the you felt the place was a rip-off and not worth the prices they charged? Worse yet, can you imagine doing it the next day also? Of course not!
Yet people feel no such compunction about appropriating media content without paying anyone for it. Why is this the case?
The entertainment industries would have you believe that the dreaded "perfect copy" is responsible for people illegally acquiring and sharing content. That is to say, because this new digital world offers heretofore unprecedented levels of quality in bootlegs, people steal. Frankly, that's a load. It confuses the cause and the effect. Sure, the existence of perfect copies has made the piracy problem more wide-spread and tougher to "fix," but people's disrespect of "entertainment value" happened well before the internet was even a glimmer in Al Gore's eye.
We all did it when we were younger; we'd pay to watch one movie, and at its conclusion we'd scurry down the hall and pop into another. "Why not?" we thought. "It's not like we're actually going to pay to see Bio-Dome. Besides, the seat is empty." There is no arguing the logic. It's impeccable. It's clearly a case of no harm, no foul. There's only one problem: that's really not the rule. Believe it or not, there is no "I wasn't gonna pay for it anyway" clause in the commerce rulebook. Nor is there an "I disagree with your terms so instead I'll just take it" clause. Yet, for some reason, when it comes to entertainment -- and the goods become intangible -- these become perfectly acceptable arguments.
The obvious answer is that people have no respect for goods where the marginal cost of production is zero or close to it. It doesn't matter that work went into its production. It doesn't matter that the sales of current goods pay for development of future goods. It seems to only matter what production costs. And, of course, what the consumer's self-proclaimed set of rules are.
I'm always reticent to suggest that people are ever "stealing" entertainment. Despite the best efforts of the industries involved to paint them as such, few of these people are criminals. Yet, they each break the rules and feel very little remorse about it.
So today we'll try something different. Today I'm going to ask you some questions. Do you have different rules for content vs. tangibiles? If so, why do you consider entertainment to be different from say, groceries? What are your personal rules about personal use of copyrighted -- often DRMed -- digital content??
For instance, I have a friend who buys music via an online store and then immediately torrents "clean" copies. Does he have a right to do so? Absolutely not, but he's fine with it. I've spent the last couple days loading up my new 5.5G iPod with movies I've previously purchased. Did I lose sleep over it? Nope. However, at the same time I recognized that I was indeed breaking the rules and it would be perfectly within the copyright holder's rights to slap so much DRM on there that I couldn't do it in the future -- just like it would be perfectly within my rights to not buy the movies if they did so.
I know others who only torrent broadcast shows. Still others torrent shows their cable companies don't carry or carry with bundles they don't like. On the more extreme side, I know people who feel perfectly within their rights to download music because "the label is screwing the artist."
Share your rules with the world. What's the most interesting rationalization you've developed for bending the rules for entertainment content, and why is it ok? I want to know, and something tells me you've probably thought about this before.
If you have comments or suggestions for future columns, drop me a line at theclicker@theevilempire.com.
"Somewhere along the line people started to categorize music, movies, and other forms of entertainment as exempt from the normal rules of commerce."
Start with the providers of such content which has always pushed hard in favor of getting paid for any and every single performance of such material, regardless of who or what did the performance or what constitutes such performance. The movie market was deathly afraid of the VCR because they feared someone will watch the movie "for free" and wanted as best they could to ensure that they got paid each time that movie was played. That's what Divx (not the codec) was about, that's what the broadcast flag is about and that's what blueray (and HDDVD) is intended to do- to force people to pay per performance and never, ever have anything resembling ownership of movies, videos, or eventually audio content. And I'm not going to mention the absurdity of copyright protections that last for decades for computer software in an era where 2 year old software is obsolete.
Why shouldn't I be able to put the product I have purchased on any machine or device I own? Let's look at another form of copyrighted material that is often traded in vast quantities without any regard for the originator OR the distributor: recipes. If I buy a cookbook, am I not allowed to modify the recipe to suit my tastes? Can't I go online and look for just ONE recipe without having to buy a whole book? How about sharing that recipe with my neighbor? Maybe I don't want to keep the whole recipe book because I don't like most of the foods, but I want that one dish that caught my attention so I copy that one recipe down and move it to my personal list of recipes, maybe on a three by five card--maybe on a computer program that I can easily email to tens or hundreds of people. Heck, I could go so far as to BLOG my new favorite recipe where it would be viewable to the world. We haven't even covered whether or not I'm entitled to resell my recipe book after I've written down some of the recipes in other places.
Have I broken a law? Or was the practice of trading recipes around a long long time before the cookbook manufacturer found out a way to make a buck on what everyone used to proudly give away?
well I doubt that anyone is going to read this, but...
The reason I feel it is ok to 'steel' music/movies/software/etc is that it didn't cost anything for whover made it.
If I went to a restruant, bought a load of money then took off they would be in the hole for the food they sold me, the bottle of wine, the time for the waiters to serve me, etc. If I download a copy of XP or a season of Family Guy no one lost a single penny. They didn't even burn a cd. They were not going to get a single penny of my money either way, might as well make the best of things.
It also dates back to when buying data ment you owned it and could do whatever you wanted with it. When I could buy win2k and install it on all of my computers I didn't need to get a bootleg copy... In fact by making it so that I can only isntall XP on a single computer has cuased me to stop buying their software all together.
Fianlly, thenew comment system is not compatable with google spellcheck. Sorry about the spelling mistakes.
The biggest problem with DRM is the user experience. I have at least 1 computer / digital audio device in each room of the house. With the DRM scheme, I have to have a license to play the music on each device, even if it is not simultaneous. That gets expensive.
One big assumption from the music/software/game industry: People that 'steal' the content would have originally bought it. Not true.
I agree with Bob Dylan - the music sounds so bad that it should be free.
Copyright, as enacted in the US, provides limited legal protection to creators of artistic works, in return for their granting fair use and other rights.
DRM does not abide by those terms. It does not allow fair use, and does not expire when the copyright expires.
If the artists are not willing to abide by their side of the bargain as set out in law, and instead want to find technological ways of having their cake and eating it too, why the hell should I abide by my side of the bargain? Why shouldn't I find technological ways to weasel out of the deal too?
mathew says: "If the artists are not willing to abide by their side of the bargain as set out in law, and instead want to find technological ways of having their cake and eating it too, why the hell should I abide by my side of the bargain? Why shouldn't I find technological ways to weasel out of the deal too?"
I says: But you did agree to the "deal". When you downloaded the song and paid for it with your credit card you accepted their terms and conditions, one of which was some shitty DRM scheme. The only signal the record companies will understand is a price signal. Stop sending them positive ones, and DRM will soon enough go away. But don't pretend that you aren't breaking a solemn contract willingly entered into. You have no natural right to the 'information' contained in the entertainment offered for sale. If you don't like their terms of contract, don't enter into it.
Personally I always buy the CD and rip this to the formats I desire. I also download legally available free mp3s, and I have on some rare occasions bought mp3s. Generally I just avoid the DRM'd music. I did buy one song from iTunes once, just to see what the experience was like. I don't share this stuff, if a friend wants a track I'll burn it from the mp3 to an audio cd, usually. Bulk sharing your content is just plain wrong and benefits no-one in the long run.
The "stop buying to show them your opinion" works about as well as the "Don't buy gas from Cheveron because that will teach them Arabs a lesson!", meaning it doesn't work because people perceive a need to have the goods and the root source providing the commodity is limited to a handful of barons.
I am old enough to remember buying records every week for just $5 bucks. I watched them go from $5 to $7.99, to $9.99 to $12.99 to $15 bucks and beyond. It was frustrating, At $5 bucks, it was OK if only two songs out of 9 or 12 were good, but at $12.99 it really sucked.
So, because of this, I feel justified in occasionally "acquiring" songs that I didn't pay for. After all, the music industry has been ripping me off for years. I never felt this way about movies, though. If I acquired one from a friend, fine, but I never went out of my way to acquire bootleg movies and do not do so now.
But ever since the iTunes Music Store opened up, I have been purchasing 99% of my music. Oh, occasionally I resort to other means if I cannot find it anywhere else, but on the whole, I try to keep artist's rights in mind.. even if I can't find it conveniently. You can be sure you're getting a good copy if you purchase it.. you are not as sure if you use other means.
I think the sense of entitlement comes from having our entire culture commodified and sold back to us.
In other words, let us consider the other 99.99% of human history, although we can surely extend this way beyond that into pre-history too. Do you think that as oral tradition was spread through song and chant royalties were charged? Even in more recent times, popular folk songs of the day were performed openly in public spaces. Sure a coin in the hat was appreciated, but the music was considered the fabric of culture, part of the lexicon. Were pirates (the real ones) stealing their chanties while the Royal Marines were paying liscensing fees for the tunes they hummed while swabbing the decks? Its obnoxious and absurd to deny us our birthright of shared musical tradition. While there may be commercial space for some parasites to make a living off this fundamental human activity, the sense of entitlement to question seems to be this author's (who seems to think the Industry is owed something).
I can't come up with easy answers; I appreciate the hard work musicians do and understand the costs of equipment and travelling; but it seems that really the problem is that in our obsessive quest for economic growth, creative pursuits are not really accounted for unless they are commercial successes. Basically, if you can't afford to do your music as a labor of love without payment, you might want to look for a day job. Tough titties, Moby. I'm totally willing to suffer only mediocre local, overworked DIY musicians if it means the recording industry collapsing and going back under whatever foul rock from whence it came.
Same goes for TV and other media... why should we, as the clock of human history is at 11:59:59, be charged for exposure to our own cultural heritage? Yes I realize people paid admission to greek plays and so on, but in general these were for luxurious seats; the vulgar public still had common access to the tales, music, and events of the day. So yeah, if they want to set up prime seating, or early delivery, or more ultra high-fi shit, and people want to pay, great. But to say that it is theft to expose yourself to something that is duplicated without cost is purely ridiculous. His restaurant metaphor is absurd in this light:
"Can you imagine walking into a restaurant which you knew to be overpriced, eating, and then leaving without paying just because the you felt the place was a rip-off and not worth the prices they charged? ... Of course not!"
It would be more appropos to say "Can you imagine walking past a restaurant, smelling the escaping and tempting wafts from the grill, and then recieving a bill for it? Of course not!"
The sense of entitlement comes from a major misunderstanding between consumers and corperate America. We spend thousands on computers and need to upgrade every few years. We spend $50 per month on broadband so that we can download quickly. We spend $300 on an ipod. What we are spending is our entertainment budget. We are spending MORE than we used to spend buying CDs so that we can steal music. The corperations think that we are willing to spend unlimited ammounts of money on entertainment. They are wrong, as is evidenced by the fact that we have drawn a line in the sand and are stealing everything beyond that line. The market needs to adjust to this reality and reorganize.
If I buy something I dam well am going to play it on any and all Hardware I have purchased. If the entertainment don't play or convert then it will go into the toilet and the world will know how that content sucks (SEE HOW THAT HELPS YOUR SALES). "WE" subsidized and allowed studios and radio stations to "USE" for extended periods of time our "PUBLIC" AIRWAWES in exchange we were allowed to copy the content with the toys of time. We have better toys so the rule should be the same but now the entertainment companies think we can be charged for each and every device or form of play even though WE OWN A COPY. GREED has caused the public to be not interested in the BIG COMPANIES whine about PIRACY. They lied and told us in the 80's a CD cost more to make than a cassette or Vinyl. Truth told it was faster and cheaper. Then they slowly ratched up the cost on top of this. From $7-9 to nearly $18 or more sometimes. Lies and more LIES. The artist getting screwed every step. We care for the artists. We hate the studios GREED. There is our entitlement. You don't like it. Try and find a buyer next time we can't convert. This is why sales dropped in the 90's, $18 CD's whatever. Virgin had sales of 3 cd's for $25. I bought $400 worth of music. Too bad I had to subsidize the industry during that time but the sales were too goo to be true. Now WB is churning out $5 DVD's. Who in their right mind would waste their time making copies. Not worth it anymore in time or risk. How can a movie with all the time and effort of many many people and lots of money cost $5 bucks when a band of say 5 max gets $18 for a cd of 7 or 8 songs. Bummer is the band is only seing a few cents of all that cash. So a few songs or a movie. Where would you want to put your money? The GREEDY RECORD industry killed itself. Then had RIAA make them into the most vile entities since Hitler. Definately my opionion. I know many who would agree.
It isn't entitlement that is at issue. It is labelling and selling music/dvd's/software that without reading a 30 page agreement you don't realize that you are not actually buying anything but rather renting under their rules. That is crux of that matter. When I went out to buy a vhs tape in the 80's I owned it. I could make copies easily and devices were readily available to do so. Now IPOD comes along and companies like them. Sure we may know the rules about IPOD but what about each and every company that starts up with a contract a mile long that you are signing on to. Each customer should fully read this to buy a song or a movie? Ridiculous. I believe what needs to be done is language needs to be altered for the companies that sell DRM realted materlial. Big bold letters to the customer everything you are not permited to do with this because you are not PURCHASING anything you are RENTING.
If companies continue to hide behind detailed user agreements to limit users ability to use their material they are led to believe the own then the expected results is that users will want do with it what they would do with anything else they own.
I can't use I-tunes b/c of the format. I don't want my digital music in any closed format, it just feels to restrictive. So for now I will buy CD's and rip them. When I get one with DRM on it I just look up the work around online. I don't believe there is anything wrong with this as the CD I have purchased is my property and I am not stealing anything or offering anything to be stolen. DRM was created to be circumvented, its as simple as that.
Its Robin Hood mentality. Mistreat the peasants and the peasants will do whatever they have to in order to get what they think they deserve.
In a few years your Blu-Ray/HD-DvD player will have to 'phone home' before you're allowed to watch a legally bought movie, on a legally bought HD-player, on a legally bought HDTV. God help you if you haven't upgraded to HDMI by then. The MPAA are stepping too far into our living rooms...and people can justify alot out of spite. If someone wrongs you.. justification is subbed for morality.
You compare digital content to food. Tell me how tempted you would be to walk out with a couple of cans of food under your shirt if buying it legally meant someone from Krogers had to come home with you and watch you prepare the meal according to their rules. Too bad if you like your fries baked in an over instead of fried in grease.. they sold it to you...you bought it, you have to prepare it the way they tell you to. Why should digital content be any different than anything else I buy? If I want to copy it to my harddrive the ever-so-fragile-and-way-to-easily-scatchable dvd disks where I dont ever have to touch the disc again.. I should be allowed. If I want to put it on my legally bought portable Mp4 player.. I bought it, I should be able to watch it wherever and whenever I want. Just because I buy a product from the MPAA doesnt give them a right to enter my livingroom. Nothing gives them that right. As long as they use really screwed up tactics people will justify stealing everything from them. Sure there are a few poor or cheap people that will still steal.. but right now I think most are doing it out of spite and spite alone.
my rules..I'm a kid, I have no money, and if I REALLY like an album/movie etc (I Mean LOVE It) I'll go out and buy it afterwards. But I'm not gonna pay 10-15 for a CD/DVD on the off-chance I may like it!
One of the main differences between tangible goods and non-tangible goods is just that. One is a physical product which has an increase in cost for every user. When there is no clear correlation between costs incurred and amount of use of a product it is must harder to establish fair buyer-seller relations.
Personally I feel that the little power I have over the media content that I see or hear is well deserved. As long as I rarely get to choose what I see or hear I feel I have the right to decide what content to sponsor with my own money. Billboards in my face all day, radio commercials in my ear, tv commercials, newspaper ads, product placement and etc. I will not pay for any media content until i know whether or not I enjoyed it. Media content providers have so many sources of income, why pick on the little guy?
Everytime this discussion comes up I think of the story about the Emperors New Clothes. Did the emperor pay a fair price for his new clothes? As long as he was happy with them, yes. If the emperor decided not to pay for his new clothes would that be fair?
I think majority of us did it because collectively we were irritated when we purchase a cd from a artist with 18 song and only 2 of them could be considered mediocre at best and the other 16 just shouldnt be listened to at all, nor should it be called music, then internet downloads came about, a easy way to download an entire album and previewing it before purchase, it got worst when the previewed version became close in quality with the purchased cd and it went from downloading to preview before purchase to not purchasing at all. Who is at fault? I dont know but the ease of free download doesnt help any and the abundance of record companies releasing music from one hit wonders is getting sickening. I think as a group when we look at our computers and see itunes and right next to it we see limewire, both relatively easy to use but only one will cost you. That inane vision of walking into a car dealership and test driving a car and not having to return it encompasses out entire Ideal. Is it right? No, is it easy to do? Yes, will we sacrifice our entire law abiding upbringing to keep us close to an art form that shaped most of our creative mentality and nurtured us through pain and joy? Maybe, why? Because a long time ago napster drove into our psyche that this is cool and its so cool it is a victim less crime. And psychologically speaking we cant argue with what we have been conditioned to believe.
Tell me why do the labels have a sense of entitlement? Sure, they have the copyright to the media that they offer. Why should we allow them the unprecedented right to remotely disable the media? Analog tapes do fade and wear, but at least an owner of those can still play them if they like, assuming the player and medium are in good shape. I don't see why I can't carry that forward in to the digital world.
Why pay $0.99 to "rent" an audio track if I don't really know if I can keep using it for as long as I have that file? Otherwise, it is so much cheaper to have unlimited rental of millions of tracks for the cost of one CD a month, or just buy the CD and use its tracks for as long as I still posess the CD.
If we pirate music, record companies die. Which is fine since they only served a purpose when distribution was a major hurdle. With the internet, distribution is no longer a problem and record companies must shrink to match their significance in this new world. They are parasites sucking off the creativity of small groups of people who get together to make music for the right reasons. If record companies dissapear I think we would barely notice.
Movies and television on the other hand is a totally different story. If we pirate this content we will send the movie/tv industry to the same fate we are sending the record industry to. The end result will be terrible in my opinion since afterall, you cannot make 'the lord of the rings' in your basement with your buddies. This industry works hard, take big risks and for all its flaws earns the right to have you pay them for its property.
In summary, pirate music and sleep well knowing that you are just killing off parasites. Pirate movies and tv and know you are undermining a very important industry and you will suffer in the long run because of your own actions.
There may be an endless supply of reasons and rationales as to why people feel entitled to content such as, outrage over prices, no fear of punishment, a Robin Hood type of mentality , and a major one the pre-mentioned no harm no foul outlook.
My feelings about personal use of copyrighted content is that once you buy a copy its yours and you should be able to do what ever you want with it as long as that doesn't involve redistributing copies of it. And its easy to say just buy the CD but if Artist made CD's in which every song was a good as the release single then online stores wouldn't have as large of a market as they currently do, and informed people wouldn't be willing to subject them selves to DRMed content.
I don't think its right to bundle content with all the problems and restrictions that come along with DRMed content. It's like selling someone a car with a contract that says they can only drive it in the city . In the end DRMed content is mainly hurting legitimate consumers who are willing to pay for content.
It always has and always will be hard to control and mandate intangible content. But to stop so many people from doing it the related industries need to sell products at fairer prices or offer worthwhile incentives to honest consumers. I do think online stores have taken a step in the right direction as far as letting people pick and chose what they want to buy instead of having to buy a whole CD with only a few songs they like, now they just need to get rid of the DRM.
Well written, but completely off and I completely disagree.
Someone mentioned that if the price structure of cds was incorrect people should just stop buying music. Well that already happened before downloading became popular. After popele had repurcahsed all their old music on cds sales were beginning to decline. People were speaking with their wallets. Couple this with the elimination of the single and we have the situation that lead to napster's popularity. Let's not forget we NEVER got a CD price drop. With most new technologies prices drop after a given time, this never happened with CDs. In fact the record companies copped to price fixing and got a slap on the wrist because of it. Me personally I'm not into downloading music but if I was I wouldn't hurt sales. I stopped buying new music 10 years ago. I found it cheaper to pay $5 for a used cd than $15 for a new one. Bottom line record companies treated customers poorly and they acted accordingly.
I think the problem mostly lies in vocabulary. It is only recently that our communally owned culture has been turned into wholly owned content and our nations citizens downgraded to consumers.
Without the shift in vocabulary I think it is easy to understand why citizens might feel a sense of entitlement about their culture.
"What's the most interesting rationalization you've developed for bending the rules for entertainment content, and why is it ok?"
Ideally...seriously guys what the hell is so hard about enjoying entertainment that all the major media are so poorly designed? Here's what I think---entertainment keeps you alive. It's an anti-depressant. It's a drug, for better or worse---I think better. It teaches some people about human emotions, but in the end it's a lot of work. The technology sucks to enjoy entertainment, at home or elsewhere. The whole industry is not good enough for 2006. So as I was saying I need my entertainment for the reasons above---to counter boredom mainly but also to think. I can't afford enough entertainment at a good enough quality. I am tempted to supplant it with piracy. The prices are too high for heavy users.
Entertainment is not a physical good, its information. Compare information to goods and you will notice that they are completly different. First of all information can be shared without loosing quality (non-rivalrous). If I listen to a song, then you can still listen to the same song. But if I buy a product, then there will be one less product for you to buy. Information is also non-excludable, which means you can't stop someone from using it. If I have a good then I can choose who I want to sell it to, and If I sell a service, I can choose who to service, but the moment I have sold information, in the form of music, video, games or software, then I have no control of where it ends up.
You can combine rivalrousness and excludability into four categories; goods (rivalrous and excludable), services (non-rivalrous and excludable), raw materials( rivalrous and non-excludable) and information (non-rivalrous and excludable). A public good is a good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable, for example street lighting and public defence. These goods are payed by the government because there is no real way to determine who uses them and no way to stop people who haven't payed from using them. The same applies for information, and hence the government should pay for the information, and not the concumer.
There is a low chance of being caught with the factors of encryption and turning of uploading to others. Without a chance of being caught people relish the opportunity to get away with steeling.
It's not very polite to insult someone Pixelbender, however you may feel about a problem.
I do know a fair bit about this as I worked in this field for a long time and am not party to many of the myths that go with copyright and fairtrade.
I have always felt that those who shout loudest are those who have not checked or researched the validity of their argument. Please don't use insults to stengthen your argument as it just looks like foot stamping.
Fairuse in the US was designed to allow a portion of another persons work into your own. It was never conceived a way of stripping copy protection from a piece of work or to circumvente rules regarding duplication of the work as a whole.
Also, the law in the US regarding copyright was changed with the DMCA. Like it or not the presence of restricted use files and copy protection is legal and very probably here to stay.
Anytime that "artists" receive $10 million+ dollars for an album/show/movie while children starve to death in many, many countries around the world, I and many, many, others like me will be right here...torrenting as fast as we can. We will always be here, despite Amazon, iTunes, iWhatever, whether anyone likes it or not..a little callous, I know, but there is a limit to how much compensation one should receive for creating a 4 minute song. Not that I take it upon myself to enforce it like some rogue superhero, but doctors, teachers, firefighters, policemen/women, etc, pretty much sacrifice their lives and sanity to make the world a better place; yet how many people ever thank any one of them..instead waxing philosophic about the rights of a company to make ridiculous amounts of money whilst deciding how/where entertainment should be enjoyed. Haha actually you would most probably curse at the very people safeguarding your existence (the very one which encompasses jolly DRM fun!) while willingly giving up entertainment freedoms. Phew, apologies,..ADMITTEDLY (that means DO NOT email me with poor grammar and weakling arguments) a tangential and probably COMPLETELY off-topic post/rant (although Billy Bob will most probably reply anyways), fueled by spirits at an an early hour, but seriously, c'mon people, when did we lose sight of what was important? Do you know how much money Apple makes? And where does it go? Agreed, it provides ease-of-use and access to vast entertainment libraries...but at what cost? I look forward to the hate posts. Enjoy!
In general I accept what was said without debate. I would like to add the point of "ownership." When I buy - most anything - I have paid for the right to do most anything I choose to with it _as long as I do not deprive the original manufacturer of additional revenue_ (sorry, this is all about money). One of the nastier issues in the digital space is "licensing." You no long "own" your software, it's licensed. You no longer own your music, it's licensed. Where I draw the line is being told that I can't copy the media I paid for to my iPod (and maybe by wife's), and my MusicKeg, and my laptop. Replace "CD" with any other entertainment content. Those copies are for my convenience - to keep from lugging the CD around. Since all these copies are generally exclusively for my personal use, and somewhat mutually exclusive - I have not deprived the manufacturer of any additional revenue. That's my "entitlement" and when DRM steps into that space, I will - and have - hacked the crap out of it.
>>One of the nastier issues in the digital space is "licensing." You no long "own" your software, it's licensed.
Hi Sam!
I think you've missed some of the points raised previously. The licensing of material is not new. Those CD's you have been buying all these years were also licensed to you. You never did own the music, you only owned the right to play it whenever you wished without further payments to the copyright holder(s). The licence to play said music was wrapped up in the terms and conditions of use.
The main difference now is that said music from downloads is protected by DRM where most CD's (there are some as we know) are not. Because there is no protection on most audio files on CD's we have become used to simply 'ripping them' and storing on the computer/minidisc/iPod or giving copies of the CD's away to friends. The DRM protection stops you from doing that in most cases. of course some DRM rights is better than others. Apple's is quite good (5 computers and iPods) and does give you a way to remove the protection by burning the tracks to an audio CD. Napster's music is rented for the period of subscription. It's a matter of choice where ones purchases the music and how it is intended to be used. It's not creating a new law in itself however, it's creating a new recognition of the laws that were around regarding ownership. Now it can be seen that you do not own the music, only the rights to use it according to the terms and conditions given as was the case with all your past CD purchases. It's this realisation of the 'ownership' of music and films that infuriates most because past behaviour isn't possible anymore - or at least not without difficulties.
The 'rights' people often cite are often not legal rights at all but desires and wishes based on concepts of ownership that may or may not be enshrined in law.
I can and do appreciate the argument about ownership of downloaded music. When one has downloaded an album, what have you indeed bought? The files or the rights to use them? That's a minefield in itself. One can argue that the files are physical in the sense of data that can be quantified on a storage media. 2MB of song data is a physical thing that belongs to you as the purchaser. One the otherhand the counter argument is that the content of said file is a copyrighted song which is licenced for use to you so you have not actually bought the file, but the rights to use it. The file is a mechanism to get the music to you as much as the CD is in the shop. So is the file yours as the plastic disc is? Tricky to argue. In the CD case it's easier. The CD is yours but the songs upon it are not. Never have been. They are, as I said before, subject to use.
DRM is an inevetable outcome I beleive of data as a means of reproducing copyright content. It enabled the publishers (book, music, films, etc.) to feel comfortable that payment for one song or album allows only one copy of that song or album to exist in a way that is similar to a physical CD, DVD or book. The costs of DRM will restrict the way we treat such material but as I said it's not changing too much the terms and conditions such material has always come with, it's forcing a dramatic, and to some people horrible, way of enphasising that copyright and terms of use. I can't see a way out of DRM unless people overnight become honest and the publishers feel safe to release unprotected material. When they feel that a single eBook or DVD published online will remain as a single eBook or DVD then more unprotected material will come. While the threat of copying and distribution without moral or financial support to the copyright holder exists then it will remain.
The best solution to this 'problem' for some is not stripping away the DRM from files and not foot stamping about 'rights' but to come up with a better mechanism to help publishers feel safe. A single DRM format for all players perhaps? Some European countries have proposed that and came up against the wrath of the American Department of Trade and company lawers. Would not a single DRM format for all players irrespective of where said file was bought from make more sense than fighting the companies that create the competing standards? It's not the DRM that I often see as the problem but these competing standards. I don't think CD's would have been too sucessful if only those published by Sony Music played on Sony players and left Philips and other brands to publish their own CD's to play on their machines.
Rights have to be maintained for the copyright holder. Laws are in place to allow DRM to exist to help those rights. We shouldn't be fighting those rights, we should be making a solid, conviencing and working argument to the companies that use DRM to make it work in a way that allows us to move from iPod to Yepp or Zune to iPod to Mac to Windows to Hi-Fi to minidisc etc. etc. in a way that they feel comfortable with and we feel happier in using.
I have a tiny TV with lousy antenna, and i have a big computer monitor with a fast internet connection. I would download torrents with ads if they existed - commercials are often awesome.
Humans bend their ideas to force themselves into one single path, and they bend their ideas to go around that single path, that you choose to be on one side or the other you bend your brain either way, that you fight for your rights, or for your rights, you fight for your rights. The goal of one is to make money, the goal of the second is to save money, this could also be transfered as to make money as well.
I pirate because the recording industry has become a trust, they all set absurd prices for the amount of liscence you're given when you purchase music. If the market scenerio is changed by factors like monopolization then you cant complain that the consumer must still play by the do-gooder capitalist game. Basically since all the recording industry has started playing dirty, and together, then the consumers are going to start playing dirty, and together.
i see your arguement but media companys need to realise that the piracy problem is always going to be there its nothing new i remember getting pirate VHS's of batman films when i was younger, but they can minimalise the amoutn of piracy by making it easier for the consumer to access and own the media for example letting me put the dvd i buy onto a pda, phone or any other portable device as the physical copy of the film is mine so i should be allowed to do as i wish with it. and taking drm off songs bought from itunes if i want to put a single song on my friends ipod i should be able to is that not getting the artist/band more fans buy exposing them to new consumers?
I can't help but wonder if that picture at the top of that lovely article was properly acquired, or if the author merely didn't want to go through the process of validating all artwork posted on this site... Come to think, are any of the pictures on this site properly documented?
This DRM business isn't going to work well if the biggest proponents are complete hypocrites.
And come to think, the copyright only applies to one specific version of the song. So if there are ANY changes made [i.e. format changing] wouldn't that mean that it's your song then? Because you did in fact change some part of the song, it is your version, and technically you could probably make a CD of songs you have edited, and sell it on an open market...
Oh, the possibilities.
Somewhere along the line, the entertainment industry started looking at digital content as if it were a copyright infringement for the rights of the song. I don't want the rights to the song, but I want the rights to listen to it. If a song is purchased, it should be abled to be played on anything that can play digital files. I thinks consumers are getting sick of propietary media, and just want a standard for digital media that can be played anywhere. As many have stated, you can purchase a cd and listen to it, anywhere a cd can be played. Copies can be made.... but not for resale. If a friend wanted to hear it, copy it to cd (or tape, back in the day). Having a copy of it never kept me from buying my own cd.
Why is it that as technology grows and finds better ways to have a more permanent, stable form of media, that yes, can very easily be backed up, the entertainment industry decides to tighten their grip on the content? Could it be because now we may only have to buy it once, and conceivably never have to buy it again? I can tell you, that I've probably purchased my favorite cd's 2 or 3 times, because of the wear that comes it listening to it over and over. Now the industry is trying to get their money where they can, since it may only come this time around.
I have never, and will never purchase digital media under the current conditions. I've tried monthly services, which seems like a better track that drm'ing something purchased. Cd's are still the safest bet. At least you don't need intertnet connection to get the rights to play them.
Yes of course things will always get stolen and someone down the line will pirate a CD 99% at one time, Im sure have done it. But its the people that constantly do it, for say, spite of the record companies that sell the CD because "It's not fair that they can charge that much for a CD. We're getting ripped off." No, no you are not gting ripped off. Who says that it is immoral to charge 10 dollars for somthing that is almost the farthest thing away from a neccesity. Yes, it might indeed be immoral to charge 500,000 dollars for insulin shots because withought those, a diabetic person may very well die. But when you download an album because you think you're "Stickin it to the man" That is wrong. There is a perfectly legal way of doing it. It's called boycotting my friends, that's right, the way people did it in the old days. You just don't buy it. But don't think you have the wright to steal it because you dont have the money. Unless you have some freakish disease that will kill you unless you listen to brand new music every hour, I suggest you un-install Bittorrent, and open your wallet if you want the music.
187 comments is too many to read through.
Here's why I don't like DRM. First, the legal reasons:
1) It removes my legal Fair Use rights (the right to make a single backup copy of my software specifically, though there are lots of other times that copying can fall under Fair Use).
2) It removes my legal First Sale rights in almost every single implementation so far.
Now there are some other reasons that don't have any particular basis in law. All of these are simply reasons I don't want to purchase DRM solutions as a consumer, and thus why content providers tend not to get my money:
1) Phone-home solutions mean that the content distributor can decide at any time that I'm no longer allowed to experience the content. My guess is that they'll all have licence agreements that state this.
2) The content providers all try to (and succeed in) getting our lawmakers to extend copyright. Originally, copyright was much more limited, temporally. Between Congress and the Supreme Court, it's essentially become infinite (Congress made the laws, SCOTUS upheld them). Though there is still technically a limit, there is no particular reason to expect that it won't be extended further.
This is only a problem because copyright is supposed to be a balance. Ideas weren't meant to be property, but the creators of copyright realized that creating works that could be freely copied wouldn't be terribly profitable. As such, the balance (copyright) was created. In order to maintain profitability (and thus ensure that new art was created), the creator had a limited monopoly on the distribution of that work, after which it would be placed in the public domain.
This "social contract" is being eroded, and so are our our Fair Use rights. I don't particularly want to support an industry which is doing this.
3) Planned obsolescence is built in. A license is required to create and distribute a DVD player. If they want to force people to re-buy all their content, all they have to do is stop giving out these licenses and wait for DVD players to start breaking. Non-drm'd media can be converted to other formats prior to the players breaking.
That's just a smattering of reasons that I am anti-DRM. It has nothing to do with wanting to pirate--when I want some piece of media, I go out and buy it, despite it actually being easier and more convenient for me to simply download (illegally). I support the artists and creators I like. But the above points are simply difficult for me to overlook.
I rather wish I'd mentioned that the legal points above /do/ give me an entitlement to copy. The right to copy is given by the same government that allows copyright. The lower (non-legal) reasons do not give an entitlement.
The problem with saying that stealing intellectual property is just like stealing physical property is that it assumes that intellectual property is the same as physical property. It is not. Among other things, physical property is protected from government seizure, and intellectual property is supposed to expire automatically. The laws derive their power from completely different parts of the constitution. The reason that stealing is wrong is that you are depriving someone else of something that is rightfully theirs. When you steal a song, the content owners have exactly what they had before you stole it. Stealing a song is not like stealing a steak.
The internet has flipped the old information business model on its head. In the past the production of information was undertaken with the assurance that investments would be recouped from distrobution sales. Now that distrobution can be accomplished at zero cost to the producer the old business model doesn't work. DRM is an attempt to preserve the scarcity that has heretofore been maintained by the need to distribute on physical media.
So... advances in technology have created a far more efficient way to distribute information. Do the producers of information have the right to use DRM to negate this new efficiency by creating false scarcity? Or does a new business model need to be devised?
I believe that a new business model needs to be devised and I will continue collecting (I don't think consuming is an appropriate word)information at no cost beyond my own bandwidth until things change.
The analogy used in the article in an attempt to equate copyright infringement with stealing is invalid. Copyright infringement is more akin to walking by a restaurant, smelling something good, and then going home and making an exact replica of whatever the restaurant was serving. (Of course, restaurants' recipes are covered by trade secret law, not copyright law, so even that is a weak analogy; if you can figure out someone's trade secret without resorting to industrial espionage, you're probably okay legally.)
The fact that it's easier to copy a song is merely a sign that the business is changing. Companies who try to hang on to "a copy of one of our songs is like a physical object" will need to either adapt or find a new business.
Entertainment products have two components: the creative product (movie, song, other intellectual property, and the distribution medium (CD, videotape, cassette).
For so long, the suppliers told us that what we were buying was the media. THAT's where the real cost was. Sure you bought "Back in Black" on vinyl, but if you want it on cassette, you have to pay full retail, since the cost of production, packaging and shipping are considerable. When CDs came out, the cost of albums bumped up further (remember?) because of production and distro costs.
Everytime we "upgraded," we paid full retail rate, inferring a zero cost for the non-tangible part of the product.
Contrast this with software, where they ALWAYS said you're paying for IP. Anytime there was a media shift (5" floppies -> 3.5"; 3.5"->CDs), the companies simply requested a nominal fee to cover the cost of getting the software on alternate media. It's as if they were saying: "Sure, you have a license to run Lotus 1-2-3. It ships with CDs, but if you need floppies, just send us $10."
Unlike the software companies, the media companies
have trained us to respect only variable cost. It did wonders for them in the 80s & 90s with CDs and DVDs. But now, it's come back to haunt them. They want it both ways.
There are really two different things we're talking about here when we talk about "entitlement"... The first is of course the idea that somebody who purchases content should be able to utilize that content in any personal, non-commercial way they would choose to do so. I don't think anybody is going to disagree that this really should be the case, and that DRM works against that particular entitlement.
The second issue, however, is the feeling of entitlement that gives people the right to acquire whatever media content they want without paying for it. People rationalize this in any number of ways, including the excuse that DRM is evil, that artists are not being compensated, that the RIAA is doing bad things, etc, etc, etc ad nauseum.
However, it doesn't change the fact that if you acquire something that you are legally required to pay for and do so without paying for it, you are basically stealing. Now, you can rationalize whether or not that form of stealing is ethical or not, as this is a decision left up to each person's personal ethics, but the current laws of most western societies make it clear that it is theft (exceptions do exist, such as the provision in Canadian Copyright Law that allows for "Private Copying" of *music*).
But let's not come up with any nonsense about downloading media content without paying for it being a form of "protest" because it is most certainly NOT. In order for something to be a valid protest, it needs to send a clear message, and generally that message has to indicate that the people who are protesting feel strongly enough about something to make an effort or personal sacrifice in sending that message.
Downloading music without paying for it is NOT a form of protest, despite those who may think it is. Anybody out there who might be listening to such a 'protest' is going to lump you in with thieves and pirates, and the message is going to be lost. It won't be assumed that you're *protesting* but rather that you're just *stealing*, regardless of whether your intentions are pure or not.
After all, what is the cost or sacrifice to you? You're still consuming the media, you're just refusing to pay for it. That's NOT a protest.
If you really want to send a protest, then STOP buying music from the RIAA labels and movies from the MPAA. Make it clear to the RIAA and MPAA that you are not willing to buy any of their content until they reduce prices, and/or remove DRM restrictions, or whatever other message you may want to send.
But as long as you keep consuming the content without paying for it, that's not a form of protest, but rather a form of hypocrisy.
As an aside, its is an unfortunate reality that simply refusing to buy DRM content isn't really a solution. The RIAA and MPAA don't particularly care *how* they get their money, as long as they get their money. It costs them nothing extra to distribute music through online stores such as iTunes et al, and if they happen to not make any money from that particular distribution channel because people are still buying CDs instead, they really don't care, as it has no affect on their bottom line. While ceasing to do business with the iTunes Store may hurt Apple, it's unlikely that this would ever force a policy change, since the RIAA/MPAA would simply tell Apple that it's really just too bad, and the restrictions are what they are, and the iTunes Store would quietly go out of business.
Don't get me wrong, DRM is an evil thing, although it's a necessary thing for the time being at least. The RIAA/MPAA aren't backing down any time soon on this, and will never choose to stop using it unless they are somehow forced to stop by either market forces (which is unlikely, as they are going to continue making money from CD and DVD sales from the vast majority of consumers who don't even know what DRM *is*), or by government legislation. In the meantime, online content providers are caught in the middle, with a choice of either complying in at least *some* form with the industry's requirements (hence applying DRM), or simply not being able to operate their businesses.