Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]

Matthias Andree
2003-04-27T21:55:22Z

On Sun, 27 Apr 2003, Larry McVoy wrote:

> There is much hand wringing and gnashing of teeth over the fact that
> the evil corporations are locking things up with DRM as well as various
> laws like the DMCA. People talk about their "rights" being violated,
> about how awful this all is, etc, etc, etc.

I have had the right to run any software I wish on my PeeCee.

The people locking down music with DRM and CD playback protection, whatever,
have explicitly stated that they aren't interested in pressing Red Book
compliant CDs. I am not going to ask EMI or Universal if they want me to
play their CD in my car audio or CD-ROM drive, I'm just doing it. If
they are telling my "our CD isn't going to play in your computer", they
can keep it to themselves and plug it into their backs.

I bought the CD, and the implicit right to the information contained on
the CD. I'm not sharing my CDs in P2P networks, and I do have the right
to make a backup copy of a CD (at least, that was the situation a month
ago, I'd need to check again, but the new German copyright act is
inconsistent anyways) for my private purposes (of course, selling the
copies without consent of the copyright holder hasn't been allowed for
the past decades). The current law _effectively_ undermines my right to
a backup. This hasn't yet addressed fair use, and I'm not going into
fair use here.

> What seems to be forgotten is that the people who are locking things up
> are the people who own those things and the people who are complaining
> are the people who got those things, illegally, for free. There seems

I'd very much like to give the original artist and record engineers and
stuff twice of what they're getting now, and instead give the useless
record company nothing. CD forth or back.

The problem is to draw the proper line around property, and find a
consensus in society who can own what information. Imagine someone would
"own" basic arithmetics. You can't imagine that, because that's
essential and public knowledge. Where are you going to draw the line
between public and private property?

The moment DRM is extended on other information than just entertainment,
it's going to get really threatening to the basics of society in
general. We've had this discussion before about patents, so I'm not
going over all the arguments which are virtually the same, only
technically enforced rather than by means of registering your
"invention" with the patent and trademark office.

> to be a wide spread feeling that whenever anything desirable comes along
> it is OK to take it if you want it. Napster is a good example. I don't
> like the record companies any better than anyone else but they do own
> the material and you either respect the rules or the record companies
> will lock it up and force you to respect the rules.

They are to make serious product offers first. :->

Seriously, if someone offers a "pay per listen/view", that's fine if it
has an adequate price. I still expect an offer of a "flat rate" (such as
the CD) that I can listen to/view for my private use as often as I want.
I understand that'll cost like 10 or 30 times "single view", but ...
(see below)

> The open source community, in my opinion, is certainly a contributing
> factor in the emergence of the DMCA and DRM efforts. This community
> thinks it is perfectly acceptable to copy anything that they find useful.

Open Source is about copying what you find useful; information for the
most part (and the one who makes the copy pays for it, the information
is free and with some licenses meant to remain free).

> Take a look at some of the recent BK flamewars and over and over you
> will see people saying "we'll clone it". That's not unique to BK,
> it's the same with anything else which is viewed as useful. And nobody
> sees anything wrong with that, or copying music, whatever. "If it's
> useful, take it" is the attitude.

... believing that DRM and TCPA and sequels will just be about only
permitting to consume what you've paid for is not my belief.

> This problem is pervasive, it's not just a handful of people. Upon the
> advice of several of the leading kernel developers, I contacted Pavel's
> boss at SuSE and said "how about you nudge Pavel onto something more
> productive" and he said that he couldn't control Pavel. That's nonsense
> and everyone knows that. If one of my employees were doing something
> like that, it would be trivial to say "choose between your job and that".
> But Garloff just shrugged it off as not his problem.

So there. You aren't telling SuSE any more about they deal with people
who have SuSE mail addresses (and possibly work contracts) than Richard
M. Stallman or I are telling you to open source Bitkeeper: you don't
think it's right, you're not doing it. (And given that Pavel's week has
168 hours minus sleep and eating and all that, leaves like 100 hours
for him to use, and SuSE could control half than that and less, they'd
be idiots to tell Pavel what he cannot do in his spare time.)

> that's cool, let's copy it". With no acknowledgement that the creation
> of the product took 100x the effort it takes to copy the product.

Now that's thin ice you've set your foot upon; I'd like to challenge
that with "has BitMover invented source code and revision management"?
Certainly not. Has BitMover invented distributed development? Neither.
So watch out. I do acknowledge that I've yet to see something working as
smooth as BitKeeper for merges of distributed repos, but then again, I
haven't seen anything else than RCS, CVS and BK.

> Do you think that corporations are going sit by and watch you do that and
> do nothing to stop you? Of course they aren't, they have a strong self
> preservation instinct and they have the resources to apply to the problem.
> The DMCA, DRM, all that stuff is just the beginning. You will respond
> with all sorts of clever hacks to get around it and they will respond
> with even more clever hacks to stop you. They have both more resources
> and more at stake so they will win.

They can have their rights, but no more. DMCA is currently being abused
to hinder research and publishing results thereof, and DMCA and patents
are also actively being abused to protect usury (think printer ink).
Such abuse won't grow people's acceptance of such laws and patents.

After all, the whole argument is about taking away, locking away and
selling. We know Communism has failed for various reasons, but sharing
certain kind of information has advantages, for example it prevents
reinventing the wheel, and if products (closed source software) are
copied then there must have been a reason for that, say, the original
(protected by patent or whatever) was too expensive or too restrictive
or whatever.

> The depressing thing is that it is so obvious to me that the corporations
> will win, they will protect themselves, they have the money to lobby the
> government to get the laws they want and build the technology they need.

That's the real problem here. Most industry nations claim democracy, but
they act contrary to people's will. If the people's will evidently is
"give us free music", one might consider rising taxes on certain
products and have the state pay for the artists. I know this phrase is
reaching far too short and such things aren't going to happen without
another bloody revolution, but just give it a thought as a model that is
outside what you're used to.

What I'd also like to see is many small companies rather than few
giants, to have real competition and choice.

I'll stop now, because that's getting off-topic. Please respond in
private mail.