WI: No DRM

[kasumigenx]

I was thinking of a way to butterfly DRM, in what way could DRM not be invented.

 

[Aelita]

I was thinking of a way to butterfly DRM, in what way could DRM not be invented.

Short of a world communist revolution, I can't think of a way to accomplish this.

Owners of intellectual property will always have an incentive to keep people from using their product if they haven't paid for it.

 

[Dan1988]

I was thinking of a way to butterfly DRM, in what way could DRM not be invented.

Digital Radio Mondiale? Well, someone would eventually develop a digital radio format suitable for long, medium, and short wave bands anyway (anything over HD Radio, IMO).

Oh - you meant digital rights management? Whoops! Sorry, I don't know.

 

[Thalyr]

You could try to get rid of all the copywright laws, but that will essentially kill most of our culture. POD would have to be somewhere in the Middle Ages.

 

[the_lyniezian]

I dare say if the media industry had lisened more closely to the potential critics, or if they at least realised that it isn't an effective way to combat piracy and too much of an expense, they might have done without it. But I guess it is a typical sort of knee-jerk reaction to early internet piracy.

(I mean, it's not too hard to see that DRM is useless. Anyone can rip a non-copy-protected CD or even analogue recording to MP3 and upload it, or even a copy-protected recording via an analogue connection.)

If perhaps the music industry, say, had seen the potential for digital music downloading much earlier, perhaps that might have meant piracy never quite became so big a deal and such a reaction would not have occurred, but it's a long shot.

 

[Tallest Skil]

We don't need to not have it, necessarily.

There are already plenty of laws that let you legally get around DRM'd materials.

 

[kasumigenx]

I dare say if the media industry had lisened more closely to the potential critics, or if they at least realised that it isn't an effective way to combat piracy and too much of an expense, they might have done without it. But I guess it is a typical sort of knee-jerk reaction to early internet piracy.

(I mean, it's not too hard to see that DRM is useless. Anyone can rip a non-copy-protected CD or even analogue recording to MP3 and upload it, or even a copy-protected recording via an analogue connection.)

If perhaps the music industry, say, had seen the potential for digital music downloading much earlier, perhaps that might have meant piracy never quite became so big a deal and such a reaction would not have occurred, but it's a long shot.

Yes, an earlier downloading service for music for pay but lesser P2P programs.

 

[Eurofed]

You could try to get rid of all the copywright laws, but that will essentially kill most of our culture.

This statement is way questionable, at least if plotted to the present and near future. With the amazing mass dimensions that P2P use has gotten (as far as I can tell, almost every X-Gen and younger who's not terminally IT-challenged), 'our culture' has already effectively discarded copyright, in its younger (and much more culturally influential) half.

 

[Aranfan]

I was thinking of a way to butterfly DRM, in what way could DRM not be invented.

You'd have to get rid of "intellectual property" to do so, or get rid of computers and computer networking. Because something that is analogous to DRM will be invented by any state that has copyright laws and is confronted by the internet.

 

[Sam R.]

It is more than possible that media format sales companies could have, in the past, restricted content producers from enabling intellectual property. In the conflict between printer and author, cinema and studio, station and recording label one group of capitalists could have defeated the other on the issue of intellectual property.

(Consider, for example, how long the United Kingdom maintained the Corn Law.)

yours,
Sam R.