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Is Copy Protection Needed or Futile?
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Jan 15, 2008 10:05 AM
from the hard-to-explain dept.
from the hard-to-explain dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Columnist Saul Hansell is hosting a debate about copyright issues and technology on his blog at the New York Times . On one side Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, says that anyone who is intellectually honest must 'acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world' and that we should be 'identify workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive and that fully respect other interests such as privacy and fair use.' Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School, responds that 'locks will be broken, and so a business model that depends on locking is very vulnerable' adding that locks may form a part of certain successful business models but 'too much reliance on locking can seriously backfire.' Wu and Cotton will respond to each other and to comments by readers today." As for the man on the street, Panaqqa wrote us with word that the Question Copyright site has posted an interesting video of ordinary people explaining why they think copyright exists. It's pretty clear that most people don't understand it at all.
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What is Fair Use in the Digital Age? 199 comments
Hugh Pickens writes "General counsel for NBC Rick Cotton and Tim Wu, professor at Columbia Law school, continue their debate about copyright issues and technology on Saul Hansell's blog at the New York Times discussing Fair Use of commercial music and video as the raw materials for new creations. Cotton says that content protection on the broadband internet is really not a debate about fair use The fact that users can 'take three or four movies and splice together their favorite action scenes and post them online does not mean that these uses are fair. There needs to be something more — something that truly injects some degree of original contribution from the maker other than just the assembly of unchanged copies of different copyrighted works.' Wu's position is that 'it is time to recognize a simpler principle for fair use: work that adds to the value of the original, as opposed to substituting for the original, is fair use. This simple concept would bring much clarity to the problems of secondary authorship on the web.' This is a continuation of the previous discussion on copy protection."
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Irony? (Score:3, Funny)
Monday's Question
Should creators insist on technology that will restrict the copying and transmission of copyrighted works? Any lock can eventually be picked. Do these restrictions provide speed bumps to help keep honest people honest? Or do they create a permanent war between creators and users that may hurt everyone?
Rick Cotton
Rick Cotton: Given our experience to date, it is clear that technology can be and needs to be part of the answer in many areas to protecting copyrighted works on-line. But this can be done flexibly, avoiding "war" between creators and users while respecting privacy, fair use and other reasonable concerns that too frequently are raised not as concerns to be addressed, but as excuses seeking to block any action at all.
It's hard, if not impossible, to have a meaningful discussion on this issue unless we can agree on the following premise: the broadband, digital world is awash in a tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content. As to the question at hand, it is entirely reasonable to explore technological solutions. A few key building blocks:
1. There may not be a single answer to this question. It may vary by medium, by technological environment and by groups of creators. Some media may be more susceptible to flexible, effective and commercially reasonable technology protections than others. Some groups of creators may have different preferences than others. Some tech environments may be easier to address first than others.
2. Many creators devote huge amounts of time, creative energy, and -- in commercial settings -- monetary investment to produce copyrighted works. Media companies, including NBC Universal, have made major commitments to utilize technology to deliver great content to fans in many new ways and to build new business models. Both fairness and the law (firmly rooted in the U.S. Constitution) support creators' right to control the use of their work and to be compensated for these efforts (if that is what they want). " In today's digital world, that includes taking steps to protect their works from indiscriminate, wholesale theft on the internet.
3. Those who suggest that technological protections are not needed must, if they are intellectually honest, acknowledge, confront and speak to the tidal wave of unlawful, wholesale reproduction and distribution of copyrighted content that is currently occurring in the digital world on the broadband internet. This indefensible massive trafficking simply must be reduced in any kind of law abiding society. We should be working collaboratively and cooperatively to identify workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive and that fully respect other interests such as privacy and fair use.
4. Another feature of this debate that should change is technologists disingenuously trashing technology. Too often, the same people who enthusiastically and unreservedly sing the praises of the infinite and wondrous capabilities of digital technology in virtually every other respect pretend that technology has nothing to offer and no ability to reduce the massive trafficking in wholesale infringements of entire works (certainly in the area of video, film, TV, games and software). It is categorically and demonstratively untrue and unworthy of tech champions. Current filtering technology, for example, now being deployed on video sharing sites such as MySpace, Microsoft's Soapbox, and even soon on YouTube work with a high degree of technical effectiveness, stopping unauthorized copyrighted material from being uploaded while permitting authorized material to be posted. There remain obvious challenges. But the tech community has demonstrated its capability to solve similar challenges in multiple other arenas. There is no reason to think that the challenges of content protection technology are any different.
5. The imperfect protection offered by anti-piracy technologies - "Every lock can be picked" - is no
Re:Irony? (Score:5, Interesting)
Car locks, home locks, e-mail accounts, and computer firewalls all differ greatly from media DRM in (at least) one important way:
Not one of the security models used in his analogy depends on giving the key to the potential attacker. With media DRM you are given a restricted format and an obscured key to unlock it. This is its weakness, and has no corollary with the examples he gave.
Two - in the case of car and home locks - deterrence is enough. I don't need to secure my house against a perfect thief, unless I have the Hope diamond in my bedroom. I only need to secure my home better than my neighbor does. Even securing my house well enough to change the risk:reward or difficulty:reward balance is enough to greatly reduce the chances of a break-in.
Parent
Re:Irony? (Score:5, Funny)
Or be considerably poorer than your neighbor. Either works, really.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I only need to secure my home better than my neighbor does. Even securing my house well enough to change the risk:reward or difficulty:reward balance is enough to greatly reduce the chances of a break-in.
Hmm, that gives me an idea for helping secure my home: A burglar is probably gonna have a quick look under the mat or pots at the front of your house for a key. Why not put a front door key under one of those pots, but not your front door key. And label the key with the address that it is for (probably best the key doesn't actually work at that address). A burglar would no doubt try the key in my front door, find it doesn't work, but be tempted by the address, so might then piss-off and stop trying to ente
Re:Irony? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Irony? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a second critical difference: Breaking the lock on one physical item nets you one physical item. Breaking the protection on a copy-protected work nets you as many copies of that work as you care to make.
And a third difference: Sometimes breaking the copy-protection on a work allows you to copy many other works as well.
If breaking one auto lock gave a thief access to every car of that model, and perhaps every car of that model year, they'd be pretty useless. Such is copy protection.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Workable, flexible and effective approaches that reduce piracy without being intrusive" only stops the casual pirate from uploading their file. It does nothing from
Re:Irony? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is significantly dangerous for the consumer since it means that the consumer's right to access their legally purchased content may be revoked at any time. For example - if the DRM server becomes inaccessible you really don't want all your content to be revoked (if the rights holder has gone bankrupt, for example, they aren't going to care that none of their customers can access their content any more).
Sadly many of the public who I have talked with about DRM seem to think this is a problem. Usually they say something along the lines of "I don't care if I lose access to my music in 10 years, after all it's 10 years old so not important" - I don't know about anyone else, but I still listen to music I purchased well over 10 years ago.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
With such a model the ability to contain a single security breech to a small number of files should be possible.
Indeed, that was their intention with the Blu-Ray format or at least in part by allowing part of the decryption algorithm to be dynamically loaded from the disc. The model was still flawed in that the dynamically loaded code was subject to analysis, but the designers probably hoped that the extra effort involved in analyzing dozens or even hundreds of variations all different on different disks would be enough of a deterrent to discourage copying. Obviously they are wrong, for the reasons pointed above, bu
Re:Irony? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right to bring up the idea of deterrence. Anyone security expert worth their salt will tell you that security is really all about deterrence. You can't make something impossible to access, and even if you could, the only way to completely secure it is to disallow all access, even to the owner. Otherwise, the owner could inadvertently give access to someone else.
So the purpose of security measures is to make it difficult to get unauthorized access, risky to attempt to gain unauthorized access, and very likely to get caught if you do gain unauthorized access. That's all. However, a good DRM scheme has to be transparent to the authorized user, meaning it has to be simple to get access, without risk to gain access, and unlikely to suffer bad consequences from getting access. Therefore it's just incompatible with the idea of security. You don't secure things against authorized access.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not one of the security models used in his analogy depends on giving the key to the potential attacker. With media DRM you are given a restricted format and an obscured key to unlock it. This is its weakness, and has no corollary with the examples he gave.
The listed examples (car locks, home locks
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except, as has been mentioned by others elsewhere in this thread, for the fact that picking my home's lock does not give you access to my neighbor's home.
Also, to pick my Honda's lock you need physical access to my home. This
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is very different from current media DRM schemes. Once a file is broken there is no longer a barrier at all. Anyone can use the broken file, without physical access, without spendin
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Make the lock as strong as you want it. But if one person.. anywhere in the world breaks it, then it is broken for everyone.
It would be like if one person figured out how to jimmy a chevy in london and all chevy locks throughout the world unlocked.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
çopy protection does work ... (Score:3, Informative)
This works amazingly well with software as well. I witnessed the sale of a chemistry app at a university bookstore. The app was required and low cost (under $20 IIRC). The first quarter it had no copy protection and the ratio of books to apps was about 15:1. The next quarter it had copy protection and the ratio was nearly 1:1. Many people will pirate if they can do so easily. The conventional wisdom that low prices will deter piracy are wron
Re:Irony? (Score:5, Insightful)
If we are truly to be intellectually honest, then we must address the problem of supply versus demand. Rampant piracy suggests that the demand for content delivered over the Internet is obvious. Yet digital content has traditionally been held hostage by physical media. In many of the instances that content is provided digitally, it is further held hostage behind walls of incompatibilities, digital restrictions, overpricing, poor terms of services, and other devaluing options. All in the name of "protecting" digital content.
The preciously few times that digital content is loosed upon the populace at a fair price and fair terms, it blooms and propers. Which (if we are to be "intellectually honest") means that the failure to prevent copyright infringement is a failure to provide what the average consumer wants. When the content producers fail, many consumers take matters into their own hands.
My dear Warner Bros., why has the DVD of 300 been available for over 6 months, yet it is impossible to purchase or rent online? BBC, why are you not catering to your international audience by providing quality shows like Doctor Who on services like iTunes? NBC, thank you for your website. We very much enjoy the television content you provide. Now why are you backing out of the lucrative iTunes deal? You don't need exclusivity in this business. Viacom, CBS makes a killing on promoting their Late Late Show on YouTube. Why are you cutting off promotion of your excellent Comedy Central series rather than embracing it? (And thereby having some modicum of control over it.)
No. If we are to be "intellectually honest", we must face the fact that content producers are afraid. The world has changed, yet content producers cling to any false sense of control they can find. Each of these walls crumble under the might of economic demand, for which content producers only call for a bigger wall. Your customer is not your enemy. As with the barbarians at the gates of Rome who only wanted the land and crops originally promised to them by the emperor, your customers only want easy access to the content you promise them. No one has proven that they are not willing to pay for that privilege.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you'll find that it is customary to use brackets around an inferred term if it does not appear in the source material. In this particular case, I think you'll also find that I never stated nor inferred that overpricing was the problem. I stated that high price in concert with unfair terms lead to a devaluing of the product that made it undesirable to the consumer.
iTunes was successful despite its DRM. Part of the key to its success was that the DRM was not intrusive and thus not devaluing
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a silly argument. It's pitifully easy to rip a DVD and share it online. I know for a fact that I could go and download 300 off of Pirate Bay if I wanted. But I don't want to. I *want* to do the right thing. I *want* to purchase the movie legally from the content owner. I *want* MovieLink to have a better selection than when I was using it. I *want
Re:Irony? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is such a glut of entertainment that there is no reason that Tom Cruise gets $20 million for a $100 million movie when a movie (and a host of people involved with the movie also get 7 figure and 6 figure salaries as well).
The fact is that a movie -- the hard technology of it, the writing, the editing, can be done at a 10th the cost it is currently done at (probably 1/100th).
Sane people do not pirate $6 dvd's. However $89 DVD is something different. Especially for a movie that made it's profits years ago and is in the "all gravy" phase.
Do people have a *right* to infringe (steal) creator's works? No.
But to think they will not when they can easily do so for $1 and two hours of their time is insane.
Also... I used to write software which was used to earn my company 8 billion dollars. Why are movie and television writers so special that they get paid for the rest of their life when they write yet another boilerplate television script?
Actors... writers... everyone in hollywood is in for a wakeup call. Multi-million dollar salaries are going to be unsupportable very soon. Already, I spend 30% of my entertainment time on free things like Star Wreck, Fan Movies, and so on. A huge chunk of my time goes to Mmorg's at $15 a month (maybe 50 cents per hour). And then DVD's of series like Mission impossible and Heroes run me about $1 per hour for entertainment. Why does a movie justify $15 per hour? It doesn't.
The compensation in the entertainment industry is grossly inflated.
Parent
Punishing your PAYING customers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Punishing your PAYING customers (Score:4, Informative)
I think the way around it is with software that can find that first session. Exact Audio Copy under windows has an feature to do this: action menu, detect TOC manually. Then you can rip the audio to WAV files or MP3s and ignore the data session at the end of the disk.
Parent
Re:Punishing your PAYING customers (Score:4, Insightful)
There are so many things that we think are "easy" like things as trivial to putting attachments on emails or burning CDs, but to some they don't know how and they don't know where to turn. For those people, they just accept the DRM and its restrictions as part of the whole "computer experience." If they can't listen to their music on any/all of their devices (but be honest, those people probably have an iPod anyway), then they don't feel cheated...maybe a little frustrated, but for the most part it is just all part of the game.
Again, just because you are clever to avoid any/all DRM doesn't mean that it is completely ineffective.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If I shoplift a CD, the proprietor no longer has that CD. If I infringe your copyright you still have both the work and its copyright. The difference is if you're caught you have a small criminal fine with stealing but a large civil penalty with copyright infringement.
If you go into a theatre without paying that is also described as "stealing" the movie, and similarly if you take a ride on a train without a ticket.
No,
It keeps being said (Score:3, Insightful)
People won't bother to steal if there's a quality, low-cost solution they could just pay for.
For example- I pay $15/month to subscribe to Yahoo Music with my MP3 player, because it's just easier than stealing. The catch? I don't even keep my music if I stop paying. But I don't care! I'm paying for convenience.
Re:It keeps being said (Score:5, Insightful)
As for pricing on quality, the 'quality' of all music on iTunes is the same, and all the songs cost the same... But I sense that isn't what you're talking about. I think you mean 'value', and that's a subjective thing. My value of any given song is probably lower than Random Joe's because I'm not that into music. It doesn't excite me.
I suscribed to Rhapsody for a few months for the same reason you subscribe to Yahoo Music... It's just easier. Then I realized that I mostly listened to internet radio and I could do that for free, legally. imeem.com also provides a way for me to sample songs I think I might like, find more like it, and listen to classics that I just want to hear again right now.
I think Amazon is doing a great job with pricing and convenience right now... Many songs are cheaper than iTunes, all are DRM-free, and it's pretty easy to download the songs. I still think AllOfMP3.com had more convenience (I'm ignoring the ridiculously low prices), but they didn't have any rules they had to play by.
Parent
Re:It keeps being said (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than complain and moan about it, the RIAA should've figured out why allofmp3 was doing so well. It wasn't just the prices.
1) Selection as good as, or in many cases even better than many existing stores. About the only online store that does better is ITMS in my opinion.
2) NO DRM. Makes selection variety a bit less important, as there's less incentive to stick with a single store. (In some ways bad for a store if it's easier to go to someone else, but if your selection stinks and/or is niche, you're going to find that no one chooses you if you've got DRM.)
3) Not overpriced. Admittedly too cheap, but the RIAA could've made a store at twice the prices and still have been wildly successful. (Why? Legality = convenience, as far as "ease of payment", and twice Allofmp3's prices would have still been far below current RIAA-sanctioned stores.)
The RIAA wants to hang on to high per-track prices, but they should be thinking about sacrificing per-track profits to drastically increase volume. For example, if someone hears a track they really like on the radio or elsewhere, they're likely to buy the entire album at $3. But at $10+ for the entire album, they'll probably just buy only that track at $1, given the tendency for albums to have a lot of "filler crap".
Parent
Are the two options mutually-exclusive? (Score:4, Interesting)
A more interesting question would be to ask a PC game maker if they'd release their game with no copyright, if their publishers/retailers allowed them to. Right now, they have no choice-- given the choice, which would they make?
You can't lock a tent (Score:3, Insightful)
'very vulnerable' isn't the half of it. You can't lock a tent . If your business model depends on end users not copying your product, you might as well save everyone a lot of trouble and move on to another project. Copyright/Patent/Trademark may protect you a bit against some commercial competition. But you can't do much about end users violating them. And maybe not against mega-corporations with brigades of lawyers either.
Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both. (Score:5, Interesting)
The Media companies need to understand that what they really need to focus on is getting customers to pay for the song. How they get it should be device agnostic -- a download, a CD, recorded off the air, etc. Once the "license" for that song is acquired, the consumer should be legally entitled to do whatever they want with it, including (but not limited to) space shifting, time shifting, remixing (for non-commercial use), transcoding, and demonstration.
While I don't agree with "file sharing" in a general case as a legitimate practice anymore (I think enough legal alternatives exist) the litigation-happy companies going after every last dime because someone ripped a legally purchased song into an MP3 that's on their iPod, desktop PC, Laptop PC, car CD changer, digital picture frame, gaming console, playing in the background of a youtube video of their kids, and their cellphone ringtone. Technology has made media accessible EVERYWHERE, and the rights of the consumer to use it as such should outweigh the nickle-and-dime dreams of the RIAA.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What many people fail to understand is that "file sharing" (bittorrent, etc.) is a tool, just like a photocopier is a tool. Both have many legitimate uses in addition to illegitimate ones. Photocopying an entire book remains a violation of copyright, whereas copying a single page for fair use is not. The same standard should apply to audio recordings, and in fact it has until now. It was only with the introduc
Re:Charge for the Media, or the License. Not Both. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that the printing press has been invented, all the scribes will be out of business and nobody will write any more books!
Just like Gutenberg changed media, the internet changed media. The world is not as it was in the 20th century and never will be again. This is no more the time to invest in media companies than 1900 was the time to be investing in carraiges. Like that business then, the future paradigm is completely unlnown. What is known is that DRM doesn't work and cannot work. As has been said countless times before, making bits uncopyable is like making water not wet.
Parent
It's futile and everybody loses (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's also assume that they hand the secret crypto keys to Carol (the attacker) in an utterly unbreakable meanner
It's still totally futile. Let's take music as an example:
There comes that point, no matter how secure the path, they keys, the algoritm, etc where a digital signal must be transformed into an analog, human "readable" signal. That signal can be re-captured and re-digitalized (and with the right equipment in good quality too)
Thaat's also referred to as the analog hole and no amount of DRM will ever get around that.
If it doesn't play at all its's pointless (Score:5, Informative)
copyright is defunct (Score:3, Insightful)
i mean, you can also outlaw alcohol. but people will still drink, you just wind up rewarding is the mafia
people will copy files and share them. before the internet, that was a work intensive and very localized effort. anyone remember bootleg cassette tapes of concerts?
nowadays, the effort involved in sharing files is practically zero. and so a major shift has developed. people will copy files and share them. with ease. nothing you say or do will stop that
as for morality, what is moral or immoral about sharing files? someone "owns" them? oh really? their "ownership", unlike say, their ownership of a house or a car, is an abstract legal notion, derived from a business model that is now defunct in the age of the internet
there is nothing immoral or dishonest about sharing files. except among those minds who can't adapt and shift to a new paradigm about how media will be consumed in this world
new business models will develop. and they surely won't be as lucrative. again, is that a bad thing? not at all. music is about community, a passion for art. it's not about the passage of filthy lucre
so deal with change. or don't, and remain defunct. your choice, but copyright is dead
There has always been piracy... (Score:4, Interesting)
Counterfeiting is big business. As are knock-offs of Gucci and Chanel.
I've been using computers for nearly 30 years now, and since the day I started programming, I've seen piracy. In fact, I'm having a hard time coming up with an example of any protection scheme that hasn't failed. From early software anti-copying measures, to serial numbers, to DRM, to DVD encryption, its all failed miserably to stop the determined.
I've often wondered what the actual cost of these measures truly is to the companies that use them. If they create them internally, there's the development cost. If they license them, they end up paying per-use, I would guess. Either way, it seems to me that this is one of the ultimate excersizes in futility. I've often wondered if this was due to stubborness or simply stupidity. Either way, it ends up being a burden to the legitimate user, and hasn't, as far as I can tell, stopped the illegitimate users.
Take copy protection. When I was a 13 year old using an Apple IIe, everyone I knew was pirating software. We did it because there was no way we could afford to buy it, for the most part. While I acknowledge it was stealing, at the end of the day, it wasn't a loss, because we wouldn't have done it if we could a) afford it, or b) live without it.
So what did copy protection accomplish? It simply stopped people who bought it from making backups of legitimately purchased software. I remember once when I school I went to had a bad drive, and through stupidity ended up destroying multiple copies of AppleWorks trying to get it working on a machine. A "friend" of mine attempted to make duplicates of legitimate software so they had enough to go around for classes. Because of the copy protection, he ended up using cracked software to make copies so they could teach class for the two weeks it took to get Apple to acknowledge they owned the software and to ship it out to them.
As far as my own personal views, I can see the motivation for someone who is young and poor to make illegitimate copies of digital property. Mainly because you can't afford it. I know a few years ago, $20 made a differenc between eating or not. I sure didn't have it to spend on (software, CD's, etc.).
Now, however, I buy what I need to use. When I could afford it, I went and bought CD's to replace all the cassette copies of my favorite bands. I can afford it, and I recognize that if my favorite (artist, author, software company) doesn't sell their work, they won't make more for me to enjoy. Could I suck down my favorite albums off a Torrent? Sure. But I don't have a single desire to do so. I want that struggling band to sell enough CD's that they'll make the next one.
So, does any sort of copy protection benfit anyone at all? Maybe the guys who write/license it.
But everyone else loses, in the end.
Hopefully the negative feedback inherent in this system will rip it apart. One can only hope.
Bill
Shops and bars (Score:3, Insightful)
I also realize that they should go after the people sharing 1,000's of music / movie files, just as they go after the thief who steals from stores (I know, piracy != theft).
Here's one for you (Score:4, Interesting)
DRM will fail always. (Score:3, Interesting)
Pirate's Bay is making money off of other peoples work. They Sell ads on their website they are not the good guys. I don't like the RIAA or the MPAA going after grandmothers, little kids, and college students and they are also not the good guys for sure.
As I said it seems that we are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
You have two groups of people that seem to think they are entitled to rule the world.
You have the media companies that think that they should have the right to control how you watch and or listen to their media. If they could do figure out how they would charge you for every person that you let listen to your music. Don't put that CD on at a party and heaven forbid you play while tailgating at a football game! Don't forget that broadcast flag! They must sell you that show on DVD when they get around to selling it.
And then you have the people that think they are entitled to take any media that they can! You can tell them by their matting call. "I it isn't my responsibility to make your business model work!"
I really don't mind paying for my music. I don't mind buying or renting DVDs. Heck I don't even rip the DVDs I get from NetFlix. But I want to record shows off my TV for my own use and I want to put my DVDs on my hard drive and my iPod. Oh and I don't want to pay bunch for my digital music. Even $.99 for a song is a bit silly folks.
Inform but do not block (Score:3, Interesting)
However, copy protection is wrong if for no other reason that you may interfere with a person's lawful right to copy.
Books do this quite well: They have a notice inside that says "copyright... all rights reserved." Most books can be copied with a regular photocopier.
One thing books do not do right:
Many do not alert you that you do have certain fair use and other rights.
Understanding of the "man on the street" (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. The people in this video get some concepts mixed up (e.g., patents versus copyrights, economic rights versus moral rights). But, they seem to get the gist of what intellectual property rights are supposed to protect.
People definitely seems to struggle with their ideal view of copyright protection and their desire for convenience and low cost. Some of the people seemed to go to some lengths to rationalize copyright infringement.
One of the arguments given is that the artists do not see much of a profit from their works. That is, because the content creator has a bad deal with the content distributor, the consumer can legitimately chip away at the content distributor's profits.
This is poor rationalization. The ability of content creators to make reasonable deals with content distributors is a result of supply versus demand. Content creators that are good at controlling supply (e.g., programmers, who control supply simply by not having an overwhelmingly large population, members of the writers guild, who control supply through unionizing, or established artists, who have managed to survive the fickle markets) are in a better position to establish favorable deals than content creators who do not control supply very well (e.g., new musicians, who seem to grow on trees).
Copyright plays an important role in controlling supply. If there was no copyright, new musicians would have to avoid playing their songs in public or otherwise distributing their songs. Recording studios could troll for good songs, take them without any compensation, and hire their own musicians or established stars to take the songs to the big time. The marketing power of the content distributors would be much more important than it is today.
Copyright transferability plays an important role in stimulating demand. If the copyrights were completely non-transferable, then the risk of investing in content would become very high, reducing the demand from content distributors. Again, the marketing power of the content distributors would be much more important than it is today.
What is the effect of widespread infringement by consumers? The effect is that the risk of investing increases, again reducing the demand from content distributors.
Content producers can try to cut content distributors out of the loop, but that only works if consumers purchase from the content producers. Infringing on the copyrights of works that are in the hands of content distributors does nothing for content producers.
Remember, that even if content producers get no royalties for their works (something that is common with programmers), content distributors have to meet some threshold of reward to get content providers to assign their copyrights over the the content producers. The more risk there is in investing in a content producer (e.g., because of widespread copyright infringement), the less demand there is from content distributors, and thus the worse the deals are for content producers.
When the cost of production reaches zero (Score:3, Interesting)
What copyright holders refuse to accept is perhaps with the consumer aware of the value, that they simply not prepared to but the music at the price asked.
I am an example, I travel all the time, and in my earlier life I spend thousands of dollars on movies. Now I cannot see movies ( I live in France and most DVD's seem to be in French Dutch and German etc) because I travel and frankly having invested lots of money in kids's DVD that get scratched, I am fed up with the price and the infexibility of delivery.
Now I download a digital files because I can. I would pay 5 Euros a film - no interest in Blue ray etc. No one will offer me a site where I can download a film and pay.
Please don't blah blah stealing to me. I am willing to pay. If they are so inflexible that they refuse in a capable world to sell me their product how I want it, and I can get it for free, well I can and will do this.
When they bother to ask me, perhaps they might learn there are many different ways people will pay.
When the cost of duplication is zero, be careful in how you price your product.
They have no clue.
copy protection doesn't work (and may hurt you) (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, I was thwarted by the copy protection on the disks. I couldn't get a proper image of them because of it. I wound up having to find a cracked copy of the word processor on some website (which took me all of 20 minutes to find using Google), and can recover my old papers perfectly.
It's very amusing to me that the CRACKED version of the software is actually more valuable to me than the non-cracked version. Re-buying the software (even if it was available) is useless to me, as I can't run it on an emulator, and thus transfer the data to somewhere useful.
This may seem like a special case.. but I don't think so. Even 20+ years later I can STILL get the cracked, pirated version of the software. The software was cracked many years ago, so it didn't really prevent much of anyone from getting it if they wanted to. I suspect if I had used a proper C64 copy utility I'd have been able to copy the disk anyway. The only thing it prevented was ME, the guy who bought the software from using the product as intended.
One Sided (Score:3, Interesting)
The only reason copyright law was enacted in the first place was to "promote the useful arts". So tell me, how does locking up and extracting maximum profit from a work for up to 150 years "promote the useful arts"? Currently I can't build on by remixing or being too closely inspired by current works until long after I'm dead? Disney would never have had their Snow White if the Grimm Brothers had been able to exercise this level of control. It's an ironic situation.
Now with that said, if copyright was actually set to a sane level I'd have a lot more respect for it. Like 14 years - that's more than enough time to make a reasonable profit off of your work. And none of this eternity DRM. If your restrictions scheme doesn't have an expiry mechanism it should be outright illegal.
Impossible and Impractical (Score:3, Insightful)
The impractical part is that this a classic impossible problem but the record and movie companies fail to grasp the simple limitations that facts dictate. It is a classic entropy problem, copying digital data requires almost no resources, therefor it is going to happen. Controlling the copying requires exerting energy and resources. The amount of entropy (copying) if greater than the big companies, even with their considerable resources, can fight.
They need to realize that they can't control copying. They have been trying since the first cassette recorders came out decades ago. Hell, they've been trying since printing presses came out. The trend is, and always has been, to make copying and production easier and cheaper.
The trick is to figure out a new business model. Duh! I'm pretty sure oil lantern produces were fighting tooth and nail against that horrible intellectual property destroying light bulb thing, but that's progress!
Lets just be honest, shall we? (Score:3, Insightful)
Note to Rick Cotton: copyright is a bargain (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't like that? Uphold your end of the bargain and see what happens.
Re:Copy protection, in an absolute sense,NOT CORRE (Score:3, Informative)
This is not correct. Copyrights don't disappear just because copying is easy. Copyrights never prevented copying. From the very beginning, you could copy by hand any copyrighted book. What copyrights allow is to seek damages against those who violate them. Only the copyright holder may freely sell their work for money in the open market. Others who try with unauthorized copies face civil penalties. So just b
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Last night I showed my wife the beauty of Apple TV - she thought the Movie trailers were a really cool feature.
Then she asked "why can't we download these movies right now"?
The movie and music industries need to realize that restricting content only shrinks the market for your products. With every instance of artificial restrictions, I can easily name many situations where the distributor of that content lost a potential sale:
Movies released to theaters - OLD model good for teens, not good for parents with young kids, a home theater and high speed internet. I would love to see new releases, but we can't really get to the theater (and we hate going there anyway). Why not let me "rent" the movie at my house? (I have digital cable with on-demand movies, but the list of movies is not current with new releases.)
The practice of staging release times (in general, theatre, then aeroplanes, then rental, then buy-to-own media) is pretty well established, and I'm pretty sure the justification is that it maximises profits. At each stage in the chain, the later release would take away sales from the earlier one, if they'd come out at the same time, and not vice versa. e.g. People watch a movie in the theatre (because they're keen to see it and there's no other way), then later buy the DVD. With a simultaneous release, th