The Digital Rights Management, also known as DRM, is various technologies or security codes that are used to copyrighted works from being illegally copied. What DRM does is it removes usage control from the person who possess it, and gives it to a computer program. For example. DRM is used to restrict the number of copies that can be made of a DVD, a music CD that has information to prevent it from being copied, or an eBook server that restricts you from copying and printing material. In simple terms, DRM is used to limit what you can do with digital media.
DRM is intended to help solve a legitimate problem of piracy, which is illegally copying media and distributing it freely to others. Piracy is a huge problem is the media industry, it allows people to gain access to content for free, while the people who created the content aren't receiving anything for it. DRM is intended to stop piracy, however, DRM can be hacked.
In March of 2010, the gaming company Ubisoft deployed its new DRM technology. The new DRM would require customers to remain online to play purchased content, however, their new DRM was cracked within one day. Within a matter of hours, the DRM that Ubisoft deployed was now cracked, and ineffective. The games that were created using the new DRM were already available online for people to pirate and get for free.
DRM is simply not very effective in today's marketplace. DRM is very easy to hack into, and break the DRM restrictions. People are figuring out new ways to get things for free everyday. DRM is becoming old, and very ineffective. It is trying to stop piracy, but it is not working. Torrenting websites still have current content, which is constantly receiving the newest media. If anything, DRM is driving people to want to torrent the content more.
The limitations that DRM puts onto users content often bothers those that have purchased, or intend to purchase, the content. This will drive them to pirate a cracked copy of the content, in order to remove the restrictions and limitations. Like Ubisoft's DRM, many other gaming companies use DRM to protect their content, but it often causes piracy. People would rather not spend money on something that requires them to constantly be online, and when the connection goes down, the game crashes. A lot of people would rather get a cracked version of the game, and not have to deal with the hassle that DRM creates.
DRM also creates a hassle for those who purchase music online. DRM can often restrict the device that the content can be played on. If the user purchases the music, they should be free to put it on whatever device they want to. The legally purchased the content, so they should be able to do what they want with it. DRM prevents them from being able to do so. A user could have purchased a song off of iTunes, but they wanted to put the music on an Android device. DRM could restrict the user from being able to transfer the file to that device. This could lead to a user pirating the music in order to avoid DRM, and do what they want with their content.
In modern day, I feel as though DRM just isn't effective. It is causing more problems for the people who purchase the content, than those who pirate. People will always find ways to hack into software, and get it for free. DRM is helping very much with that. It is simply restricting their paying customers, and often times making them lean towards pirating to have full access to the content.
This post interested me immediately with the title; while a lot of people are well aware of the problems with music piracy today, one would not usually consider paying customers as the culprit. The writer does a strong job of explaining himself; he states that when DRM does not allow these customers to transfer their music from one of their devices to the other, they turn to piracy as their rational solution. He also points out many other flaws with DRM; specifically, how outdated and ineffective it is, as is discussed in the reading. Mentioned in the post is the relative ease with which hackers can successfully get around DRM restrictions, and a strong example (a 2010 Ubisoft hack) supported this claim. While DRM is clearly, as the writer makes clear, old and largely unsuccessful in limiting piracy, I would argue there needs to be more action by lawmakers and the judicial system. Those who are the culprits of media piracy need to feel threatened; while the ease of hacking DRM software is a large issue, it will be very difficult to ever quell piracy to a large enough extent. As the book mentions the shutdown of a few file-sharing services, lawmakers need to continue to actively seek out those who are pirating software and raising the consequences for the guilty parties.
ReplyDeleteTo begin, I thought the headline was very good. It explained how the DRM is intended to prevent privacy, yet was causing users to want to pirate material more often due to their restrictions. While I knew what the DRM was before reading this post, I wasn’t aware that their restrictions encourage pirating, so the headline got my attention and made me want to read the rest of the post. There were two good links in the post, relating to how the Ubisoft DRM was cracked and how DRM causes piracy. The links were relevant and gave further information to what was being discussed in the post.
ReplyDeleteThe main points of the post were how DRM is causing people to want to pirate material more due to the restrictions it puts in place. The post first explains how DRM limits what you can do with digital media, like restricting how many copies can be made of a DVD. It then discusses how DRM is not particularly effective in today’s marketplace since it is so easy to hack into and break the restrictions. The post goes on to discuss how the DRM restrictions cause people to want to pirate material, because actually paying for something under DRM’s restrictions such as a game might require the user to be constantly online, which can be frustrating.
I thought there were a lot of good points brought up about why DRM restrictions are causing people to want to pirate music. For example, the post discussed how people find it frustrating that DRM can restrict the device that music purchased online can be played on. I can relate to why this is frustrating for consumers, which makes the content of the article easier to understand and more relatable to readers. While I thought the post was very good and explained the headline extremely well, I thought maybe it could have included more examples of people who would have otherwise been willing to pay for material turning to pirating. For example, this article (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jun/19/xbox-one-drm-second-hand-restrictions-abandoned) discusses how DRM restrictions for the Xbox One were dropped because there was an outcry of people who didn’t want their ability to share games to be limited.