DRM and the DMCA: so stupid it makes me want to punch babies

I hate DRM. I hate it so much, I want to punch babies. DRM's mere existence infuriates me, because it's anti-consumer, turns honest customers into criminals, and does nothing to stop dedicated pirates.

You've read my blog before, so this is nothing new. DRM is in my mind today, however, because of two links I read at boingboing.

Link the first:

Wellington Grey has a great little slideshow about the idiocy of the DMCA's "anti-circumvention" measures, which prohibit breaking the digital locks off the stuff you own. In it, Grey recounts how offended he was when he bought a TomTom GPS that came with a CD in a sealed envelope, the seal on which read, "By breaking this seal, you agree to our contract," but the contract itself was on the CD, behind the seal. In other words, the CD said, "By breaking this seal, you agree to a bunch of secret stuff."

I saw this on Reddit last week, and meant to link it then. Whoops. Anyway, I love how this guy explains just how fucking stupid and pointless DRM is, and that he shows us what would happen if DRM and the DMCA were applied to real world objects. It's good perspective that's useful for explaining to technophobes (and congress critters) why these things need to go away. Now.

Link the second:

Techdirt reports that Steve Jobs has been pitching studio execs on a scheme whereby DVD owners can pay extra for the "privilege" of ripping their DVDs -- but only for playback on iPods and iPhones. The thing is, Jobs fought the music industry back in the early iTunes day, arguing that people who buy CDs should have the right to rip them without paying anything extra.

So what's the difference? DRM -- Digital Rights Management. This is the anti-copying software that studios put on DVDs, allegedly to "stop piracy." But DRM isn't doing anything to stop piracy (people who want to pirate DVDs just break the DRM, because it's impossible to stop determined attackers from copying bits on their own computers). It seems like the primary use for DRM is to sell you back the rights you used to get for free, so that the studios can pick your pocket every time you find a new way to use the media you buy from them.

That second link reminds me of the first time I encountered some sort of restrictive, proprietary "software": when I was 9, my mom let me buy this really cool cap gun. It was so awesome! It looked just like a real gun (this was in 1979, when things like this were harmless fun for a suburban 9 year-old) and you could load this strip of plastic caps into a clip that went into the handle. When you fired it, it went off with a satisfying bang, and ejected one spent cap like it was a shell.

I didn't want to ever shoot someone for real, and as an adult I don't have any interest in owning a gun, but when I was 9, this thing was the coolest toy, ever, and it was the perfect addition to my James Bond superspy roleplaying adventures with the other kids in my neighborhood.

The thing was, I could only load the gun with a particular type of refill, and if the store was out of those refills -- but flush with all of the "standard" strips and rings of caps -- my really cool gun instantly became a useless piece of plastic and metal that only made whatever "bang bang" noise I could create myself . . . just like the kids up the block who used Legos to make guns that didn't make an awesome "BANG" but more of a 9 year-old vocalized "bang".

Of course, the proprietary caps were more expensive than the standard caps, and after a few months they went off the shelf, never to return. The cap gun became a paperweight, and was sold at a garage sale.

It's not exactly a 1:1 on DRM, but I believe the fundamental concept is the same: a manufacturer uses some restrictive bit of technology to lock consumers into one format and one device. It's stupid, it's anti-consumer, and it makes me stabby.

Comments

I think I had the same gun. It had a plastic cartridge type thingy, and the explosive 'stuff' was in little dimples in the track. We had the same problem - stores were often out of them, but good old american-boy ingenuity steps in. My friends and I would buy up the cheepest generic caps, and carefully, oh so carefully, would use an exacto blade to open the caps and scrape out the magic explosive powder. We'd even use a straight razor blade to scrape it into a useful pile. Rather like a 10-year old coke den.

Of course, the activation energy (a term I leanred years later) for this cap 'stuff' was somewhere around 0.27 micro-joules. The act of scraping it into a pile could set it off.

The gun was cool, but setting off a full ounce of the cap 'stuff' in my mother's living room was even cooler (she would disagree).

After much experimentation and effort, we would get a handfull of the proprietary cap slips loaded and covered with scotch tape, and they even worked. Sometimes.

In the end, we decided that a full roll of standard caps on a concrete sidewalk, activated en-mass with a balpeen hammer was even more exciting.

Nowadays, we'd no doubt be rounded up by the FBI for building explosives.

Sigh...

[wollem]

... so that the studios can pick your pocket every time you find a new way to use the media you buy from them.

And so the studios can not share any of their ill-gotten gains with the writers who helped create it... Grrr.

[Mark]

I'm hating the DRM as much as the next guy, but I just wanted to point out a misattribution here. "Steve Jobs" isn't the source of the "pay extra to rip your DVDs" idea:

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13509_1-9830636-20.html

It's the studios, of course.

(not that Jobs has been championing DRM-free content, of course, but let's wait to pounce on him for something he actually did)

[John M]

One of the coolest things about these kinds of forums is finding out how similar our life experiences are. We like to think we are unique individuals and the choices we made set us on a never before explored path. But...
Me and my friends did exactly the same thing with caps at age 10 as the first poster!

I think Wil's talking about a different sort of cap gun. And he's right they were friggin' awesome. I had two: a pistol and a small rifle. The caps were like the red plastic ones that came in a ring, but they were in a strip. And, as Wil mentioned, the coolest thing was that you threaded the plastic strips into the clip and then put the clip into the handle just like a real gun. Then, when you fired, it ejected the spent cap out the top like a shell. There was also a decent amount of smoke to add to the realism. And yes, Virginia, there was only one store in Dallas that I knew of where I could get the guns or the caps and they eventually stopped carrying them and I was screwed.

What John M. said. It's a small world. Not sure what happened to those.

[ttrentham]

PS DRM still sucks.

[Jim Strickland]

I'll bet you mean these:

http://download.aperion.it/edisongiocattoli/capguns.pdf

I had one too. I used it as a prop during a speech about role playing games in high school. (This was when Top Secret was all the rage.) It was one of those hooks that went too well, as it left my audience too shocked to listen. I believe I had the Falcon model.

Ah the days. Harris and Kleibold would have been in pre-school at the time, but even then it apparently did occur to my peers that it might have been a real gun.

-Jim

[Wil]

OMFG, Jim Strickland, that was exactly it! I had the gun called The Falcon, which is on page 13 of that pdf.

How in the world did you find that?

[Hafizi]

And WD has also decided to join in the DRM bandwagon. Can things get any more bizzare?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/07/western_digital_drm_crippled_harddrive/

I actually don't hate DRM at all. Why? I've never come close to surpassing its restrictions. For example, for the iTunes songs I've bought, I have had no trouble moving them to the four computers I've used them on or to the three ipods in our family or burning them as much as I want to a CD (but admittedly burning a CD these days is a rare event).

I DO however HATE, HATE, HATE Sony/Columbia's anti-copy DVDs. I have yet to find a solution to ripping them on my Mac (I haven't looked lately either.)

Anti-copy and DRM for music do not seem to be the exact same thing. DVD copy protection limits ALL copying, while iTunes DRM allows considerable freedom of use.

[bbaydar]

Man, I remember those cap guns. I had a few of them, including the Falcon/Walther PPK, and the uzi. I seem to recall they had a different brand name on them though.

I remember being utterly disgusted when they started being manufactured with the orange tips. To my mind, (back when I was 12-15ish) any kid dumb enough to pull one of those toys out while a cop was around deserved what they got.

Wow, you guys had permissive parents. No way my Mom would let me have a toy gun of any kind, except a plastic ray gun once that spit out sparks like a flint lighter. I was forced to buy those generic strips of caps and pound them with a hammer to make them explode. I quickly figured out they made a bigger bang when I stacked them on top of each other so several would go off at once.

[Amalthia]

I've experienced the frustration of DRM when I saw the new Amazon Kindle come out. They have this library of 90k ebooks! and I can't buy a single one for my Sony Reader and I don't want to buy another expensive ebook reader when I already own one I like. I can't adequately express just how disappointed I am with amazon right now.

[StAlia]

If this posts twice, I apologize and blame my computer.

I took an intro to computers for non-majors class a few years agowhich surprisingly contained a lot of material on DRM and encryption, which was very interesting as opposed to the rest of the class lectures which were somewhat simplified. As part of this class we had to read a book of short stories called "True Names by Vernor Vinge and the opening of the cyberspace frontier" ed. James Frenkel, which I heartily recommend. It had one story in there by Richard Stallman called "The Right to Read". I don't know if anyone's read it, but it was downright terrifying to think of books, something I have loved my entirely life, as being so restricted. I agree, DRM sucks.

Here's the story:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

[edgore]

"iTunes DRM allows considerable freedom of use"

Not really. For example, I prefer using Mediamonkey to play my music at night, since it has a sleep timer. I can use this to play all of the music I have except for the Matthew Good album that I bought from iTunes since it wasn't available digitally anywhere else. I would really, really enjoy falling asleep to this without going through the ridiculous steps involved in stripping the DRM and lowering the quality of the music. As long as iTunes DRMed music only plays in iTunes it is a ludicrous restriction on a consumer's use of their purchase.

[Jon C]

I feel the same about CD keys. Partly my fault, since I'm not the best at keeping my gaming area tidy, but its nuts when you have to reinstall some game you haven't played in a couple years because you think it'll be fun, then run smack into the problem of "Where the hell is the manual or flimsy piece of paper they attached the CD key to?"

I suppose I could label the disk itself but I don't know if that would mess it up, plus nowadays CD keys are longer than my social security number plus my checking account number plus my address. Its insane.

[JSager]

You can't have that gun. You'll shoot your eye out.

It's not so much the DRM, although agreed that is evil, as Proprietary Widgets. Sony and Apple are both *major* offenders - tragically, they also have the Best Shiny Stuff. (Case in point; I lost my USB connector cable for my walkman. Only available by order. For £65. Yes, sixty five English pounds, or (at the moment) $132. For a freakin' USB cable! I considered myself lucky to find one on Ebay for a mere £30.) Don't get me started on Memory Sticks, AAC coding, and the legerdemain that i-"lock 'em in"-Tunes has pulled on half the world's non-tech-savvy population.
Humbug!

[Tatoshka]

Is it not so far to believe that once genetically modified food comes to a point of sophistication that WE will have in it embedded our DNA, and when you want to share your food it tastes bad to another human. You can purchase your food for your use only. DRM sucks and I hope the concept is not put to other uses. Here borrow my jacket...POOF no more jacket. The wrong person was wearing it. DRM Sucks, So I choose not to purchase Sony/ Columbia music.

[Paul Turnbull]

GARG!

OK, yes, DRM sucks. I'm all with you there but please follow the links back to the source of the story.

Techdirt is not reporting anything, all they have is a shoddy synopsis of a New York Times Blog Post that cites an analyst saying he's heard that the studios want to create premium DVDs. There's nothing in the analyst rumour about this being Steve Jobs' idea.

It may well be his idea but it's poor practice to just quote links without looking at the original source.

[taruntius]

Wil-

While I am generally with you on the evil of current DRM technologies as applied to music and video sold on shiny disks, I have to admit that I'm really undecided about the value of DRM in other circumstances.

To wit, I'm one of those guys who wants to be a writer when I grow up, but I realize that a) breaking into the "big leagues" of publishing with agents, publishers, etc., is a tough gig, and b) e-books are pretty soon going to become the hot new thing anyway.

So with those in mind, I'd rather be ahead of the curve and get into the e-books game now. But I really don't know what think about DRM in that context. As a content creator, I understand full well the impulse to protect my stuff. But as someone who also consumes media, I too hate being treated like a criminal.

I'd be interested in your perspective on DRM from a writer's perspective.

[MaryMactavish]

1) Has anyone ever successfully fought the "you agree to the contract you haven't read yet because it's on the CD" thing?

2) You had a ball peen hammer? In our day, we used rocks!

[Tim Murtaugh]

RE: Your cap gun

You're describing a classic business model -- the Bait and Hook.

It's how razor blades are sold -- you can buy my cool razor, but you have to keep buying my expensive blades to make it work.

[Felinegroovy]

razor blades yes... damn you Gillette!

and Sony media stuff... once you get one thing youhave to stick with it because their memory sticks only work with thiers.

grrr to them!

[MrPeach]

And don't forget DRM is why you had that problem with your TV a couple months ago.