Software developer here, I'm as pro-digital media and anti-artificial scarcity as a lot of techies, but I think a certain amount of digital restrictions management is inevitable. The human race hasn't escaped to the glorious VR waifutopia just yet - we're still living in a meatspace world of scarce resources and property rights to control them.
You can't profit and create redeemable wealth counted towards GDP from any sort of creative work that can be infinitely copied - be it music, film, art, vidya, software, or unique inventions. So what's the creator left to do after investing time and money into a great work that becomes worthless, other than turn to legal protections, which are costly and incur backlash.
DRM is a technological solution to a technological problem. True, no DRM is truly safe from pirates who will crack it just once and produce a superior product. But it can be a semi-effective deterrent at least for a short launch window when most sales are to be made. I see DRM as fundamentally no different from encryption, obfuscation, and user permissions in Unix systems.
That being said, I think once pirates release a working crack a few days after launch, DRM should be removed from the official product. Ideally for software, after support ends or sales stagnate, the source code should be released as well. For games, the source could be free but the art assets would fall under copyright with a cheap license available for purchase - my model for open source, proprietary asset games would be DOOM.
If you think I'm a Jew for desiring to profit off software I devote hours and resources to produce, blame capitalism - not me. By definition, profit-hungry proprietary competitors to FOSS will almost always garner more power and resources, and the few exceptions like the Linux kernel, Apache, or Red Hat only reinforce the rule. It's a classic prisoners dilemma, actually, that surprises me why there are many open source projects at all.
Fuck off, I'm not running your digital locks on my computer just to access things I paid for.
If you do manage to fuck up something I paid for with DRM, i'll just pirate it again to get a clean DRM-free copy, because fuck you.
I want to develop FOSS but shit man, I need to eat. I don't live in my mom's basement or off student loan money like so many of you seem to do.
>I think a certain amount of DRM is tolerable.
I think you're mentally retarded.
I have no problem with people using DRM, I just won't have any involvement with anything that has been restricted using it.
There is not a debate to be had. Developers are free to implement whatever retarded shit they like on their programs, and users are free to boycott said retarded shit.
I don't even mind people cracking DRM, which is just as shady as using legal measures to enforce it.
People don't have a right to content.
Content creators don't have a right to revenue.
It's a free for all, and everything goes. Whoever wins, wins.
>>54456699
DELET THIS
>>54456699
>surprises me why there are many open source projects at all
Because your "rule" isn't a rule.
Money doesn't just come from end user licencing.
Many developers for major projects are paid. Either through donations, commissioning fees, corporate sponsorships, parallel licencing, the possibilities are a lot greater than companies like Microsoft (which had a massive anti-free campaign) would have you believe.
They are clinging onto an antiquated business model, and trying to slow innovation in the sector. Just like the companies that provided services they replaced with computers.
>>54456699
Content creation and protection is actually a legal, not a technical problem, it applies to other media too.
The thing of anti-DRM is that the user should be in total control of the software running on his computer.
You surely have seen that every typical proprietary piece of software goes to shit by anti-features while free software inherently remains free from anti-features. Free software protects users from losing control over their software on their computer.
Also http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.en.html
>>54456699
Digital rights management
I'd rather no one else manage my digital rights for me.
>>54458157
The fact that there's laws based around copyright and breaking DRM being illegal makes your point invalid. Content creators do have the legal right to impair the freedom of their users.
>>54458373
>breaking DRM being illegal
Private reverse engineering is not prohibited in Europe.
>amerikeks and their eula
>>54456699
There isn't anything wrong with DRM as long as it's FOSS. However when you require me to run proprietary software, probably from unknown or shady source, I'll pirate.
If your content is losing significant amount of money because of pirates, then you have to be doing something wrong.
For example:
I always pirate movie instead of buying DVD. Why? Because I don't want to watch unskippable ads, and be restricted by various other things, when I can pirate movie and watch it in whatever way I want. If pirates give you much more options and better comfort than paid product, then you are doing it wrong.
I pirated lot's of game lately, but bought every single one that gave me more than 10 hours of fun gameplay. Make worthy content then people will support you.
>>54458373
>Content creators do have the legal right to impair the freedom of their users.
You've just repeated what I said. I also highlighted that people are well within their rights to give themselves back said freedom.
>breaking DRM being illegal
It isn't where I live.
Even then, legal structures are not enforced by some deity. The law is only as strong as the repercussions of breaking it. Many millions of people break DRM every day. Ever used VLC to watch a DVD? You just illegally broke DRM (through libdvdcss). The MPAA used an illegal tool (again, VLC) in a submission to a US court.
Laws like this were introduced by lobby groups, would most likely not be supported by the public if put to a referendum, and rarely enforced. They might as well not exist.
>>54456699
>DRM is a technological solution to a technological problem
No, it's a technological solution to a political problem
>>54456699
>I see DRM as fundamentally no different from encryption, obfuscation, and user permissions in Unix systems.
Then you are a fucking retarded piece of shit
Privacy and security both have nothing to do with the ability to exploit your paying customers
Fuck off, degenerate jew
As a software developer my self, you fucking disgust me and I hope nobody pays for your products
>>54458519
It's hardly even a technological solution.
DRM is usually implemented (even when there are known cracks) only to make breaking it illegal.
It's a political solution to a political problem.
>>54458535
You're right, it's a technological non-solution to a political problem
>>54458535
>DRM is usually implemented (even when there are known cracks) only to make breaking it illegal.
That doesn't make sense. DRM only exists to enforce the EULA (= legal policy). The EULA already dictates what is legal and what is not, not the DRM.
>>54458505
You're actually suggesting there's freedom based on the assumption that the laws don't get enforced? A mad world it is.
>>54458572
In some cases, clauses in an EULA are unenforceable, as they remove inalienable rights the user has.
The EULA is not gospel.
>>54456699
It's a completely moot discussion because DRM doesn't work, it has never ever worked and it will never work, because you can't engineer something that no one else in the world can't reverse engineer and crack. The best you can hope for is that DRM will last a short while or that you can restrict legitimate online play through things like unique keys which just means you have to host the infrastructure for servers and lose money that way rather than letting the customers do it.
I have no problem with people wanting to make money through software but all the evidence points to people who love media also buy it a lot and that most of the pirating of things happens by customers who also already pay way above the average for their media. In a world where there's orders of magnitude more media than the average person can buy, piracy is inevitable.
The rational thing for developers to do is focus on adding value to their customers so they want to actually buy your product over a competitors, and when you add in DRM restrictions for paying customers all you're doing is inconveniencing those who legitimately pay you for your product, in order to protect your software against people who don't pay you.
I tolerate small amounts of DRM in things like steam because the age of always on and everything connected is generally OK, but the moment someone offers a comparable service which is DRM free then steam will struggle to compete and I'll move elsewhere. That's just the nature of the free market, and GoG is getting there.
>>54458596
Are you implying that all laws should be followed?
Should the British have desoldered all of the RAM off of their computers when their government accidentally made it illegal (all in the hopeless fight against 'software piracy')?
>>54458478
Also this.
For example I have about 550 games on steam, I used to pirate basically all my games when I was younger because quite often the DRM was shit and restrictive and just a pain the ass. When you have 2 options which is to buy the legit copy or pirate, why would you pick the one which is lower quality? That doesn't make any sense, it's just not rational.
Instead you have to make sure the legit copy provides more value than the cracked copy, thats how steam won its fanbase because steam is feature packed with really useful stuff like in home streaming, access to your library everywhere, sharing library, recording/streaming video, overlay and loads more. All of that outweighs the DRM for many people and pirate copies of the game don't get most of those features.
>steam
>drm
A whole bunch of Steam games *are* drm free.
Including Valve ones.
You literally can copy them and share them with your friends. Would you? Well when they cost 4ยข a piece during sales, and Steam adds a whole bunch of value added shit (which won't work with a non-steam copy) it's really not worth the hassle.
>>54458649
>It's a completely moot discussion because DRM doesn't work, it has never ever worked and it will never work, because you can't engineer something that no one else in the world can't reverse engineer and crack.
Most companies realize this. In the case of commercial software, the DRM is just a slight barrier so that at least a little bit of effort is required to pirate. That little effort is enough for business and most casuals to not pirate. It won't stop the determined but if it stops 90% of people it did its job.
In the case of games the DRM is there to get the game past the first few days, hopefully first few weeks, of sales. That's where video games make the majority of their money. After that the sales decline rapidly so cracking is less of an issue. It's just a time delay.
>>54458878
>In the case of games the DRM is there to get the game past the first few days, hopefully first few weeks, of sales.
The funny thing is that DRM has actually caused games to fail to work in the release week. (Due to always-on DRM bullshit)
>>54458668
If you're soldering your RAM into the DIMM socket you're doing it wrong m8.
Congrats on the neat soldering skills though I guess.
>>54458727
Yeah, steam is the DRM I'm happy to use.
I use Linux on my laptop as my main OS, and I have powerful headless windows machine. So when I want to play some games, while still being on weak linux laptop, steam allows me to stream any game, including non-steam ones.
The worst DRM I can remember was Spore I think. Vast majority of players pirated it, because the DRM was utter shit. Even I had to pirate it even while having original copy, just because I couldn't install it after switching to another computer.
>>54458910
Well, these days an increasing number would need to desolder it.
I suppose at the time it would be on a module.
>>54456699
>There is absolutely nothing wrong with asking the user for their CD key on the first run, so long as all it does is check if it matches a specific pattern.
is what I wanted to say, but then I realised that if you installed the game from a CD it would be only annoying
>>54458414
>private
you'd need a copy to crack it yourself for yourself
the only use for private reverse engineering is to make better DRMs
I think fingerprinting games, movie and audio files is okay, as that prevents sharing.
But limiting how I can use it is not acceptable.
>>54456699
>Software developer
Programmer
>DRM
copy protection
My biggest worry with srm is that I fear media will get lost in time. There should at least be an unrestricted backup copy in a library or something. Which people can use if it cant be acquired through other means years after publication.
>>54459255
*DRM
>>54458878
But that's wrong, no effort it required to pirate because one person breaks the DRM and distributes it DRM free, it's not required that everyone break the DRM. So you're putting often times tens of thousands of dollars into software which either 1 person or a team of people break in typically ~24-48 hours and then everyone pirates. The idea that it stops 90% of people from pirating is just silly, not everyone wants to pirate, a lot of people are either ignorant of DRM or they simply don't care, the only people on the fence who end up buying are those who literally cannot wait the 2 days it takes to crack and release. And quite frequently these days cracks and releases are out before the legit copy is because publishers are literally retarded and put different launch dates in different countries.
In the UK where I am we get a lot of games, even digital distribution ones a few days late by which time the cracked copy is out. Why would gamers wait LONGER to play a WORSE copy of a game when they could pirate it? It's simply not rational, DRM is an emotional response which goes in the "we have to be seen to be doing something" camp.
If time delays were really super crucial then developers wouldn't allow staggered global releases of digital media across digital distribution platforms because it creates an artificial disadvantage to themselves, but they still do it and they do it all the time, so it's obviously not that important.
>>54458923
Yep this is typical, there's often huge numbers of issues that legitimate users have because of DRM, especially when they rely on online services to auth and those services are DDOS'd creating mass outages that pirates simply don't suffer.
Again it comes back to this idea that you've spent a lot of effort making a product that someone wants enough to buy, but you're treating your paying customers like scum and unecessarily causing them issues that the pirate copies don't have, it's completely backwards.
I was always told that the whole reason Hollywood was on the west coast was to avoid patent litigation.
Even legit industries are filled to the teeth with people who disregard copyright. Why should the user be any different?
The funny thing here is, at least with Windows, I've had activation issues with my legit copy, but a dodgy copy I got worked without problem until I stopped using Windows.
The same applied to my parents, who bought a big plasma in 2004. They couldn't watch Blu-rays on them because of HDCP.
I just made dodgy copies (sans encryption) and they worked fine. Granted, they didn't buy blu-rays after that, and instead waited for me to visit and got me to give them some films on a hard drive.
Would this sort of behaviour encourage people to pay for a licence to use content? No.
>>54456699
I actually agree except half your post is bait
I hate you for misrepresenting the argument
