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Comment by sbuk | Hacker News Reader

"some publisher go to great lengths to try to disturb people from copying simple text and images"

Genuine question: why is this a problem if the publisher doesn't want a third party to use their work without their permission, or at all? I ask as an amateur photographer who doesn't want people to use their images without permission, especially for commercial gain. I choose to license my work as CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, but that doesn't mean others will necessarily honour my wishes. How can this be policed on a network as vast as the Internet? I get why DRM is almost assuredly not be the answer, but what are the other options (excluding CC licensing)? My issue here is that we make a lot of noise as to why DRM is bad, but the other solutions that I've seen are as bad, or offer little real protection to the content creator.

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One problem is the unreasonable level of control over "second party" use - ie, people viewing it on the web as intended, but in a way that the publisher doesn't like. Whether they're using Linux or screen readers or adblockers or "non-standard" browsers. Even if they're just trying to fix usability problems in the site.

Example: streaming video on the Raspberry Pi; the hardware is quite capable of it but if it requires an x86-only plugin to do so you're out of luck.

Example: "readability mode" in browsers relies on the fact that currently text is not wrapped in DRM and can just be presented how you like it.

Trivial, petty example: currently on Twitter there's no sensible way to view images full size or save them without going via the DOM explorer.

The answer is that it's technologically impossible to prevent third parties from using your work if you publish it. DRM doesn't solve this problem, but claims to do so. As a result, genuine users suffer from DRM.

Exactly that. I have issues watching copy protected dvds on my playstation where if I pause the film for a short while the copy protection kicks in and I can't watch the film, instead have to restart and fast forward to when I'd paused.

That's content protection preventing me - a purchaser - using it properly.

So, I have to ask! What makes you sure this is copy protection? It sounds more like a bug or fault rather than DRM.

Even if it's not the DRM fault here there are plenty of other examples. E.g. You can't copy/backup a DVD on your computer/stick/cloud so once the DVD format is deprecated(i.e. Macs no longer have a DVD-drive) or the DVD is lost you can't play it anymore. Not to mention the convenience. The latest wonder from the DRM promoters is the HDCP: People with 4K TVs can't play 4K TV content anymore because of this new "feature"[0]. Apparently the only sane solution is to hack the HDMI cable.

[0] http://www.howtogeek.com/208917/htg-explains-how-hdcp-breaks...

True, it's likely a bug from either the disc or the player but if they weren't attempting DRM I wouldn't have the issue. Inconveniencing legitimate users because you can't implement the protections without it breaking isn't the way to go.

I know I can download a copy of a film, push play/pause and it will just work. I know if I buy a dvd I'll have to sit through unskippable piracy messages and ads and not be sure the film will play after pausing.

How do you know that without a doubt it isn't just a bug in the software unrelated to whether or not DRM was implemented?

because when I do the same on a non DRM disc it doesn't happen

> It sounds more like a bug or fault rather than DRM.

Even if it isn't the DRM, it still is. Because the player could be open and someone could fix the bug if it weren't for the DRM.

"DRM doesn't solve this problem"

Again, no wish to goad, but why?

Because it's literally impossible. If you want someone to be able to read your text or view your image, in the end the light has to reach the viewer's eyes, and that means it can be recorded. At best, DRM can be an annoyance. It can never stop unauthorized redistribution of material.

Don't Copy that Floppy.

Perfect example from the 80's, an arms race to prevent copying of software, which ended up doing what ?

Software still got copied while increasing the publishers cost.

Now 30 years later, efforts to preserve are stymied by copy protection on failing hardware. In an ironic twist, the protection broken by the pirates is salvageable.

How can you expect anyone without a time machine to explain what it ended up doing?

For example, we live in a world where companies like Adobe or Autodesk can sell software licenses for thousands of dollars. Would that be true if software piracy became the norm decades ago? Would we be better off one way or the other? Who can say?

What if piracy was never invented and we all just paid our dues. What a happy little libertarian utopia.

>Would that be true if software piracy became the norm decades ago?

How many decades ago? I built my first computer and installed pirate Windows and Photoshop versions back in 97. Warcraft had questions you had to answer during installation that were answers from the lore in the manual. Do you think people in the 80s with the first personal computers would see their friend use a new software and then wait 4-6 weeks for their own floppy disk to arrive in the mail?

Not to detract from your argument, but most libertarians support either substantially scaling back or entirely eliminating IP law, including copyright law.

Internet piracy in general seems to be culturally quite left-libertarian.

They didn't anyway. But all of that is irrelevant. The point is that questions like the one I originally responded to are fundamentally unanswerable. Don't get too caught up in the specific example. It could just as easily be "maybe walking across the street on a different day causes RMS to be hit by a bus". Or Microsoft taking a different path delays the Gates foundation from eradicating polio by 30 years.

Because it works in a similar way to general security - it's reactive to the state of the art of those looking to get around it. Once someone has dedicated time to getting around it, those wanting to get around it have a free pass with that content to use it in the ways they want, whereas those who have no intention to are restricted in their use (which is usually more locked down than it needs to be for genuine users, thus more inconvenient).

Because there is always a way to extract the "protected" work. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole.

If you're a photographer, I can always make a screenshot, or record the video from my HDMI/DVI cable to the monitor or take a very precise photo of my screen, and I WILL get the photo from your website or app.

There is plenty of evidence that DRM doesn't stop copying: millions of torrents ripped from crunchyroll/hulu/netflix/Blu-Rays, all of those have some sort of DRM, all of them were circumvented. There are people who think that DRM is not designed to stop copying, but it's designed to control how legitimate users consume your product (see: DVD ads).

Edit: Please don't assume that this is the only argument I have, it's just the most obvious argument from the top of my head. There are plenty of people who explain the negative sides of DRM and reasons it doesn't solve the problem you described. They do it in a very eloquent way with rigorous arguments, and I don't believe that I need to repeat those arguments. I'd like you to listen to Cory Doctorow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

Thanks. It's an iteresting discussion that needs to be had. As I said, I often see things along the lines of 'It's just bad, m'kay' without any reason. Your explanation is reasoned and cogent. Again, Thanks!

Producers don't watch BitTorrent statistics. They send a document asking stuff like: will my product be DRM protected? If you answer no, then farewell pal, they won't allow their content to be on your platform.

Yep. For example there is a image with power lines here https://backchannel.com/the-internet-really-has-changed-ever...

I liked to see the image as the whole. Had it been made not directly viewable by the publisher I would have had great pain to make it happen. Now I just opened it on another tab.

> DRM doesn't solve this problem, but claims to do so.

If you actually listen to any of the arguments being made on the W3C mailing lists, none of the pro-DRM sides have actually argued such an absolute stance, because they're not stupid and can see DRM regularly getting broken. The argument primarily centres on "casual piracy"—some technically illiterate user sending a copy of "something fun" to their friends—and not on eliminating piracy or preventing third parties from using your work.

Is fixing "casual piracy" even going to make a dent in their spreadsheet? I doubt it.

It sounds like they believe there are more potential sales there than there are from other forms of pirates. (Whether that's true or not is anyone's guess!)

Such "casual piracy" is legal in my country, at least when it comes to music (and we pay for the priviledge, unfortunately). Publishers shouldn't mess with my rights.

There was a post on Reddit recently which is a great example of this. Somebody said that Netflix didn't support their monitor as it was too old (i.e. didn't support HDCP). One of the comments suggested to get a HDCP stripper, a simple device for $10, which will disable the DRM.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Anticonsumption/comments/55r7i4/you...

Yes, all DRM is easy to bypass right now, but it works as a way to get studios on board with digital distribution. This brings up an interesting point. The main argument against DRM is that it is a slippery slope which will lead to more violations of freedom. But the problem with slippery slope arugments is that they're often unsubstantiated. We often don't know what the long-term effects of something will be.

What if DRM is actually serving the opposite purpose? By appeasing studios with weak protections, it may be preventing stronger digital locks from being developed. It could be that if the FSF and other anti-DRM organizations are effective in removing current standards, the industry will respond by developing something even worse, leading to an ever-stronger DRM arms race.

I'm not saying that I know this will be the result either, just that we don't really know what the effects of defeating standard DRM interfaces will be. The only real solution I can imagine would be to get content distributers not to want DRM, which is a very hard proposition. They have the money and the power, and they won't stop until they get what they want.

> DRM is easy to bypass right now

That's because DRM isn't and never has been about preventing copying. The intent has always been to transfer power from consumers to the studios and tech manufacturers. It doesn't matter if the DRM can be defeated by some subset of consumers as long as the idea that you don't have the right to us your purchases as you see fit. As long as this erosion of property rights and the doctrine of first sale becomes normalized and you start believing in artificial scarcity, DRM will have served it's purpose.

This is why it's so important to never compromise and accept any form of DRM. Compromise only shifts the Overton window[1] making change harder in the future.

> it may be preventing stronger digital locks from being developed

Even if "stronger digital locks" was the goal, you don't prevent future locks by allowing them today.

> the industry will respond by developing something even worse

They already do that.

> They have the money and the power

So they can use some of that money to develop their own players if they want to push DRM. There isn't any reason browser authors and the public in general should subsidize selfish businesses.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

I'm not so sure that haivng a standard way to connect DRM to a browser is changing the Overton Window. It's a technical standard that no users are actually looking at. What percenage of the population would even know the difference between a NPAPI plugin and a HTML5 interface for DRM? If you went on the streets and asked people if they feel less in control of their media because the W3C approved a standard replacement for NPAPI in browsers, would anyone even understand what you're talking about?

There are historical examples where weak DRM became standard and never got replaced. Look at CSS for DVDs. It was broken early on, but nobody bothered to replace it because it was already standard and the hardware was out there for it. Yes, there's different copy protection on Blu-Ray, etc., but a lot of people still use DVDs, and they can easily back them up because of weak encryption.

There's definitely a lot of benefits to creating a culture that values personal control, but I'm just not sure this is working. I want a DRM-free world as much as anyone, but the message is muddled and people just want their Netflix. If Mozilla and the W3C both came out against it, Chrome, Safari, and Edge would still support it, and I think all it would do would make Firefox lose even more market share. I would love to see some evidence that it would come out another way.

Normal users aren't relevant players in the politics of DRM. It's everyone who's tech- and IP-literate who is involved in the politics of DRM.

The Overton window though is about what's acceptable in public discourse.

Yes. That was my point. The goal is to change public attitudes, not practical enforcement of copyright. This has always been about shifting public discourse.

> It's a technical standard that no users are actually looking at.

Of course users aren't looking at the standard. The shift happened with the technically-minded people that eventually make recommendations to their friends and family. Just look at this very thread where people like you already accept the premise that DRM is anything other than malware that gives control over your hardware to some other party. The fact that you are making arguments that use language such as calling DRM a "digital lock" demonstrates how far the Overton window has already moved.

> If you went on the streets and asked people if they feel less in control of their media because the W3C approved a standard replacement for NPAPI in browsers, would anyone even understand what you're talking about?

You're trying to frame that question to get the answer you want. Of course most people are not familiar with NPAPI. However, if skip the technical jargon and actually ask people about their experiences, you will get very clear answers. I've literally never met anybody that wasn't directly profiting from DRM that thinks crippled video players are fine. Many have mentioned the things they would like to do but can't because of DRM.

> standard replacement for NPAPI

EME is not a replacement for NPAPI. At best it's a replacement for the DRM in Flash.

> weak DRM became standard and never got replaced. Look at CSS for DVDs.

Except it did get replaced - which you admit - in the next version of the hardware (Blu-Ray). The only reason DVD wasn't affected is the large amount of existing hardware. It's simply not possible to update all of the existing hardware players.

However, web browsers are software that updates regularly.

I'm not a good representative of public discourse. I've read Richard Stallman's blog for over fifteen years.

What you're talking about with hardware is exactly my point. We're talking about encryption, which I'm sure you support for individuals. Public Key Encryption is great for when you want to send a secret message to someone you trust to keep it secret. But what if you don't trust them? You have to convince them to trust you to have some control over their system, even if in a jail or a restricted VM. DRM is sender-controlled encryption employed by software.

So what happens if you tell the sender you refuse to run software you don't control and they still don't trust you? Their only other option is to convince you to use hardware they control. So rejecting broadcaster-controlled software might just lead to a demand for more broadcaster-controlled hardware. It's been done for years, but now we're moving from a full hardware solution to a more software-based solution, something you can contain and easily run with whatever restrictions you want.

I'm not saying it's good, but I'm not saying it's definitely not progress either.

I work on the video streaming sector and we get the shivers when a client wants a web application. And if anyone thinks media producers will allow their content to be streamed over a DRM free channel they're either naïve or stupid. What Google, Netflix and others want is to stop the mess this is currently on browsers.

SnapChat became popular because it restricts what people can do with a post. Its users don't seem to be suffering. So it seems that there is demand for this sort of thing from many users.

> why is this a problem if the publisher doesn't want a third party to use their work without their permission, or at all?

Because whether they are allowed to do that is a determination that has to be made by the law, not the company.

Imagine someone is using your work for commercial gain and you want to sue them. If DRM is a thing and breaking it is illegal, you can't -- you need to make a copy of what's on their website to use as evidence against them, they put DRM on it that says you can't. (In practice this rarely happens because all the DRM is broken anyway, but what does that tell you?)

And the same situation plays out in a hundred different ways. Imagine politicians owned all the clips of them speaking and could throw anything that discredits them down the memory hole. Or evil companies could prevent the press from publishing incriminating documents.

It isn't a matter of whether there is some alternative. That is a thing that cannot be allowed to happen.

> but the other solutions that I've seen are as bad, or offer little real protection to the content creator.

Frankly, "then don't put your content on the Internet" would have been the response 20 years ago. But that conflicted with making money over an ultra-low-cost, global, distribution medium so something had to give-way.

The early days of the Web had a real new-frontier feel, as if the common man had finally found a platform for communicating with the World. It was heady and thrilling.

But DRM, and content restrictions in general[0], is a rude reminder that the Web nowadays is primarily commercial and centralised and is run for profit, not enlightenment or sharing, and that creates an emotional response in many people. Perhaps that response is irrational, but it's widespread and deeply-set.

A closing question: why do you want to put photographs on the Internet but also want to control what people do with them? Why not just keep them on your NAS, nice and safe?

[0] I consider anything like -NC-ND to be content restrictions.

"Perhaps that response is irational..."

No argument to your points, but the quoted sentence deserves a response: It is not irrational to expect a product/service that is, and has always been, advertised as open & shared to be open & shared. False advertising, data sequestration and shady patterns are antonymous to the claims.

> why is this a problem if the publisher doesn't want a third party to use their work without their permission, or at all?

Because they do some really stupid and awful things with js and css. For example, some websites try to hijack the clipboard so that if you highlight a piece of text, no matter how small (and small is allowed by fair use), it'll replace your clipboard contents with an attribution to the website or completely forbid you from copying the text.

Some websites try to disable highlighting text via css or js. This one tries to hide its HTML source code, try looking at it without the DOM inspector:

http://etimologias.dechile.net/

Fuck off, the data is on my computer, my home, my personal affairs. Don't try to hijack control away from my computer. Your perceived and exaggerated sense of author's rights or copyrights do not trump my right to use my clipboard or browser the way it was meant to be used.

If we have a problem with how data is being handled, we take it to court. Letting people take data enforcement into their own hands by letting them subvert laws via technical means is vigilantism and a breach of rule of law.

> why is this a problem if the publisher doesn't want a third party to use their work without their permission, or at all?

Because it often breaks accessibility tools used by the blind, for instance.

It also has a potential to break the social contract that copyright is based on. Copyright doesn't last forever, but most DRM schemes that I know of don't suddenly go away when the copyright term ends.

I use right click -> back to navigate, it drives me nutty when sites try to disable right click or put transparent gifs on top of everything.

> Genuine question: why is this a problem if the publisher doesn't want a third party to use their work without their permission, or at all?

Suppose the publisher's content consists of slander or government propaganda. They use DRM to prevent copying or archiving or citing it properly, and revise it as they wish, denying that older versions were ever published.

In the print days, you'd still have the old copy. Today, you can point to the internet archive. What if the text was DRM'd?

What the publisher wants to permit is one consideration. What the reader has a right to do with what they're reading is another.

"why is this a problem if the publisher doesn't want a third party to use their work without their permission, or at all?"

This misses the point. People when given a choice about something they don't fully understand will generally be conservative and protective. It would be very easy for the default to become locked-down for resources that haven't really had this fully considered for them. Which, if we're being honest, will be most of the web.

It's also not so much about using a third party's work - the more valuable thing is being able to see how something works.

Right, but this is a moral argument. I'm uneasy with this because as much as I like the idea of sharing, I also respect peoples desires not to share.

If you want to share something, then share it. If you don't want to, then don't. Nothing is forcing people to share their content.

DRM is saying you want to have your cake and eat it too. It's sort of like they're sharing content with you, but not really. You have to consume it the way they want to you to consume it. That's trying to control the experience, not the content, and I don't see any reason content creators have that right.

If they don't want to let the content loose on the world, then they don't have to.

There are perfectly legal things one can do with your work under "fair use" that involve being able to reproduce your content that your technological lock can never discriminate.

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