We’re all pirates because of DRM. That’s the conclusion of a new UK study—and it’s a long one, coming in at 200+ pages—. The idea here is that the DRM schemes imposed by rights owners do just as good a job at restricting people who have legitimate claims to the material as it does restricting those without any claim at all.
Consider this: you’re blind, so you’re used to handing off e-books to text-to-speech software. Nothing wrong with that, right? You pay for your e-book, then do with it what you want. Here, in order to actually “read” the book, you use software that reads it to you. But what happens when the e-book you buy is wrapped with DRM, as happened to someone interviewed for the survey? You buy the book, fully expecting to be able to listen to it, like you always do, and that pesky DRM, ostensibly used to prevent misuse, denies you your paid-for content.
Or what if you’re trying to show a few clips from a DVD to your students? Sorry, DRM won’t let that happen. (True story: in 10th grade I had to do a small report on the atom bomb for chemistry class. I copied a scene from The Simpsons DVDs that explained nuclear energy to a VHS. Should I have been sued for that?)
Yeah, we already know that DRM, largely, is just a hassle, and, in the real world, it does more to adversely affect would-be legitimate users than pirates; pirates will just grab the crack off The Pirate Bay.
Wow Now I feel better about robbing the bank it wasn’t my fault I was broke. When are people going to grow up and take some responsibility instead of its not my fault it won’t work here. If you purchased the the Simpsons DVD no, but I am betting you copied from TV, because it was convenient and free.
jlmc727-did you really rob a bank or have you fallen for the “sharing is theft” propaganda,Sharing is Good,but if you did rob a bank(or anyone else) that’s BAD
he copied the Simpson’s off dvd,read the story;
DRM does absolutely nothing to stop piracy. Nothing at all.
Pirates do not see something with DRM on it and say “omigod! run away!”
No… they say “eh, so what?” and carry on
All it does is agitate ligitmate customers.
High quality intelligently priced products will beat piracy everytime. DRM never will.
I buy every game I play. I also crack nearly every game I play so I don’t have to put up with the DRM bullsh!t.
I can find a way to pirate anything I want in about 5 minutes, and I’m not a freaking genius.
DRM does nothing to stop pirates.
There was an excellent comment on this sort of thing on a forum I browse regularly. Someone commented on a movie they had bought
“I had to watch that stupid ‘don’t pirate movies!!!’ message even though I’d bought the stupid movie. The DVD won’t let you skip it!”
First reply: “Know who doesn’t have to watch that clip? The pirates. Booyah.
“…then do what it what you want.”
Pretty sure this is a line from a Beastie Boys song.
DRM did push a lot of people over the line … I have a valid copy of game (NWN2) that I cant use – my DVD drive will come up with error due to Sercure ROM protection …
The solution is to download a torrent – worked fine !
Now if this happens a few time – the lesson for a normal user is simple – why go out buy a valid copy that give me a hard time if I can just download a copy (illegal) that works …
Most tech people in the business said it was going to turn out to be a bad thing – but the sales wanted to have it that way …
lol do they need to do a study to conclude that??? wtf.. to think people are paid to say that 1+1=2….seriously