Why DRM Should Be Kicked to The Curb

Published on October 1, 2008 in General by Rami Taibah

This is a guest post by Ian McLean, an Australian Linux and Open Source aficionado currently based in Romania.

The Information Age: Where Everything Is Free

I once was having a light conversation with a student friend of mine and told him about OpenOffice.org; I said that it’s free to get and use, it does nearly everything that Microsoft Office does for none of the money. It’s got a word processor, spreadsheets, maths, presentations…! I asked him if he was interested in trying it out. He told me, of course not. He already has Microsoft Office. It’s better than OOo, and thanks to the gift of the Internet, that was free too.

And I’ve seen this fact swept under the rug quite a few times in software related discussions in the politically correct business world. But among my student friends, it’s bandied about so carelessly you’d be forgiven for thinking that there’s absolutely nothing strange about it at all.

The fact being: It’s cheaper and easier to use pirated software than to pay for the real thing.

Ever since practically the dawn of recorded media, piracy has been an issue that every single developer and publisher of music, software or other media alike has had to contend with; in the eighties we didn’t have torrents, but we had tape trading. Then, when CD burners became commonplace it was no problem to just get a friend to burn you a copy of Windows or whatever latest games were making the rounds. Now, we’re headed into the latter years of the 00′s, and high-speed Internet is so cheap and commonplace, downloading a copy of whatever you like is often simpler in practice than making the effort to go to the store and fork out your hard earned cash for it.

Solution? Handcuff em’

Now, with software piracy running totally rampant, the worth of software available on retail shelves begins to sink, and software companies begin losing money. Clearly, this isn’t a minor trend to deal with; it’s a potential catastrophe and of course, there’s plenty of reasons, which are perfectly legitimate, for companies that make their bread from software sales to find a way to curb piracy and keep their user base honest.

Software consumers have a binary choice:

Purchase a legal copy of the software and begin using it legitimately. You pay for the right to use the product entirely legally, and you’re able to rest easy knowing that you have legal right to use it.
Obtain a pirated copy. It’s breaking the law, but it’s also law that’s extremely difficult to be enforced. You’re not using it legally, but chances you’ll get away scot-free anyway. Obtaining it was quick, simple, and above all, it cost you nothing.

For folks where money doesn’t grow on trees and in many cases (I’m looking at you, Adobe) the software’s pricing doesn’t exactly correlate with the complexity or quality of the program, option B is going to be the preferred choice for a lot of people. So, software companies, unable to influence their users by mind control, are also left with two main options when they’re producing and distributing their software:

Accept that piracy is going to be there, and help sway customers by giving extra incentives to purchase the product legally. This can come in a number of forms such as exclusive help and support, security updates, extra features via member subscriptions or something similar.
Design the software in such a way that the software is crippled or deactivated for those deemed to be illegitimate customers, and forcibly limit consumer rights in an effort to wipe out any possibility of illegal use. This includes Digital Rights Management schemes, product activation, rootkits and so on

Now, this isn’t exactly a binary choice. Many companies have opted to use both options here, and to varying degrees. But clearly, if anything’s proven by the trends it’s that leaning too heavily on option B can have the opposite effect to that which is desired to software companies.

Spore: The Last Straw

A classic example of this has happened just recently, in the form of a computer game named Spore, the baby of Maxis founder/Sims franchise creator Will Wright.Â Â Spore has generated massive, massive hype in the gaming community and was thus released to huge sales, and, thanks to its SecuROM software, a nice amount of controversy as well.

SecuROM comes bundled with the game. It’s not advertised on the box and for all intents and purposes, the customer is entirely unaware of its inclusion until they’ve bought it, taken it home and installed it. The software cannot be uninstalled, even if the game is. Upon installation the game must be activated online, and it can only be activated on five different systems. At first this seems to make sense, until it’s made clear that the software’s methods of determining whether it’s a different computer or not aren’t bulletproof; changing the computer’s hardware may register to the game that it’s an entirely different system and thus, another activation is used. After all activations are used, the game will not play and to a completely legitimate consumer, the game is rendered useless. Pouring salt in the wound, the SecuROM software is still bundled even if the game is purchased and downloaded through Steam, itself a powerful anti-piracy measure by its very nature.

The fallout from this calamity is pretty obvious now; the game’s ratings on Amazon average one of five stars due entirely to the game’s DRM measures, and thanks to the friendly pirate community, copies downloaded illegally through file sharing and torrents have had the DRM measures deactivated or removed â€“ effectively making the pirate copies of the game superior to the real thing. In short, if you buy Spore from a shop, you get a worse version than the one that pirates are getting for free. And what was your crime?

Spore was downloaded over half a million times in its first four days of release, and is well on its way to being the most widely pirated game in history.

Kick DRM Out!

The fallout from this debacle leaves us with two lessons.

a) DRM is not only ineffective, it also diminishes a product’s value.

b) Crippling and punishing consumers for being honest isn’t healthy business practice.

We’re in a new age, where information can be generated, modified and exchanged extremely quickly and easily. Adopting old-age methods to curb free sharing of files by strong-arm tactics clearly isn’t working, and all the while Free and Open Source Software community are enjoying fantastic software, legally, and without paying a cent. You’d never find me shelling out $700 for Photoshop, and why? It’s because I already get $650 worth of its value with GIMP, and I pay nothing for that. Half a grand saved, half a grand earned.

If commercial software publishers want to win their audience back, they’re only going to accomplish it by penalizing illegal users instead of their legal consumers, and they’re only going to do that by giving legit users something that’s better.

Picture credits: 1- Zdnet blogs 3-Penny Arcade Webcomics

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About Rami Taibah

Rami Taibah the founder of The Linuxologist and a self proclaimed geek and Linux aficionado. This fall, he will be pursuing an MIMS degree at UC Berkeley, California. You can follow him on Twitter @rtaibah.

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Jim

@app

You said thief, not me. Cool your tool. My point wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular. I was my feeling that people who use software but don’t seem to think it’s worth paying for are using any excuse in the book to justify an action that they, in reality, know is wrong.

I always find it interesting how the same folks who wouldn’t think of stealing a toaster, shampoo, groceries, tools or cars etc. because they think they’re overpriced, don’t think there is anything wrong with stealing software for the same reason. No matter what reason or excuse anyone can make, if you use it but did not pay for it, you stole it, period.
Matt

Jim, sharing is not the same as stealing. Stealing is taking the original while sharing is copying the original. As technology evolves so should our vocabulary. Piracy is stealing, and on the high seas at that. At worst you can call file sharing a crime. Calling it piracy is just an ad hominem.
Jim

So what you are saying is if I sit for months writing a piece of software, get it on store shelves, it’s okay for two (or many more) people to be using it when I only made one sale? Somehow that’s going to be a little hard to take when the bills come rolling in each month and I depend on the royalties and/or profits made for each product sold. And I don’t call it piracy, I call it stealing and theft.
Matt

I made no mention of the morality of it, but if you want it I’ll share it. Just because you put something on the market doesn’t mean you have the right for it to be profitable. Your only real rights, ie non govt ones, are your property rights. If someone steals they should pay restitution. If someone buys my product and then puts it on the internet, or shares it with their friends, I might be upset, but as soon they bought the product it became theirs, and theirs to use. Yes, it’s unfortunate that govt has stepped in and gotten people use to rights they shouldn’t have, but the reality is that IP is a govt enforced monopoly rule, not a true market one.
Yes, you’re right, you didn’t refer to it as piracy. Though stealing and theft is still inaccurate, maybe not the latter if you believe in IP.
http://appsapps.info app

@Jim

An author that spends years of his life writing a book, and I buy it, then read it and loan it to a friend, is in the same boat as what you described, But there is nothing wrong with letting someone borrow a book, and it’s perfectly legal.

Why does the same become a crime when it’s an ebook or an application?

Is is to do with how many can read a single printed book at the same time vs. how many can read a digital book? And how many can use the same application at the same time?

If that be the case, why can you not run a copy of Windows on one pc, shut it down and then move to your other PC in another room and use the same copy of windows there, legally? If it is only being used on a single computer at a time, then you should be able to install it on any number of computers you want, as long as only one runs at a time.

But that isn’t how the software is sold. They don’t allow you to do that. They won’t even let you run it on the same computer after replacing your motherboard, without their permission.

Getting permission from some company to use their product that you paid for, is insane….even more insane to have to jump through hoops and get that permission repeatedly…and often being denied the right to use what you paid for.

After buying a cheeseburger at McDonalds, do you have to get their permission to eat it? Is it illegal to break it in half and eat some now and the rest later? Do you have to get permission again when you want to eat the other half? Do they get to tell you where you can & can’t eat it? Do they get to tell you that only you can eat it, and you are not allowed to share it or give it away to someone else? Do they get to tell you whether or not you are allowed to pick the seseme seeds off the top? Do they have a right at all?

Why then do software companies have that right?

As a software developer, I do not understand how I could have the right to tell you that you can only use my product on one computer and if your computer dies, you have to buy my software again if you want to run it on your new computer.

I do not understand how I could have the right to tell you that you can only use my product with a single user account on your computer and if you reboot into another user account, you have to pay me again to be able to use it there too.

I do not understand how I could have the right to tell someone they only have the right to use my product on their desktop at home, or on their laptop while traveling, but not both.

I do not understand how I could have the right to say that one person can use my product on your computer but nobody else that lives with you can use it on your computer without paying me more for each person.

I do not understand how I could have the right to say that if your copy becomes corrupted and you don’t have access to the original installation file that nobody can give you even one single file from their copy to get yours working again.

I do not understand how I have the right to tell someone with an old slow computer that could run an older version of my software but not the latest, that even if they pay for it 100 times over, they can not have an older copy they can run, even if they can find the setup file for it or downloaded a copy 10 years ago and had it sitting on their hard drive all this time without installing it.

I don’t understand why I have the right to tell people that if they buy my product, they are only allowed to use it for as long as my company exists, or as long as I live. If I die or go out of business, they can’t use what they paid for any more.

And why do I have the right to let people know stuff like this after they pay and not before, and not issue a refund if they don’t like all the miles of fine print they are not allowed to read till after they pay, take it home, remove it from the package, pop it into their computer, and click install.exe? If they don’t like it, they can exchange it for another copy of the same thing, but they can’t have a refund. And if it won’t run on their computer and it is the fault of the software or operating system (not defective media), same thing…exchange for same title only….and you are not allowed to sell it to someone else to get your money back.

As a developer, why do I have these crazy rights?
Jim

I don’t think most software houses would mind sharing if it wasn’t for all the people who just plain steal copies of the program. At least with sharing (still in my mind not an ideal situation) a sale is made. In the other case hundreds or more copies are out there with no profit seen except for the guy selling it out of his trunk in the mall parking lot.
Matt

@app: Hear hear!
@Jim: So you don’t mind the business practice of punishing legit customers because of some bad apples? Also, stealing and sharing will most likely always be a part of culture, it has so far.
Jim

I don’t like copy protection practices any more than anyone else but it, for the foreseeable future, is a necessary evil.

I got to thinking about what you posted about books. It’s true you can lend or give a book to whom you wish and it’s legal but that book was most likely purchased and the owner got his due. One book. I can buy a computer game and sell or give it to someone as long as I no longer have it on my machine. Their due, one game. Legal. Now copying books would not be practical but copying software is. So, for example, you have one copy of that book but five hundred copies of that game. Not the same thing.
- Matt
  
  Why is it a necessary evil?
  Sharing is still sharing whether it’s a book or software. The degrees seem a moot point to me.
  - Jim
    
    Like I said, not if you depend on sales to pay your bills. Why is it people just don’t want to pay for what they use??
    - Matt
      
      So you believe that if companies make a product they deserve sales/profit?
      I sort of see where you might be coming from but you’re not making it all that clear.
    - Ben
      
      What does DRM have to do with stopping piracy? It’s tricks the programmers pull in the game that cause problems when cracked, like in mass effect, that discourage someone from pirating something more than and third party DRM.
Ben

Although it is still illegal under copyright law to lend a book. And how is DRM necessary? Originally stuff like CD keys were reasonable, and they’re still used reasonably for online account registrations. But with something like securom, to use the spore example, all that happens is that they can’t access the online content, something which could be achieved by just having one account per key. Still a risk of giving someone the username and password, but it hasn’t proved to be a major issue with steam.
- http://appsapps.info app
  
  How is it illegal to lend a book? Isn’t that what libraries do?
  - Ben
    
    My mistake on that count, I misread the statement in the front… It was actually saying you’re not allowed the switch the cover but I got confused on all the terms they threw in.
    
    While it’s not as significant as with books, DVDs can’t legally be lent. At least in Australia anyway.
Jim

@ Matt
Like I said before, if a program is worth using, it’s worth buying or don’t use it. If they sell 500 copies of a game but there are 2000 copies out there being played that’s 1500 games they did not get payed for. And those numbers are very conservative as to what really happens many times. I think any of us would be a little bit ticked off if those were our sales/profits we were losing.

If you invented a machine that could perfectly clone products you purchased off the shelf and then sell them, just how long would that last before you got a knock on your door? Not exactly the same, but you get the idea
- Matt
  
  I suppose where we disagree is that I don’t think people (necessarily) have a right to a profit on something that’s not their property.
  There are many instances where I’d disagree with your first sentence. In most cases I, and other consumers, like to try before we buy to be certain of quality, whether we’d like the product enough to buy, or stability. Sometimes products don’t have demos so ‘we’ have to improvise.
  Yes, products do get shared a lot, but most likely the higher the share ratio the better and more profitable the product is anyway. Finally, a shared product doesn’t mean a lost sale. That might be the case but so could, try before buy, wants entertainment but is strapped for cash, would buy but the shared version is better (no drm), etc.
  - Jim
    
    Next time I want a new car and am strapped for cash I’ll ask the dealer to “share” one with me. And I don’t have a problem with try before buy but if you intend to keep using it pay for it!
    Last post, I said what I believe is right. Bye.
    - Matt
      
      I enjoyed the conversation and I hope you come to separate stealing from sharing. I do not believe force is legitimate or right.
      Take care.
    - http://appsapps.info app
      
      You have never borrowed a car from anyone? How about when you were learning to drive? Did you borrow your parent’s car?
      
      Have you ever let anyone borrow your car?
      
      It’s not illegal to share a car. People do it all the time.
Jim

You take care yourself. I too enjoyed it. Open discussion is what makes it all worth while.
Jim

The bit about the car…umm that was a joke. Never mind.
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Kop

My view is that all software is is a sequence of 1s and 0s that are arranged on a readable device. When I purchase a piece of software, I transfer the 1s and 0s from the disk that I purchased to the magnetic platters in my hard drive. I also purchased the hard drive. So why can’t I make modifications to the sequence of 1s and 0s I purchased on the hard drive I purchased? I think I should be able to. That’s why I like X-Plane’s EULA: “You can do anything you want with this as long as you don’t copy it, save for 1 backup copy” (or something similar to that). If I buy a sequence of 1s and 0s, I want to be able to modify it however I want.
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