James Delahunty
11 Feb 2006 9:05
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) boss Dan Glickman has a pretty radical view on why Digital Rights Management (DRM) and copy protection exist. One would guess that besides using copy protection and DRM to effectively control how people can enjoy their movies and other content, it is there to stop pirates from mass producing pirate copies and selling them for a small fraction of the retail price. Of course, this does work sometimes, but still movies do end up on P2P networks quite fast, and on the street even faster; so what use is DRM?
Well according to Dan Glickman, DRM is here to protect vulnerable consumers from themselves. "Content owners use DRMs because it provides casual, honest users with guidelines for using and consuming content based on the usage rights that were acquired. Without the use of DRMs, honest consumers would have no guidelines and might eventually come to totally disregard copyright and therefore become a pirate, resulting in great harm to content creators," he said.
I would guess that I'm not the only consumer, and customer of the movie industry, that is somewhat offended by this comment. Why? Because I feel that Mr. Glickman feels it's OK to "look down on consumers". I don't like to be treated like a "possible pirate" when I purchase content. I don't like the movie industry feeling it can police how I use content that I purchase, or that Mr. Glickman feels like he is somehow above consumers, and can comment on us like we are a big bunch of children that he needs to educate.
It it this "holier than thou" attitude that angers consumers. How can the movie industry tell me DRM exists to stop me from doing something "wrong" when all it stops me from doing is transferring video to my iPod, or to my PSP, or creating a backup copy in case my original becomes badly scratched? Is it not my "right" to do these things? All DRM seems to be doing is forcing people to buy their content again on different formats, or buying the same DVD again to replace the damage your kids accidentally did to their Disney DVDs.
Content Scrambling System (CSS), the weak copy protection on DVDs, had a bigger purpose than anti-piracy; it controlled how consumers can enjoy their DVDs. Linux users were left out in the dark for example, until DeCSS made fair use possible. Now Advanced Access Content System (AACS) will do the same thing again for high definition movies. Take these anti-consumer copy protections and merge them with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) or the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) and their equivalents elsewhere; the movie industry has complete control.
Now, not only is it "wrong" to transfer video from a DVD to your iPod, it is "illegal" to circumvent the copy protection to make it possible in the first place. In most countries it is even illegal to distribute the tools necessary to make a backup. How could this have been allowed to happen? The answer is quite simple; money. DRM keeps people buying the same content on different formats (DVD, UMD, from iTunes etc.) so it brings in more money. That's why it is illegal to circumvent copy protection.
Piracy, of course is illegal in many states, and this six letter word allows the movie industry to force such laws as the DMCA. "Losses", "Economical Damage" & "Threatening the Industry's future" are three things we keep hearing about. Why does the movie industry not care about consumer's rights? Did any major studio ever stop to think "Hmm, I wonder how CSS will affect the rights of our customers? The people our whole Industry depends on." Of course not.
There is much more that could be said from a consumer's point of view in this article, such as the Movie Industry's use of User Operation Prohibitions (UOPs) on DVDs to force us to watch those annoying "Piracy, It's a Crime" advertisements, and the use of Region Coding to stop us from importing cheaper (or uncensored in some cases) DVDs, but to continue this article would only be continuing to tell all of you what you already know.
Source:
Arstechnica