What does DRM achieve, and does piracy equal lost sales?

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Oh but it's OK because it helps prevent piracy, the bane of the car industry.


:p

It's nothing to do with "piracy", and that comment is unfair. I hope nobody is entertaining a belief that in any way equates carjacking to cracking games.

These are systems that have been proven in actual use for dealing with car theft, carjacking, and police pursuits. Is it possible that they will be abused? Yes, though unlike American privacy laws, European laws have teeth and judges willing to enforce them.

Control freaks? Nasty DRM? Bah, you play police dispatcher and try to get a stolen car stopped without anybody getting hurt.
 
If police dispatcher can have such car stopped, then some attacker can do the same thing (messing up the engine, disabling brakes or whatever). A dream for criminals or someone even worse. And now imagine this thing happening on a massive scale and simultaneously. The whole idea is really absurd to begin with. It's very close to DRM in the spirit - overreaching preemptive policing. And has the same result - weakened security.

Now, if they want to make it properly, the owner of the car has to be in control of such defense measures. Not some external entity like police! That would be a proper security approach. Same thing as with DRM. It's not a protection for the user. It's a defense against the user. Same thing here, it looks more like a measure against drivers, rather than something to protect them from car theft.
 
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Far too many maimings and deaths occur in accidents resulting from car thefts and getaways. The overriding objective is exactly this: Get the vehicle stopped without causing an accident. No other means is as effective as this one. If you can do better, do so and patent it. Otherwise, I don't buy your claim that this is overreaching or even DRM of any kind.
 
The objective is fine, but the reach and consequences of this solution is way broader than the objective. And that's the problem. It is DRM in essence. Another classic example which goes even further is prevention of crime before it happened by overseeing all potential criminals in real time. I.e. even more overreaching. The idea can be stretched to absurd levels. (see The Watch Bird by Robert Sheckley).
 
I really do not like to use speculation about fictions that are not under discussion as a foundation for systems that are current and under discussion. The Watch Bird is entirely irrelevant here. The ability of police to issue a command to prevent a vehicle from continuing is the entire scope of the proposed system and is no less than is necessary to implement it safely.

And tarring every third-party digital control with a brush that paints "DRM" on it so reduces the meaning of DRM as to render it meaningless.
 
The Watch Bird is relevant as a projection of where such way of thinking can lead. Dystopian science fiction since long serves as a sobering antidote for those who don't think about side effects of bad solutions, even if their intentions are initially good.

For the reference of those who didn't read this short story by Robert Sheckley: http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/29579

DRM as an abbreviation is not meaningless. Digital Restrictions Management can perfectly refer to control obsessive copyright lobbies as well as to control obsessive law enforcement organizations when they go overboard in that control. Except that "Restrictions" can be understood wider than what you commonly think of in terms of copyright. I'd say DCM would be even more precise - Digital Control Management.
 
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DRM means Digital Rights Management. The fact that some activist organisations decided to change "Rights" to "Restrictions" doesn't validate the usage.
 
DRM means Digital Rights Management. The fact that some activist organisations decided to change "Rights" to "Restrictions" doesn't validate the usage.

It's commonly referred to as such and probably was coined as such originally. But what it means is precisely Restrictions, not Rights. In most cases it has nothing to do with supposed rights whatsoever, and more than often it only violates various rights. So, Digitial Restrictions Management is a perfect fit for the abbreviation and that's the way I use it. It's up to the user of the language how to expand it. Either in the oxymoronic original way, or in the way that actually makes sense. At least there is a sensible expansion. Some business coined abbreviations don't have one at all.
 
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OK I take back my joke about software piracy and car theft. I know this is a serious problem. As far as remote controls go though I think the comparison is valid: increased control under one supposed purpose, enabling many other purposes.

Unlike software piracy, remote engine shutdown may actually help stop stolen cars. However it doesn't directly address why car theft exists. As far as I'm concerned the police is just as corrupt as anyone else, and we all know corporations have more than just a say in social policies. In other words, this is an overreaching system than can also be easily abused.

About the meaning of DRM I have to agree with Gilrond. One thing is what the acronym stands for and another what it is. Just like free trade agreements are not at all about freedom or trade.
 
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Just like free trade agreements are not at all about freedom or trade.

Agreed, but using word-games to get a message across just confuses the issue. If you simply re-assign the acronym DRM to mean something other than Digital Rights Management, then the message attracts a "Huh? But this is nothing to do with DRM!" or a "DRM is necessary to protect us from pirates" response instead of the one desired. Just like this conversation :)
 
That's why it's good to make it clear what the context is. By DRM I always mean "Digital Restrictions Management". As Cory Doctorow writes, DRM pushers use it as a tool to write their own rules which go beyond copyright. It's another aspect of its overreaching. Naturally those rules are all about restrictions on the public, not about promoting creativity.
 
DRM does not achieve anything. 99,9% of PC games that use any kind of DRM are pirated. DRM only causes pain to people who actually buy games.
 
The problem is mixing crowdfunding with obtrusive licenses and corporations. Crowdfunded projects should be entirely original to avoid this sort of legal troubles, like what happened with Shadowrun Returns.

Thankfully inXile and Obsidian are smart enough to work with their own products. Moving Torment to Numenera instead of using the corporate Planescape was an excellent move.
 
The problem is mixing crowdfunding with obtrusive licenses and corporations. Crowdfunded projects should be entirely original to avoid this sort of legal troubles, like what happened with Shadowrun Returns.

Thankfully inXile and Obsidian are smart enough to work with their own products. Moving Torment to Numenera instead of using the corporate Planescape was an excellent move.

And inversely, corporate entities with well-established funding sources and methods for valuing their IP shouldn't be playing around with crowdfunding.

Maybe it's OK for the cast and crew to use crowdfunding to demonstrate the viability of the show -- but it's not their property to do with as they please. They made promises that Warner was within their rights to refuse to allow them to keep.

Maybe it's OK for Warner to allow a crowdfunding demonstration -- but it makes them look like amateurs who wouldn't know the value of a title if it hit them upside the head with a clue-by-four.

Together, it's a recipe for making everybody who took the public's money look bad, and everybody who paid into it unhappy.
 
DRM vs Piracy: An expanded timeline
As SimCity burns, CVG looks back at a 40-year arms race between modders and manufacturers
The two week firework display of explosive SimCity problems has given gamers the chance to stop and stare at the spectacle of DRM failing spectacularly.

EA is faced with the unenviable reputation for relying on one of the most hated anti-piracy methods ever, as a groundswell of players complain of connectivity issues, deleted data and numerous related bugs.
read at full length here : http://www.computerandvideogames.com/395791/features/drm-vs-piracy-an-expanded-timeline/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidth...-companies-more-than-piracy-developer-argues/
 
vincentdante said:
I'm not quite sure what you mean here. I can trade in console games and play them on as many systems as possible without consequence which is what DRM tries to stop you from being able to do. So no they don't have DRM unless you are talking about download only titles.
@vincentdante: Console operating systems are infested with DRM, so you can't have a DRM free experience with games there.
 
@vincentdante: Console operating systems are infested with DRM, so you can't have a DRM free experience with games there.

How are the OS's filled with DRM is the next question then? I can run my PS3 offline indefinitely and nothing get's in the way of my consumer rights while playing it, and I know PS4 is similar. Nintendo systems are just bare bone game players so that argument is invalid (although they have a few other features but not as heavy as the competition). I could agree with you as far as the Xbox is concerned because they attempted to do some shady things with the Xbone which required an update before you could play anything.
 
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