Blizzard concedes that DRM is a losing battle.

It's in society's best interests if any work is available to as many people as possible; however, it is also in our best interests that artists have some encouragement to produce works. Copyright is a trade-off between these two aspects.

It is clear that the exclusive right to control copying of one's work is by no means a natural right, but an artificial one. The U.S. constitution states that "The Congress shall have Power [. . .] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." - clearly, at least back then, lawmakers understood that copyright was a tool to be used in the best interests of society.

However, because of the Internet, copyright has lost quite a lot of effectiveness. Full enforcement of copyright is no longer viable, at least not without excessive government interference, and loss of privacy. The result of this is that, in order to keep the effectiveness of the deterrent high, the damages for piracy have become very much out of proportion - if you have a 1/10 chance of being caught, the fine has to be 10 times as high to remain effective; those who are caught are forced to pay for the many who aren't.

Even so, copyright continues to become less effective, and companies have tried to find ways of protecting their products that don't rely on the law alone, due to the difficulty of actually enforcing it. DRM is one of these approaches - an attempt to prevent copying within the product itself.

 

Again, all this babble on laws and copyright is senseless.

Concentrate on supporting the customer and giving them what they want, create quality software, and it's a non issue. No DRM period. Companies hide behind these laws because they can shovel out crap and customers have no recourse. Give them something worthwhile, and you'll still sell billions and who cares if some shmucks make a copy then, they clearly don't care to buy it in the first place. No it's not right, but get over it.

With most other products, even cars, there are lemon laws to protect the customer, but there's nothing like this for software. People are so concerned about "the company" the company THE COMPANY! It's survival of the fittest. If you create crap you shouldn't exist, sorry.

 

You're 100% correct on all accounts.

 

These protections, like copyright and DRM, are indeed not necessary for authors to be able to profit from their works.

People can be willing to pay money that they don't have to pay in order to obtain a product - consider the relative success of the Humble Indie Bundle. Sure, some people still pirated it, but even though it was possible to pay only $0.01, the average contribution was $9.18.

Ultimately, if works can be copied without impediment but the authors will still be recompensed, that would be best for society, and I hope that's where the future is headed.

 

Hehe, the Korean/Chinese companies have been making good money with free 2 play games.

Read some analysis that these free to play games make more money per customer than the monthly subscription games.

 

That's the problem. I think we all know this and believe it, but for some reason it doesn't translate to the deep pockets making the decisions...

 

I agree. The issue nowadays is that the software business is still relatively young (20 years or so of massive expansion) and it seems the companies have taken long steps trying to control everything they can about their product. A practical solution would be to recognize that buying software is equivalent to buying a product, thus enforcing all the rights physical products have (like the first sale doctrine).

 

Just curious - are you against copyright and DRM for software only, or on all media, like books, music, movies as well? There's a decent argument to be made against software DRM since the final product never really is a final product and DRM causes problems, but I don't think the argument is as strong against other media, and I think copyright law still needs to exist for those.

*edit*
This isn't a you directed to htwingnut, but to the general "you" participating in the thread. The quotation is just a good stepping stone to that question.

 

Breaking their full draconian DRM is just as easy as breaking the old keycodes.
If someone "cannot be bothered" to run a single *.exe then installing the program may be too complex and indeed perhaps tying shoes may be a challenge.

I am going to go ahead and assume the average gamer isn't a complete drooling idiot. I advise you to do the same.

Your argument doesn't hold water and you know it. DRM has only ONE effect... annoying paying customers. Even the least capable of the pirates completely ignore it.

Yup, I want to be able to enjoy a closed world.
That's right, I want to CHOOSE when I deal with the masses...
I want to be able to close all doors and play the game I purchased.

FYI, I play plenty of online games... most of them have curbed cheating to a degree that battle.net doesn't seem capable of...
I am fine with Blizzard concentrating on games and not on preventing cheating. Just leave me the tools to enjoy the game without cheaters.

 

very plain and simple, drm will never stop or even slow down people that want to steal a game music movie whatever. No matter what you do anything people have access to in their hands they can break it.

Look at satellite TV the channels are heavily encrypted people play around with the receiver box and find a way to extract the encryption keys from the signal boom infinte ppv infinte channels.

Take the iphone for example oh you can only use it on at&t nah sorry 2 months after it was released it was up and running on t mobile. now any gsm network can run an iphone why wasnt apple able to prevent it? Because the hardware (the phone) is in peoples hands and they can modify it however they want and it's completely legal. You own the phone you paid for it you can do whatever you want to it.

Remember when blu ray came out? Remember the lables talking about how blu ray's encryption scheme is unhackable copies of blu rays will be impossible? Hacking sites saw the lables say it would be impossible and guess how they responded?? "now we are gonna concentrate even harder to break the encryption just so we can make them eat thier words."

Can anybody here name 1 single drm technology in any sector in the market that has succeeded?

All drm does is inconvenience paying customers and doesn't change at all how many steal the game. If some 1 wants to steal it they will whether it is drm or no drm. It's sad that the paying customers have to suffer with drm for nothing cause it doesnt stop the theft. Now if it stopped the theft actually worked then yea the customers are suffering from drm but atleast they are suffering for a good cause. But the way it is now they suffer and people still steal the games and everything else.

look at zune pass 15 dollars a month and you can download as much music as you want but when your subscription dies the music files no longer play. The piraters just use programs to strip the drm off the music files and they pay 15 dollars download 10,000 songs strip em all of drm and wow you just got 10k songs for 15 bucks. drm fails always.

 

Again battlenet is damn near 13 years old. Its gone as far as its gonna go. If you really think blizz is not gonna make any efforts to protect us from other player hackers your crazy. Wow is a great example. There is almost no legit "hacking" on live servers. And what there is are nearly non existent (Account's getting phished are a totally different animal and that relies more on the user).

 

Actually, my base assumption is that the typical gamer is of average computer knowledge, which is to say they can install a program and run it, maybe configure the options. Gamers who post to forums to discuss things like DRM or tech policy tend not to be drooling morons, but the average gamer does not touch them.

The simplest way for me to think about DRM is that it's just like the locks on my windows and my front door. It's not going to keep anyone from stealing my stuff when I'm not at home, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to triple bolt every door to try to secure it. All it really takes to break into a house is a crowbar and perhaps 2 minutes of your time. Copyright holders will keep throwing protections on their works regardless of whether or how often pirates break it and take the goods for free, if only to keep out the most opportunistic (the thieves who go around pulling on car door handles to see which is unlocked rather than breaking into a car). DRM keeps out those lowest-hanging fruit pickers, nothing more. Just remember, every time you break DRM, you're basically the guy with the crowbar.

I'm going to have to jump a little sideways here, but essentially, noone HAS to use any software if they don't agree with the terms. It's really up to them. It's REALLY important to note that when it comes to copyrighted work, noone but the author actually owns the work. Most of the problem people have with DRM is that they think that because they bought a box, they own everything in that box, free and clear. This is not the case. Every book/mp3/movie/program a person buys is merely a license to use and enjoy the work, and they have to agree to all the terms of the license or not use it at all as per present US copyright law (going into a debate of what the law is vs. should be is a wholly different matter). If they decide they don't like the terms but still want to use it, well, that's a "personal" decision.


As far as judging battle.net, it's been a long time since battle.net was reworked (2002/2003 for wc3/tft, i believe), so perhaps we can just hold judgment until it's released?


As far as all those examples laststop 311 listed, those are all DRM workarounds. If you stick within the scope of the license you purchase, you never ever hit that DRM wall. It's only when you want to do something you're not allowed to do - copy a movie off cable, rip a DVD, strip out the protections from a music file - that you run up against something that inconveniences you. I can play DVDs on my single-region DVD player without ever noticing I'm being hammered by DRM.

 

I'm all for protecting someone's work, software, art, books, music, movies, or otherwise. But my whole point with software is that customers have zero rights basically. Debate pirating all you want, but until customers have a legal option, it's hard to debate anything. You either buy something and are stuck with it regardless and with annoying DRM, or you get it pirated free and clear without DRM. At least books, movies, music (at least CD's) you can sell or even gift to someone else. You can't do that with most software, especially games.

Protect it all you want, but then give the customers a chance to at least return the product. The way I see it is don't protect it, can't return it or protect it, but offer a return policy. Right now the dev/publisher have it 100% in their favor. They protect it and can't return it.

 

Very true. There's a phenomenon known as the shrinkwrap rule in which even if you don't agree with the terms of the license (which you can't even see yet), you can't return your purchase unless the license is wildly inappropriate (e.g. you sign your first born child over). IMO it definitely needs to be possible to reject it and get your money back.

 

I don't think anyone reads those licenses. I know I sure as heck don't.

I think what most people want is the ability to return software if they don't like it. Like a really bad game or buggy program. Much more debatable issue.

 

This^^^

I'm not talking about the EULA or TOS or whatever, but that certainly is an issue as well. Even if it's a short window for a return (say 1-2 days) at least you have some recourse. Sure people could copy it, do a midnight gaming session and return it, etc. But this would also open up a used game market that publishers just loathe because they could never get their grubby hands in that market.

That's the other thing, since publishers can't get in the used game market, they make it near impossible for anyone else to be able to. Talk about pure greed.