Oolite Bulletins

So Microsoft has announced that they are dropping virtually all their DRM requirements for the X1, Yay!!!!!! Umm, not for me. I was initially against the system they proposed, but the more I looked into it the more excited I became. Sure, the system wasn't perfect and maybe 24hrs was too short a time period for checking in, but the check-in was required to use the other features that I was looking forward to. Share my library with 10 friends? Sweet! Play my games without requiring my disk? Nice! Have all my games backed up on the cloud? Awesome! But not any more. Apparently the Internet has spoken and they want the same thing they have had for as long as consoles have been around. Now, I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, or that I am championing change for the sake of change, but I think that new ideas and systems are a great way to evolve the product. The way I seen it was that you had one company offering your standard family car with a bigger motor, safe and proven but kinda boring (Sony) and then had the other offering a luxury car, more expensive, more bells and whistles and more of a pain to maintain, but exciting (Microsoft). Now we have two virtually identical sedans only one has a turbo hanging off the side. I'm sorry if this offends anybody and I'm sure I'll be told that I am wrong, but I feel this as a loss, and that makes me sad

Cheers,

Smithy

Smithy2501 wrote:

...exciting (Microsoft)...

I never thought I'd see those two words in the same sentence!

Smivs wrote:

Smithy2501 wrote:

...exciting (Microsoft)...

I never thought I'd see those two words in the same sentence!

Shocking huh? but, for good or bad, they were at least trying something new!

Cheers,

Smithy

There's nothing preventing Microsoft or any other producer to add all this features without annoying the users with drm and restrictions or spyware. Nothing except greed.

Smithy2501 wrote:

So Microsoft has announced that they are dropping virtually all their DRM requirements for the X1, Yay!!!!!! Umm, not for me. I was initially against the system they proposed, but the more I looked into it the more excited I became. Sure, the system wasn't perfect and maybe 24hrs was too short a time period for checking in, but the check-in was required to use the other features that I was looking forward to. Share my library with 10 friends? Sweet! Play my games without requiring my disk? Nice! Have all my games backed up on the cloud?

The system was by default less than perfect because DRM as a concept is an abomination. The idea that you can 'buy' something but then only use it how and as specified by the vendor violates almost every concept of right and fairness that there is.
If I buy something I don't expect to have to tell the seller anything after the event. OK, maybe you should register some things for guarantee purposes but that's it, no more. The very idea that you have to give the vendor un-fettered access to your stuff is wrong. If to use it you have to let the vendor access it, rifle through it for things 'they' don't like and dictate what you can and can't do with it, it is hardly 'yours' is it?
Sharing with friends? Well yes you should be able to, and could do so freely before the dark days of DRM. Years ago if I bought say a vinyl record, it was mine. I could play it at home on any record player, and I could take it to a friend's house and play it on his as well. It was even legal(ish) to record a copy of it. You lose all that freedom with DRM, unless the vendor decides that you can. And it is this level of control that a third party has over 'my' possession that really rankles.
As for 'the cloud', well, yeah if you want your stuff held by somebody else over who you have no control, that's fine. Games are not much of a problem, but storing personal stuff out there where the likes of the NSA, foreign governments and any competent hacker could gain access to it - no thanks!

I totally agree with Smivs. Also, about DRM, this is a good example of that you own nothing and you loose all your rights when drm is involved: http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/out ... mazon-drm/

I'm not a great believer of DRM either, I agree with pretty much all of what your saying. But the way that MS designed there system I can't really see any way for it to work without regular DRM checks. All your games, weather they are digital or physical, were installed to the HDD, thus eliminating the need to use the disk. But then what is to stop you from giving, or selling, that disk to someone else and continuing to play the game yourself? Restricting the ability to resell said game was a stupid move, that I'll grant! As for vendors restricting how you use their product, check out a EULA sometime, it's enough to turn your hair white! Here in Aus, most DVD's that I have watched also have notices at the beginning stating that any unauthorised copying, distribution, lending, or public display is illegal. Region locking is another thing that I feel is abhorrent, yet hardly anybody complains that their DVD that they bought in the USA wont work on a DVD player in the UK. I'm not saying that MS system was perfect, or the only solution, I just think it's sad that because of all the backlash the whole system has been scrapped rather than being tweaked to be a bit more user friendly. As a side note, look for an author by the name of Cory Doctorow on Smashwords, I really like his views towards DRM.

Cheers,

Smithy

Smithy2501 wrote:

But then what is to stop you from giving, or selling, that disk to someone else and continuing to play the game yourself?

Well, not a lot, but that's always been the case since long before DRM (in the internet sense) was ever practical. If it didn't install entirely to the internal storage, what's to stop you copying the disk?

I can't argue with much that you say. And as you say the problem is not limited to Microsoft (although they are one of the worst offenders) - Apple, Amazon and many other big companies are just as bad.
Sadly what we are seing is a steady erosion of basic 'rights' of ownership that we've had for years/decades/centuries even, and the worst thing is, as you pointed out, people just seem happy to accept it instead of standing up for themselves and their rights.

Tichy wrote:

I totally agree with Smivs. Also, about DRM, this is a good example of that you own nothing and you loose all your rights when drm is involved: http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/out ... mazon-drm/

I will start by saying that this is simply inexcusable and not the first time I have heard of this, one of the reasons why I avoid Amazon! When you take a physical product out of the equation ownership becomes a problem simply due to the ease of which you can copy that property. If I buy a banana I have one banana, I can't copy it, there will always be only one. If I buy an ebook without DRM there is nothing to stop me from making 1000 copies of the book and distributing them, except for the fact that hopefully I am a good and honest person and wouldn't do that. Unfortunately not everyone out there is a good and virtuous angel (neither am I for that matter) and it must be enough of a concern to publishers that they have to do something about it. In a similar thread on another forum someone said in answer to that "But piracy on consoles isn't that much of a problem". That's kinda like the cops saying to the farmer "Well, only 5% of your bananas were stolen so it's not that much of a problem!" I think that games publishers or authors or artist have just as much right to get paid for their product as anybody else. Please don't think that this means that I feel DRM is the greatest thing since sliced bread or that companies have the right to remove said content from you whenever they want, but I think that DRM in it's purest form as copy protection definitely has a place in digital media

Cheers,

Smithy

I know Docotorow and I agree with many of his ideas and with the political view of Richard Stallman (some friends of mine say that I'm a thinner version of RMS ).
Vendors are using DRM hoping that it would reduce or eliminate "piracy", but they coulnd't ignore that every protection, sooner or later, will always be compromised. So they choose to annoy the regular byuers anyway, including DRM and similar restricions.
They could choose to make a product that the users will find completely useful and without hassles, but they refuse to do that.
They go for a centralized control, while the instruments to create a mesh network exists and are alredy used widely.
To be correct, I must say that they use decentralized distributed netowrks. Could storage is an example. But from the user point of view, this remains a client-server situation where the user own nothing, even his personal data.
Think about the differences between facebook and diaspora* or friendica. Or between a chat protocol like ICQ and XMPP. With XMPP, fiendica, diaspora, you can run your own server that will contain all your data. You have complete control over it. You can choose to link it to the other servers, building a network, or to leave it on it's own.
This bring all the control to the user and all the advantages of a networked system. The users are asking for this, but Microsoft and other vendors keep selling them crippled software and hardware with a little part of this possibilities and lots of restrictions and spyware (which is DRM)... And the users resign themselves to accept this, because they are unaware that they could have much more.

cim wrote:

Well, not a lot, but that's always been the case since long before DRM (in the internet sense) was ever practical. If it didn't install entirely to the internal storage, what's to stop you copying the disk?

I agree that this has always been the case, but that doesn't make it right! As technology progresses its easier than ever to copy and distribute media. 30 years ago if I wanted to copy a cassette tape I could as long as I had the time to sit there waiting for the tape to copy and then I could distribute it to maybe 20 people max. Today I can make as many copies of that album as I want and distribute them to thousands of people in no time by making a torrent. As the scale of the problem increases, new ways have to be found to combat it. Is DRM the answer? maybe not and I sure as heck don't have the answer, but until we do I guess you gotta make do with what you've got. BTW, this is my own personal and probably very limited view and if I'm wrong, please feel free to call me a dickhead!

Cheers,

Smithy

Tichy wrote:

They could choose to make a product that the users will find completely useful and without hassles, but they refuse to do that.

I agree that a lot of products could be made easier to use, but I'm curious as to how you would apply this to something like a game. Sure you could remove all copy protection from a game and enable the console to read burnt disks but how long is the game producer going to stay in business? Any thoughts on how a simpler system could work would be greatly appreciated! I am also all for people standing up for their rights, I hate people who are just sheep! But I also recognise that businesses have rights too, I hope that the rights of both parties can one day co-exist in harmony and everyone can enjoy tea and scones

Cheers,

Smithy

I think that they just have to resign themselves to the existence of illegal copies. There have always been illegal copies and there will always be.
One method is to make the original copy much more interesting to the user.
Do you know the prog rock group Tool? Their CDs have always some special package making them much more interesting than every crappy copy you could find.
Add someting. Make the original product more convenient and the users will be happy to buy it. Even those who initially had downloaded it.
Ne nice to your customer. Don't treat him as a potential criminal that you have to control in every moment, and the customer will return you that kindness, instead of trying to defend himself from what he percieves as abuses against him.
Ok, maybe not everyone, but that inveitable. People are different.

Smithy2501 wrote:

Please don't think that this means that I feel DRM is the greatest thing since sliced bread …

<thread derailment imminent>Out of curiosity: am I the only person always wondering about this expression, because I find that sliced bread is actually not great at all? I prefer a whole loaf of bread from which I cut exactly as many slices as I'm needing right now, and keep the rest of it fresh and not drying out.