I disagree; good DRM is transparent and unnoticeable, and if that is the case then users do not care.
Who does care about DRM is pirates and content creators whose content is shown without them earning off of it.
Yes I am aware of fair use exceptions, but fair use should exempt a user from getting sued over using a fragment of copyrighted content; it does NOT force a content creator from offering their content open for downloading and republishing, even if it's for fair use.
I disagree; good DRM is transparent and unnoticeable
Yeah, until it isn't.
I can't start GTA V for days since the "Rockstar Social Club" won't connect and glibly informs me that "I need to be on-line"
I would have agreed with you until then. But not being able to play a game for which I paid full price and not being able to get meaningful support to resolve the issue rapidly changed my stance on DRM.
> You never truly own anything that has DRM, you're just licensing it.
The thing that I hate is that the marketing either explicitly says "you own it", or does it implicitly or indirectly, or in a way to make you think that you do.
They never, ever put in big bold letters "License this game for $69.95, today!"; not even when you actually "purchase" does it say "license". In fact, you see the words "purchase" or "buy" or similar; words that have always connotated "ownership".
Now granted, all software, and media in general, has always been a "license" - but there was always something physical around; that if the company or entity that licensed it to you disappeared tomorrow, you could still - theoretically - continue to use the license you had and enjoy the media as intended.
That all really changed with license keys. One would think that the whole DIVX debacle would have made this abundantly clear, but I guess it didn't (makes me wonder if the DivX media format or whatever it was actually wasn't created purposefully to muddy the waters; but that's just conspiracy theory on my part).
I don't even think people will "get it" if tomorrow everybody who "bought music" from iTunes or whatnot lost their licenses with no recourse. I really don't think there'd be anything done, except for some bawling at most.
If everything we have seen over the years, including the various massive data breaches that have occurred recently, hasn't woken anybody up to force reforms and changes that benefit the citizens and consumers, well - nothing will.
Society has basically said "we don't care if we or our children get slaughtered" - where that last word takes on a wide variety of meanings - up to and including its literal meaning.
Those of us out here being force down the chute screaming about the injustice, the wrongness, the reasons why, etc - we are all just so much noise that nobody cares about anymore.
Children getting slaughtered? Oh come on. The simple fact is that movies, music and video games are just not that important. That's why people don't get up in arms about restricted access.
Let's imagine a field. A holy place. People flock for miles, pay the land owner handsomely to visit the field.
A judge says that everyone has a right to take a single photo of this field for their collection - no more than that. The land owner disagrees.
We're not saying that the land owner should be forced to provide small organza bags for the visitors to carry their cameras around with them; but posting armed guards at all the entrances with metal detectors, automatedly initiating legal action on anything that looks like a camera and then trying to tell the user it's for their own good... well, this should at the very least be discouraged by the community, no?
> good DRM is transparent and unnoticeable, and if that is the case then users do not care.
Then there's no such thing as good DRM, since many users will want to make use of the content they've paid for (either monetarily, or perhaps indirectly via ads) in flexible and open ways that a proprietary DRM system will not allow. Fair use is part of this, but not the only issue.
Meanwhile I bet everyone here and /r/gaming uses Steam without thinking about it where you can't even click and drag an .exe to your buddy on a long flight and you need to log into it every X days for it to let you play offline.
To be clear, I'm definitely happy to support gog.com and thankful that they exist and are successful.
But look how many HNers will bring up Kindles and buying books for them on Amazon where you can only "lend" a book from kindle to kindle (forget drag and drop) through their proprietary system.
Every day 90%+ of people are happy with systems that use DRM and don't even notice it exists. Most people just don't ever go off the rails.
It's one of the worse things about DRM: trying to position your product as DRM-free and people just go "wtf is that? it never bothered me before."
No such thing as good DRM. All DRM is broken by design, and exists to take your rights away. Never make excuses for this garbage software. DRM must die.
Who does care about DRM is pirates and content creators whose content is shown without them earning off of it.
Yes I am aware of fair use exceptions, but fair use should exempt a user from getting sued over using a fragment of copyrighted content; it does NOT force a content creator from offering their content open for downloading and republishing, even if it's for fair use.