There are plenty of issues with DRM from a practical and philosophical level. But I think calling it malware is disingenuous. Alice doesn't cede her rights over her data by transmitting it to Bob, and DRM is how Alice protects the data when Bob is a malicious actor. If Bob wants to gain more privileges over all his data, he doesn't need to accept communication from Alice.
That said, buggy DRM can be atrocious and cost more money than it saves. I know plenty of folks who pirate software they own because it's easier than an legal install. But that's a UX problem, not a DRM problem.
The copy is essence of what a computer does. A computer can essentially only do some math and copying.
If you ask me to install some DRM software (or maybe even some hardware containing DRM stuff as in HDMI) you are asking me to run additional complex software where the only purpose is to restrict the functionality of my computer.
I do that, since I like some movies and other things I get this way. However the software serves no purpose to me as the user. It is there to do Digital Restriction Management.
Meanwhile however we have Spotify and are back in the walled garden.
Movie industry unfortunately went directly from physical media (with stupid DRM restrictions - my favorite one is that on a "legal" DVD player I am forced to watch a short sequence on how bad pirates are, on my "illegal" DRM free player I can skip that part) to streaming. Making sure I don't "own" a thing and making sure my computer runs software limiting what I can do with my computer.
I don't disagree with your assessment, except I'd say DRM doesn't exist to restrict the machine - the goal is to restrict the user. Which is necessary, when users aren't trustworthy.
But I'd disagree that DRM doesn't serve you a purpose. It serves the purpose of establishing trust and enforcing conditional exchanges of information. The alternative, like you imply, is no communication, or communication through a different medium that doesn't involve your hardware at all.
Here in meatspace, we have this notion of ownership and property rights. DRM is a mechanism to protect those rights. They may not be perfect, and they might not always make much business sense but that is their intent.
If you look for a comparison: DRM is like a book publisher printing books on special paper which prevents copying and which can only be read in a specific angle so I can't easily take notes containing quotes from the book. All to protect those rights. (Edit: actually that example is missing a piece - you need special reading glasses to be able to read it, that's what DRM is doing on my machine)
And yes - Napster was an issue for the music industry. Suddenly their content was there for free and easily accessible. But then there was Apple, giving music away DRM-free with even better usability and for an acceptable fee.
That's a nice way of phrasing it from the business point of view. From the customer point of view, it's degrading the product and artificially limiting the ways one can interact with it. It goes against the fundamental principle of general-purpose computing: as a computer owner, I get to tell what the computer can and cannot do with the data it has.
DRM in its most general form exists as a way to (try to) make some data follow a different set of rules than the rules of the medium. It's an attempt of making bits have colour[0]. Since bits don't, and can't, have colour, you have to simulate this by changing the rules of the universe in which those bits are processed. It's practically impossible to do correctly, hence the product degradation that always accompanies DRM schemes.
Adding insult to injury, DRM is usually employed to force a recurring revenue stream in a context where it fundamentally doesn't make sense.
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Barring quantum technology, I don't think this is possible.
I have no idea what you mean by that. I really need you to elaborate, because it sounds like a perfect description of DRM. It's there to stop you from playing/copying files, and nothing else.
This is exactly why DRM is malware. It's not your device. You don't get to say what it may or may not do. That's for the device's owner to decide.
malware: Software that is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a computer system. <https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/malware>
Your explicit intention is to disrupt the operation of the computer running the DRM software. This disruption is not authorized by the owner of the device. Ergo: malware.
If you're going to claim control over my computer in the process, I would prefer that you not send me the file. If the price is accepting DRM then it would be better for everyone if the file never existed.
I'm not complaining that you won't give me the file unless I run your DRM code. I'm complaining that your insistence on DRM is creating negative externalities for me and others even if we don't want the file.
And as a practical matter, while many services require DRM when it's easy to do so, in a world without DRM almost none would shut down.
So instead of "It is extra software with the only purpose to limit what I can do." we have "It is extra software with the only purpose to limit what I can do, on the bidding of someone else."
That's basically the same definition. The "someone else" part was already implied by the first half, obviously some party wants it or there would be no conflict. So we've reached a clearer and more explicit definition, but we've also shown that the original definition is not insincere at all!
I understand why someone could view this as limiting, but saying DRM is malware and it's only purpose is to limit you is intentionally ignoring other information about DRM to make it sound even worse then it is.
Any kind of security, authentication, or encryption software ever written was done so to "limit what you can do", so I don't think that is enough to constitute maliciousness.
That being said, many DRM software implementations have been known to go beyond just protecting the rights of the content creators, and that's a different story.
You're seriously trying to argue that people who commit copyright infringement do so maliciously, i.e. with the intent of harming the copyright holder? That seems... novel. And not very plausible. If true, however, it would be much more effective to ignore the work altogether, thus denying the copyright holder both direct income and free publicity.
> Any kind of security, authentication, or encryption software ever written was done so to "limit what you can do", so I don't think that is enough to constitute maliciousness.
The point of security, authentication, and encryption software is to protect the interests of the owner of the device. Defending yourself from malicious attacks by others is not an act of malice. DRM is malicious because it perverts the owner's computing resources to thwart the owner's interests and subverts their control over their own device.
Your incredulity seems intellectually dishonest.
If not malicious, how would you describe enjoying a {book, movie, song, program, ...} that someone has offered for sale without paying for it?
Granted, it's not as clear cut as theft. You aren't depriving anyone of an item that they own.
Granted, the author may in some cases benefit indirectly from copyright infringement, e.g., when you go tell your more honest friends about it, and they go off and buy a copy for themselves.
But in a world where the vast majority of the folks who create these kinds of works need to get paid, and the way they get paid is by selling copies, consuming their work without paying for it seems really fundamentally unfair to them.
The natural state of the world? There is no natural right to control the distribution of things that you publish. Copyright is an artificial privilege created for the sake of social engineering.
If one thing is certain it's the fact that there is no actual malice in the act, so calling it "malicious" is intellectually dishonest. Even labeling it as freeloading would be incorrect since there is no cost ("load") imposed on anyone else. It makes zero difference to the copyright holder's material wellbeing whether you obtain an unauthorized copy or just ignore the work altogether. It's understandable that people would like to be paid for nothing more than giving permission for something that doesn't actually affect them at all, but there's no just basis for it.
Obviously people should get paid for the labor involved in creating new works, to the extent that there is a demand for them. That does not in any sense imply that they should be able to control the distribution of works which have already been created and published. There are plenty of other models (including patronage, crowdsourcing, bounties, and work for hire) which would permit creators of works to get paid fairly without control over distribution. Copyright in general and DRM in particular are among the worst choices, not only because they are unjust but also because they impose massive negative externalities on the rest of society for relatively little gain.
The owner owns their device, yes but they don't always own the data on the device. DRM, for all its faults, is an attempt to reconcile to reconcile the two conflicting requirements.
Owning a resource means that you get to decide how the resource is consumed, i.e. used up. This is exclusive only to the extent that scarce resources cannot be put to two conflicting uses simultaneously, so active use by anyone else would prevent the owner from consuming the resource as they choose. Data, however, is not scarce; it can never be used up. There is no possible conflict between the "owner" and any other user, which makes the claim of ownership meaningless. No matter what anyone else might do with the data, the "owner" still has it and can use it however they wish.
That may be semantically different than “ownership”, but is otherwise functionally irrelevant in the context of this conversation.
The idea that creators shouldn't have the right to control their works is wildly radical -- even more than the FSF's view. Even the concept of copyleft relies on the right of the creator to impose licensing on their creative works. If copyrights didn't exist, licenses that require source to be shared, like GPL, couldn't exist.
You're well entitled to your opinion, but I'm glad the world doesn't work that way, because things like the restrictive clauses in GPL have been very good for the world.
That's the labor which is scarce. Not copies of the copyrighted work. I already said people who create things should be paid for that labor—or more to the point, have to be paid if you want them to continue to create things. That does not imply that they deserve to control what others do with the work after it's been produced and published. That was just an expedient method chosen to encourage "the sciences" (though in practice it's been applied more to entertainment). There are better ways.
> If copyrights didn't exist, licenses that require source to be shared, like GPL, couldn't exist.
The GPL was created as a counterbalance to copyright. In a world without copyright there never would have been any need for it. Moreover, permissive licenses like MIT and BSD have had their share of success even without a requirement to share source code for modifications.
> The idea that creators shouldn't have the right to control their works is wildly radical -- even more than the FSF's view.
It's not really all that radical. Copyright itself is a relatively recent invention and was originally designed as a means of censorship and protectionism for publishers. Before that there was no practical means for an author to control distribution of their work, or any expectation that they should be able to do so. The manual duplication of notable works was routine, and you wouldn't find those scribes begging the author's permission.
In more modern terms, the popularity of file sharing certainly suggests that a very large fraction of the population doesn't act like they believe authors should be able to control the distribution of their works once they're published. Copyright is mainly popular among those who directly benefit from it, much like any other subsidy.
> There are better ways.
Like what, paying for labor instead of the work itself? That may work well (and already does) for more commoditized/custom-purpose/one-time-use creative works, but how do we apply something like that to something like recorded-media entertainment? Prepay for Taylor Swift's next album on Kickstarter?
Yes, exactly. There is no reason why a Kickstarter or Patreon model wouldn't work for recorded-media entertainment. Those approaches have already been used for things which are much more labor-intensive than music albums.
Artists with an established brand and fan following have some additional options, such as limited-edition merchandise or signed prints. Scarce physical goods that can't just be duplicated because their value is derived from their providence.
PS: I think most DRM works against the businesses that attempt to implement it. But it isn't malware. It is a data protection layer.
I think you may be referring to businesses making an anti-user decision to withhold content, and mistaking exceptions to that to be things useful to a user.
DRM schemes are anti-user decisions in the sense that users are presented with a choice of either allowing companies to hijack their machines to enforce a subpar experience, or walking away.
Of course, I'd argue most DRM pushes normal people to piracy because the restrictions usually suck. Had they just distributed the content in a more unrestricted way, they'd do more business. But that is a business problem, not a technical one.
Another way is to not do it. The law does not require you to implement crazy DRM schemes, it requires me to not distribute copyrighted work to which I don't own the copyright.
The law doesn't force companies to implement DRM. It's a choice, and as a choice, it can be considered malicious action by customers.
Grocery stores doesn't hire large amount of security people so that every customer would have a security person assigned to them that follows them around and ensures they don't steal anything. They could do it, I don't think any law anywhere prevents them from doing that. But the first one to try it would quickly lose all its customers. If such a practice happened to get ultimately established (e.g. normalized by stores in non-commodity position), I suspect the meatspace equivalent of FSF would be ranting about it too.
How about:
- Using the fast forward function in media playback software to skip over advertisements.
- Ripping DVD and Blu-Ray movies for use with a media server.
- Playing movies and games from other countries (region locking.)
- Recording or streaming console gameplay (e.g. HDCP on PS3, disabling the share function in certain PS4 games.)
- Running certain software, even some single-player games, if you are not connected to the internet ("always-on DRM.")
DRM sucks, but you don't have to use it.
Of course there is no alternative as long as consumers accept it. And consumers don't care since it all seems to work.