Disagreed. Sony rootkit was on the legally purchased media. DRM on streaming services can do all kind of stuff without users consent. DRM built into hardware with cameras can do even weirder stuff (just note the crazy DRM idea patented by Microsoft regarding detecting the people in the room). Since DRM is a black box, you never know what it can do. There is completely no reason to trust that it will respect your privacy and rights. Therefore DRMed media has no edge over pirated media at all.
Safety requires transparency (for the user), as well as trust in the used technology. DRM by its very definition is non trustworthy and non transparent, it's the antithesis of that. It's totally opaque precisely because it attempts to hide something from the user. Because ironically, DRM proponents don't trust the user! User is treated as potential criminal by default. How can users in situation when they aren't trusted, trust the DRM vendor in return? They can not, and they should not! Trust can be only mutual. I.e. DRM always implies something shady and risky. DRM proponents should be treated as potential criminals by default in return. And what do such criminals usually hide in their code? Malware.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootki...
So this is different - in degree if not in kind.
6. Convenience.
I believe that the content industry is relying on a sufficient number of people still finding it easier to buy a DVD/Bluray rather than pirate. For technical people, pirating is already sometimes more convenient for reasons that you stated.
There is also a
7. Ethics
Some people do not find pirating ethical under any circumstances, and will inconvenience themselves to avoid it.
For the record, I don't pirate music anymore. Spotify has made pirating too inconvenient.
> “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work,” Newell said. “It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
Steam single-handedly killed even the temptation to pirate games for me, because it's ridiculously convenient to just fire up Steam, click a button, and have the game delivered to my desktop at multi-megabit speeds without any obnoxious DRM getting in the way of me being able to play. Pandora, Spotify, and most recently Google All Access make music piracy a complete non-issue for me, because I don't want to have to spend time chasing down a song or even futzing with iTunes - I just punch something into search and it's playing. Netflix and Hulu provide so much content that I can't watch all of it - while they don't always have the most recent content, they have a lot of it.
Provide me a service that is a. affordable (Steam Sales and $8/month for movies or music are excellent models here, content folks) b. convenient (click button, enjoy content), and c. reliable (no explanation necessary) and I won't have any incentive to pirate content.
I'm convinced that the people who can afford stuff but pirate it anyway do so because of distribution problems in getting that content legally. The people who pirate stuff who can't afford it, or wouldn't buy it if they can are arguably even a net benefit - they aren't lost sales, but they increase the reach and visibility of the product. In either case, it's not really worth worrying about them (though the studios sure do love to gripe about them as if they're all lost sales), which leaves us with one very easy solution - have the best distribution channel available, and people will pay for it. At that point, piracy is about as solved as it'll get from an economic standpoint.
Vegan products are mass market commodity goods like any grocery. Just because vegan goods consist of a smaller slice of all grocery and food sales doesn't mean you'd be a fool to make a business out of it.
There's also underage sexting, media piracy, cryptocurrencies, and marijuana. Some things aren't globally agreed upon as ethical or unethical, but the law still attempts to address them.
Identifying the overlap is difficult.
They could decide that they on want to steam on another platform if that is a better deal for them.
I didn't intend to offend the users of streaming services. I subscribed to rdio myself, only as a tastemaker though - I still buy a lot of lossless music.
Artists make the vast majority of their money on tour, which is more or less unrelated to the choice of distribution channel, except that a more prolific channel results in more people attending a show.
Again, I don't intend to offend the users of those services - just saying that Spotify, rdio and co. alone won't work for many artists.
It will be stupidly easy to execute; if the malware shuts down computer when it detects illegal download, the only thing an attacker needs to do is to trick the computer/user into downloading illegal content. And that's it. Though this simple trick doesn't let them steal data or take control of the computer, there are many uses an attacker can find for just killing the machine. Blackmailing, social engineering, or just disturbing some crucial business operations. I can even imagine 4chan folks trolling people like this for fun.
Moreover, if computer-locking DRM malware becomes commonplace, a market for cheaper-than-police unlocking will emerge, with incentives favouring hacking the DRM to then earn money on fixing it.
Wouldn't it be the opposite? Like a free pentest? Malware they come up with would be widely available (included in the price of any movie) for dissection.
BTW Next release of Qubes[1] will need an "entertainment" AppVM.
1. The content they want.
2. Quality (i.e. resolution, bitrate, etc.)
3. Reliability (it actually plays)
4. Low annoyance (no ads, warnings, etc.)
5. Safety (guaranteed freedom from malware, etc.)
The movie and music industries haven't done a perfect job of delivering #1-4. Region coding means the content users want is frequently only available through pirate channels. Lower quality releases (DVD vs Bluray) are also often all that is available in some regions. Bluray is not reliable if users don't keep their hardware/software up to date. Nearly all DVD's and bluray discs on the market are utterly infested with annoying advertisements and warning screens.
#5 was the one thing that legally purchased media had an undeniable edge in over pirated media. If users lose trust in the safety of legally purchased media they will be driven to piracy in unprecedented numbers.
It is tempting to give RIAA and MPAA the rope to hang themselves with, sit back, and laugh. However, let's not forget that every piece of code they write and every root-kit they successfully deploy will soon be taken advantage of by black-hats, quite probably in ways that will cause damage to systems completely unrelated to media playback of any sort. The only way I can see to let the MPAA/RIAA proceed is to require them to post a significant bond (in the billions) to pay for damages their rootkits will cause. Managing how damages are going to be awarded is going to be a legal nightmare though, since this will not affect only U.S. systems and citizens. If the U.S. permits this, I sincerely hope other nations hold the U.S. government responsible for damages, so the U.S. had better make sure Hollywood is ready to foot the bill.