alt Hacker NewsDrm is not targeted at the hardcore pirate, it's targeted at a potentially larger percentage of people who would be tempted to get the thing for free if it was easy. Drm may be circumventable, but any complex set of steps for doing so is enough to deter that target audience.
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DRM also intensively targets the new-release window during which much of the returns on any piece of IP are made; the latency with which high-quality copies hit mainstream sites has monetary value as well.
I think that's also wrong. I think that the primary reason media publishers use DRM is not to prevent copyright infringement. It's really to exert power over the entire ecosystem and use that power to implement rules around content distribution and use that are much more restrictive than the actual copyright law itself.
> Drm is not targeted at the hardcore pirate, it's targeted at a potentially larger percentage of people who would be tempted to get the thing for free if it was easy
spotify and netflix are both prime examples of making it easier for a larger population to access drm enabled content compared to pirated content (at the time they started getting popular anyway).
with the advent of streaming services you no longer needed to download potentially dodgy files to your computer (viruses/malware), wait for the download to finish, realise they’re a dodgy video cam recording of the cinema screening, download another one etc.
napster/limewire et. al were originally examples for the opposite case. pirating via those was super popular. there were fewer steps to access the media compared to going to a physical shop to buy a CD/DVD. (*)
(*) i can’t remember when the itunes store came along. might have been after these services? or around the same-ish time?
“Locks only keep an honest man honest.”
-Most people’s grandfather
(I’m not saying these things are equal — just that this concept and the old saying share a perspective on securing things.)
But why would this larger percentage of people rip it themselves when the hardcore pirate already did it and made it accessible[1]?
The point is: DRM is circumvented once, by some grizzled pirate captain. Everyone else just gets to plunder their downloads DRM free, nice and easy.
DRM is ineffective because the pirate uploaders are competent enough to break it, and an average end user only downloads - rank and file pirates wouldn't make their own releases even if DRM never existed and making them was easy.
But it is easy to get the thing for free, because the free one doesn't have DRM.
Piracy is a service problem. Copyright monopolists always defeat themselves with their obnoxious greed.
Things were easy enough when Netflix had a complete catalog, now every studio wants to roll their own shitty streaming services in order to cut Netflix out. Result is a fragmented mess where you want to watch a great film but you have no idea where the hell it even is, and even if you find it you discover it doesn't work because your computer isn't locked down to their tastes, and even if you buy a TV appliance they stream you some shitty horribly compressied "high definition" video with artifacts in pure black frames, all on their homegrown laggy borderline unusable video players with zero features.
Meanwhile the pirates offer Blu-Ray remuxes with commentary tracks, subtitles for every language, DRM free files that just work on your video player of choice. It's the sort of thing that makes me feel like a total moron for giving money to these corporations.