This Sort of Stuff Makes Me Very Agitated

[Aea]

I rented a series from 1976 called I, Claudius from Netflix. The disks arrived today and none of them worked in either of my Macs. I thought that was weird, tried it in my DVD player and it works. So then I tried it again in my machine, nothing. Then I launched XP in a Virtual Machine and lo and behold the disk works perfectly.

Some genius thought it was a commercial risk to allow a classic series that's over thirty years old to be viewed on a mac, lest somebody steal it. Which is exactly what I'm doing now, decrypting it in XP and then going to play it normally (the machine running the decryption has no speakers connected).

This sort of DRM is exactly the reason that people steal software and movies. A casual renter or purchaser who tries to run this disk in a non-windowed environment is completely screwed. Interestingly enough there's an aggregate of one hundred people sharing multiple versions of this according to a torrent search engine, I'm sure if it worked as intended there would be less "piracy" going on.

This is a bit of a rant, but who is with me in thinking such DRM is simply encouraging more piracy then it prevents? I truly don't mind it when it's seamless and just works, but when it refuses to play where all other disks play normally, . And why this of all DVDs?

 

[Blue Velvet]

This sort of DRM is exactly the reason that people steal software and movies.

No, it isn't. Napster was off and running long before any DRM. People pirate because they can get stuff for free with very little risk of getting caught. Don't try and justify pirating because it's all the fault of those nasty copyright holders.

 

[Aea]

No, it isn't. Napster was off and running long before any DRM. People pirate because they can get stuff for free with very little risk of getting caught. Don't try and justify pirating because it's all the fault of those nasty copyright holders.

I'm in complete agreement with all your points but not the entire sentiment. Perhaps I picked a poor choice of words to explain my sentiments, it definitely isn't the main reason, but it's definitely a motivator.

I'm all for no piracy, but DRM to me seems to be more problematic for the legitimate users then it is to pirates.

 

[Blue Velvet]

'm all for no piracy, but DRM to me seems to be more problematic for the legitimate users then it is to pirates.

That's the entire point, to discourage people who would be casual copiers. Adobe, for instance, brought in product activation on their software, not to stop determined people because they knew they couldn't, but to stop what they called 'casual' copiers; the users who would copy a disk for their friends etc.

More organised and determined hackers and industrial pirates in other parts of the world are tackled in different ways with varying amounts of success.

Perhaps your I, Claudius disks wouldn't play for another reason...

 

[Abstract]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.4; U; Series60/5.0 Nokia5800d-1/10.0.010; Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 ) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413)

If it works on XP but not on the Mac, then it's not really typical drm that's the problem, is it. Sounds like a Mac thing, and if it is Mac specific, then it's not the fault of DRM.

 

[iBlue]

I understand that sentiment. I find it odd and somewhat annoying that when I purchase something legally it is more trouble than it would have been if I'd pirated it. I also find it extremely annoying to have obtrusive anti-piracy ads on my bought DVDs. Sort of advertising to the wrong audience, dumbasses.

That is not the reason I pirate, by any means, I offer no justification for my doing so, but it always strikes me as stupid and strange that doing things the right way is often so much more bother.

 

[0098386]

I don't really watch stuff on my Mac but to apply this to games - I've got a bunch of friends from uni who never pirated games before, but did so to 'protest' against DRM in games.

In quite a few big title games exists a DRM thingy called Securom. In some games they limit the number of times you can install a game, which means you then have to ring up EA (in the case of its most noteworthy title Spore) and request more installs. Total BS. If the call was free and wasn't a call but an email, then maybe. But no. And more and more games are using this now.

The funny thing is it doesn't even stop piracy. It just stops people (like the OP) who wants to watch or play something legitimately.

If I bought an album or DVD that didn't play on my mac I'd take it back to the store, kick up a fuss and pirate it when I got home.