Intellectual Property is a thorny subject around here. I have trouble discussing it from an abstract philosophical standpoint because I have a financial stake in the matter. Being a content creator, I like knowing there is legal recourse if someone began reselling my work or passing it off as their own. How likely this is to ever happen is unknown, and it is far more likely there will be pirated copies running around instead. It is the issue of content piracy that is central to my complaints today. Early copyright law was essentially an avenue of redress for content piracy, though when the concept was introduced, making additional copies required more of an investment of resources than it does now. As such, purveyors of pirated works would have to sell them to recoup their investment.
With the insignificant marginal cost of digital copies, the financial element has largely receded into an equally insignificant fraction of the market in pirated content. However, the perception of lost revenue remains. Since the people who are doing the copying are difficult to track down and often have little in the way of money to extract, large content distributors have to look elsewhere to assuage their fears. Thus they invest ludicrous sums in Digital Rights Management technologies. DRM to anyone who doesn’t want to write out the whole darn thing every time. The premise behind DRM is that it will increase the opportunity cost to the pirates with regards to the additional effort required to make a usable or viewable copy.
There is just one not so tiny problem with this theory. With no financial gain from a successful crack, the motive for pirating has to be something else. Opportunity cost does not exist when the pirates tackle the task of cracking DRM for the challenge of breaking it. As a result, DRM technologies have ended up being measured in time to crack, with the presumption that they will be cracked and that this delay is the window of exclusive profits for the distributor. However, this does not hold true when the content market is examined. The content most commonly associated with DRM is video games. A number of publishers have re-examined the premise upon which the use of DRM has been predicated. They have distributed some of their top titles without DRM ‘protection’ and found no loss in sales. Surprisingly, the user base is still more than willing to pay for quality content from their favorite development houses. Most of the people who pirated these games were either never going to buy them in the first place or could not afford to. And the dubious protection of DRM was worth less than the cost to implement or license it.
This piece was not inspired by video game DRM, however; it was Amazon’s streaming video DRM requirement. As a paying customer (both a Prime member and someone who’s bought digital video content through that marketplace), I have a contractual right to view the content I’ve paid for. The problem is, I am morally opposed to DRM. I do not like the idea of someone with a (metaphorical) boot on my back telling me what I can and cannot do with the copy I have purchased just because someone, somewhere, might try to distribute it for free. The irony is, after my spat with the computer screen, I ended up going to the pirates to get a copy of the content I already paid for because it was easier. What is the point when the people you are trying to shut out not only get the content on the day of release but provide a better customer experience?
On a personal note, for as long as I have the option, none of the digital versions of my books will have DRM. If I could, I would also disable it on the audio versions, but Amazon does not give me that option. I’m not terribly worried about pirated versions wandering about. In fact, if someone asks nicely, I’ll usually give them a copy with the only caveat being ‘let me know what you think’. How does this mesh with the statement at the beginning? Well, as I said, digital pirates don’t typically sell it and don’t tend to change the credits.
