I think you might be onto something there, Jorpho. I remain unconvinced that very many people apart from massive cinema geeks care enough about defeating DRM or region-encoding on their DVDs to bother with it. I worked tech support for Best Buy’s store brand TV and DVD players for a couple of years, and an amazing number of people couldn’t figure out how to operate their perfectly normal everyday players. I’m dubious that there would be all that many eager to dive down the rabbit hole of fiddling with a region/DRM-free one.
4 Likes
Has Mr. Doctorow ever posted a discussion of how movie producers make money in a post-DRM world?
I understand how he can make money writing text – I have purchased his books in print, mostly because the reading experience is better than on screens. I understand how DRM-free music works – songs have high replay value and it’s worth $1 a track to me to own a perfect recording with correct metadata, album art, etc. In both industries artists and publishers make enough money for the industry to function.
Feature-length films seem different to me. Films are weird because they are extraordinarily expensive to produce, but have limited replay value. Does he think the market for DRM-free digital video will work (or should work) the same way?
This is VERY FLAWED METHODOLOGY, and i’d be very very hesitant to draw any conclusions from it about the DVD player market, let alone try and abstract that into some metric about the market’s demand for DRM free media.
Wanting a region free player isn’t an indication of playing DRM free media, if the media was pirated or DRM free it would most likely also be region free already and have the DRM removed so it wouldn’t need a special player. It is to be able to play legitimate DRMed media from regions other then your own.
my parents who have never pirated anything own a region free dvd player they paid extra for because they live in europe and wanted to play their US dvds they bought legally when they lived in the USA, and to have the ability to handle PAL and NTSC differences and power differences.
One cannot simply jump from premium feature dvd players cost more, to assuming some sort of demand for the DRM free market, that isn’t even correlation, and is a HUGE LEAP even when based off of some GROSSLY INCORRECT ASSUMPTIONS.
7 Likes
I’ve come to the conclusion, that yes, he does, because part of his income depends on it.
1 Like
That’s exactly the point. If it wasn’t for DVD region DRM they wouldn’t have needed that (every TV in Europe I have seen in the last 20 years could handle US TV signals too)
1 Like
Most were. But not all, especially not cathode TV sets. Which are still being phased out, especially by people who do not need to have a new TV every few years.
1 Like
no, the original point was a flawed conclusion about DVD player features equating to an inferred market for DRM free media.
my point was my parents are the classic market for these players, and they don’t care about DRM or seek out DRM free versions of anything, they could care less. they just wanted to watch their DRMed movies on a player that could output to European tvs, as well as play the new European DRMed discs they buy locally to the same tv. before that they needed 2 tvs and 2 players and a hefty power transformer for the north american ones. to them this was the equivalent of getting a universal remote, they were simply reducing the hardware they needed to simplify their setup. to be honest, they mostly use netflix these days anyway, and that is drmed.
they will never pirate anything. they will never care about drm. the original conclusions are tragically flawed.
(i personally prefer DRM free media whenever possible, but i haven’t owned a dvd player in almost 10 years)
You misunderstand his point. The problems your parents solve are partly caused by DRM. Unlike the PAL/NTSC schism, region locks region locks were introduced deliberately to prevent your parents from taking their discs and using them in another part of the world.
It looks time as if you fell into the trap that not wanting to have DRM on ones stuff can only mean that you want to illegally distribute it. Precisely the story the movie industry spins.
3 Likes
Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter for most of us. We watch the movie for the plot, characters, etc., not to count how many pixels there are between those two facial hairs or to try to make an amateur diagnosis of the actor’s mole or to carefully examine their pores. And a lot of us would rather see it the way it was originally seen, and get that same experience (or as close as possible) rather than some retouched, remastered, retconned version photoshopped into a completely different experience.
2 Likes
Even were this true (which - as others have pointed out - isn’t necessarily so) I’m not sure the ‘rights owners’ actually care all that much.
Maybe they have limited replay value because most of 'em are rather disappointing crap and might just as well have not been made in the first place?
2 Likes
Why not find out?
Most of his writing on these issues is pretty freely available - that’s kinda the idea.
1 Like
i’ve been very familiar with dvd encryption since DeCSS was first released.
I know why region locking was introduced and how to circumvent it.
No, i not only get his point, i countered by pointing out that wasn’t my point and that he missed my point. This seems a bit circular but for the sake of clarity:
My point is that no matter their needs, and they are typical purchasers of these devices, they’d never seek out a drm free market, nor are they interested in drm or likely even know what it is. one does not equate the other, it is a false extrapolation that the entire conclusion is drawn upon. they primary purchase drm’ed material. they didn’t seek out this player to circumvent drm knowingly, nor would they purchase this player in order to buy discs from outside their region. they simply wanted to play everything from a single player to a single tv, instead of having two sets. thinking that they are in the market for drm free material is a mistaken conclusion, and one this entire piece is based upon. my supposition is that it is a mistake to draw any such correlation. i think people buy these devices for a myriad of reasons, and one cannot extrapolate the size for a drm free market from such data, especially nowdays when dvd players are on the way out and not being purchased by technically savvy people. is that more clear?
disclaimer: i personally i like drm free material because i can format shift it, back it up, and do whatever i want with it. i haven’t owned a dvd player in forever.
1 Like
Perhaps I’m standing on the hose, as we Germans say, but isn’t that what your parents did by looking for a region free player unencumbered by DRM?
2 Likes
No, none of this led them to buy anything DRM free.
If you mean the player? The player is not DRMed, it decodes DRM, same as any DVD player.
If you are going to split hairs about region free and multi-region players then technically they don’t circumvent DRM or they would be illegal, but you can get them at Best Buy, Walmart, anywhere. Why?
The player decodes the DRMed media same as any other player, through the legitimate decoding method, it can just change the hardware region more then the authorized 3 times. It changes it every time it is necessary automatically instead of being locked to one region. This is done on the hardware and is just a region value that affects the licensed DRM decoding chip, but very few manufactures use illegal code to actually crack the DRM directly. Region free and multi-region players aren’t technically circumventing the DRM, or again they would be illegal, they are technically playing loose with the licensing agreement for the authorized decoding chip/code which is supposed to be limited to 3 changes before locking and they just allow unlimited automatically detected changes.
Regardless of this distinction, either way, the original conclusion that a purchase of such a device indicates a market for DRM free media is deeply flawed.
2 Likes
It doesn’t honor the DRM. It probably doesn’t event enforce the carefully crafted product information at the beginning of the movie.
Again, region lock was added contractually with the manufacturers, and is not covered under DRM law. Changing the region code does not circumvent the DRM and is legal. Contractually the player manufactures are supposed to limit you to changing the region of a player to 3 times before it locks the region. Region setting and changing are a part of the legitimate DRM decoding process, it is just supposed to be locked to 3 changes by the manufacture, and some manufacturers have chosen to set it automatically an unlimited number of times for maximum compatibility. Yes this technically breaks their contract, which affects their sales in some countries, but owning them is legal most everywhere because again they do not circumvent DRM.
2 Likes
If I can be so arrogant as to try and speak for @Peter_Brulls, I think his point is that manufacturers of DVDs wanted/want a system which prevents people from buying a DVD (or whatever other medium) in one area and then watch it in another.
Your replies indicate that you agree with that (as in you agree that this is the case, not necessarily that it is right or fair, just - this is a thing which happens).
You also say that your parents don’t agree with that. They want to be able to watch the media they bought in one region wherever they happen to be.
In order to do this they bought a device which lets them do it.
Peter’s point (assuming I’ve understood it correctly) is that by doing that they provide support for the argument that if manufacturers put a restriction in place, there will be a market of people who will buy things to circumvent that restriction.
Whether your parents are interested in watching ripped films from the dark reaches of the internet or flogged out of the back of a van at a carboot sale is not the issue.
They have however demonstrated one clear way in which manufacturers’ restrictions (whether this is done via your definition of DRM or by some other means is not material to the general point) did not fit what your parents wanted and when given a way to get what they did want, they used it.
Manufacturers’ restriction, your parents buy a device to circumvent, ergo your parents chose to circumvent the manufacturers’ restrictions. Therefore, your parents are in fact evidence in favour of the proposition that people are prepared to pay money to get rid of obstructions that they find inconvenient.
5 Likes
I get his point, but it wasn’t a counter to my point, we are as they say, speaking/talking past each other.
The point of the article and the paper conclude people buying such devices as an indicator for a market for DRM free media, my point is that you can’t draw such a conclusion. That point is the one i contend. Whether or not my parents would or would not or have or have not circumvented DRM is a side topic that we are currently splitting hairs on. It does not in any way affect my point that sales of these devices do not indicate a size of DRM free media market. people buy them accidentally, for other features like upscaling, mp3 playback, PAL/NTSC conversion, dual voltage, etc. Many people don’t even know if they have a region free or multi region or region locked player. There is no clear correlation from these purchases to a market demand for drm free media.
Actually region coding was introduced as an enforcement on pre-existing distribution and sales rights agreements.
To oversimplify: Company A in Country 1 produces the movie and has the rights to resell DVD versions in Country 1. Back in the past, they made a deal with Company B in County 2 and Company C in Country 3-6 and Company D to cover Countries 7-12. These agreements are still in place and region coding was agreed upon as a technical enforcement. The idea is to prevent gray market imports.
Here in Japan back in the day, that was the big thing for every expat here in Japan as well, to be able to watch movies & TV shows from their homeland which usually never got released here or sometimes were released a year or more later.
Even considering the actual reality regarding distribution agreements, expats are always a tiny segment of any market.
2 Likes
