On DRM
Peter Zion, 20 November 2008I am an owner of one of the new Apple “Unibody” MacBooks, and up until two days ago I was happy with everything about it, save for the glossy display which I knew was a compromise I would be forced to accept if I wanted the superior technology and design of the new laptop. But two days ago I learned from AppleInsider that the new “Mini DisplayPort” which replaces the mini-DVI jack of the previous generation, used to connect to external displays, will not play back DRM-protected content on “unauthorized” displays.
My immediate reaction was a sense of betrayal: had I been informed by Apple in the technical specifications of the laptop that they had incorporated this technology, called “HDCP,” then I would have made an informed consumer choice when I decided to purchase it, just as I had done with the glossy display. Instead, Apple said nothing about HDCP when announcing the changes this laptop introduced relative to the previous generation. The reason for this omission is obvious: this technology does not actually improve consumer experience in any way, and if anything has the potential to reduce the value of the laptop for a consumer.
After my initial anger (“I should return my broken laptop and ask for a replacement that works”, “class action lawsuit”, etc.) subsided, I began to think more about what Apple and other content providers are trying to accomplish with HDCP, why it will necessarily fail, and what a better solution might be.
When a movie studio releases a movie to the public they are taking a risk: that the income from the movie through ticket sales, rentals, and sales of associated merchandise will offset the total production and marketing costs of the movie. Part of the risk is that the players involved might not play by the rules: a movie theatre owner might allow his or her friends to see the movie for free, someone might sell merchandise piggybacking on the success of a movie without paying royalties, and someone might make an unauthorized copy of the movie and then allow people who would otherwise pay to see it to see it for free. This risk has always existed, but the “digital age” has greatly increase the last risk for movie studios.
What HDCP and other DRM technology does is that it attempts to transfer part of this risk from the movie studios to consumers themselves. When a consumer purchases the right to play DRM-protected content, they take both the risk that the technology underlying the DRM mechanism may fail to work correctly, thus prohibiting the consumer from watching content for which they had legally obtained a right to play, as well as the risk that the movie studio will continue to honour the authorization they provided the consumer in the first place. As with any investment, the movie studio’s ability to decrease its risk directly increases the value of its investment in the movie.
The problem with transferring this risk from the studios to consumers is that consumers are invested neither in the success of DRM technology nor the movie studios themselves. Someone who rents a movie is not doing so because they want the movie studio to make money; they just want to watch the movie. Burdening the consumer of the movie then with a risk which does directly increase their enjoyment of the movie does not make sense.
Now, one could argue that by using DRM the movie studios are able to reduce the cost to the consumer; this may be true, but I would argue that the price of watching a movie is already so low that decreasing it provides negligible marginal gain for the consumer. One could also argue that by artificially restricting the ability to view high-definition content to devices which support DRM such as HDCP the consumer does stand to gain by taking this risk; I would argue there that the marginal gain that high-definition provides to the experience of watching a movie is also negligible. However, I realise that this is primarily because I value the content of a movie much more than the technical specifications of how it’s viewed, and I recognize that others are not like me.
Is there a better solution? I believe that the real problem that movie studios face is not that consumers may view content without authorization but rather that they may do so without even knowing that it’s unauthorized and, in a strong sense, not right. Most people enjoy movies and there are many, many people in the world — not just the executives running movie sudios — whose livelihoods depend on people paying to view the content they create. I applaud the campaign the movie studios have created to help educate consumers that watching pirated copies of movies is much like theft and does hurt real people. And I think that herein lies the solution.
If we take for granted that transferring the aforementioned risk to consumers doesn’t make sense and that, at the same time, people should be aware of when they are watching unauthorized content, one possible solution is a simple compromise: keep DRM and use it to inform consumers when they aren’t authorized to view content but never actually stop consumers from viewing the content. This would solve many problems:
- It would tremendously help the education campaign by directly making consumers aware of when they are potentially hurting the content creators.
- It would greatly reduce the risk with which consumers are burdened when purchasing DRM-laden content. At worst, consumers who had legally obtained content would receive a incorrect message that they are not authorized to view the content. People are well aware that software can be buggy, and a consumer is certainly not going to feel bad about watching a movie that they’ve paid to watch because of a buggy message.
- There would be almost no reason to produce DRM-free versions of content to be (illegally) distributed. The “torrent tracker” problem would disappear overnight.
- People would be able to easily make legal backup copies of content they had purchased, which would make them more comfortable with their investment in the content.
- It would still be possible, and perhaps even easier, for movie studios to pursue legal action against major violators of copyright law.
- Most importantly, consumers would one again feel trusted by the movie studios.
Apple is already steps away from having this technology in place with their ‘iTunes Plus’ service: iTunes Plus tracks purchased from the iTunes store are not DRM-encrypted but rather DRM-signed, meaning they can be identified as having been purchased by a specific individual but can be played back by anyone. The only thing that is missing is notification that you are playing unauthorized content.