> When you buy a book you also own the book, and not the intellectual property it contains.
But a book is not a movie. You can't take your physical book and let 500 people read it simultaneously. So there's no need for even considering restrictions on what you can do with your physical book. The closest thing that comes to mind is scanning and re-printing the book 500 times and distributing that. And you can't do that. That's illegal.
> I don't see how it correlates with any necessity for DRM.
Because of the extreme ease of reproduction + distribution, coupled with the near zero chance of being caught, is a strong incentive to violate IP law.
> Limited time of rental is justified for physical goods. For digital it's not (I explained above why).
No you didn't. What you said has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the validity of limited-time licensing of the right to view content.
> I don't see any sense in limiting access. Netflix can charge the same thing for unlimited access, plus allowing making backups and still make the profit
Hah, in your dreams. Netflix's ability to negotiate (with the content providers) for the legal right to stream content to you is predicated on there being limitations. The more unrestricted the access, the more they have to pay.
Not only that, but if you did remove all limitations (and restricting access to the duration of your membership is, of course, a limitation), then there would be no reason for people to stay Netflix members for longer than it takes to download and save all the movies they want to watch for the next few months. Subscribe for one month, download 6 months worth of movies, unsubscribe. Doesn't sound like a great business model, does it? But of course they couldn't do this even if they wanted to, because no content provider is going to give Netflix a license to re-license the content to Netflix subscribers in perpetuity.
> No, DRM can't enforce it (since this stuff is pirated practically instantaneously). So why is it used?
Because it's better than nothing. New content is pirated pretty fast, sure, but stuff doesn't stay easily available forever. Netflix doesn't deal in new content anyway (barring their recent ventures into producing their own content, which is a different discussion).
Without DRM, if I have a friend with a Netflix subscription, I can just ask him to grab a few movies and send them to me. Not only does this work even if the movies aren't easily available on BitTorrent, but it's also a lot safer because nobody can track this (whereas BitTorrent does have a non-zero risk of being tracked, or of quality problems, or fakes, etc). At this point it's about convenience. Make it hard enough or risky enough to acquire the content for free, and people will decide it's easier to just pay for it. And that's what DRM does.
Granted, DRM solutions do not work particularly well. But in the eyes of the rights-holders, it works better than nothing.
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To clarify, I'm not an advocate of DRM. I would much rather get content without it. DRM-free content is more convenient to work with than DRM'd content. But there is a vast gulf between saying "I'd rather have DRM-free content" and saying "All content must be DRM-free". The former is something I can ask for. The latter is just wishful thinking.
> But a book is not a movie. You can't take your physical book and let 500 people read it simultaneously.
So what? Because you can make 500 copies doesn't justify using an unethical police state approach which DRM implies (i.e. treating all users as criminals by default). DRM is unethical by definition, because it's an overreaching preemptive policing. One would reject all DRM on the same ethical grounds one would reject police state approach to society.
That's besides the fact that DRM doesn't prevent any piracy, since it's broken practically right away and subsequent pirates never deal with it. Therefore this argument of copies is completely irrelevant to justify it.
> Because of the extreme ease of reproduction + distribution, coupled with the near zero chance of being caught, is a strong incentive to violate IP law.
Again, DRM has no effect on easiness of illegal reproduction (see above). It has nothing to do with incentives or fear of being caught. It's the same with or without DRM.
> What you said has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the validity of limited-time licensing of the right to view content.
I disagree. If you have some point to present for the benefit of the discussion, address what I expressed above, otherwise we just affirm our disagreement.
> Not only that, but if you did remove all limitations (and restricting access to the duration of your membership is, of course, a limitation), then there would be no reason for people to stay Netflix members for longer than it takes to download and save all the movies they want to watch for the next few months.
Even that out with a fee per file. That would prevent downloading the whole catalog at once.
> Because it's better than nothing.
No, it's worse than nothing, because it cripples usability for legitimate users while having no effect on pirates.
> New content is pirated pretty fast, sure, but stuff doesn't stay easily available forever
On the contrary. Once it's pirated by the first pirates which scrape DRM, it becomes easily available practically forever for the rest of the pirates.
> Without DRM, if I have a friend with a Netflix subscription, I can just ask him to grab a few movies and send them to me.
Too much hassle for potential pirates when they can access the same with just a few clicks through P2P networks. The scale of such copying can't compare. Pirating through P2P is waay more massive than any potential copying from friends. DRM doesn't make piracy neither more risky nor more scary. According to some, DRM actually only increases piracy (see an interview with CD Projekt Red).
> Granted, DRM solutions do not work particularly well.
They work - to cripple the product for users who pay for it. Plus they work for whatever shady reasons those who push for those solutions came up with. They surely don't work for stopping any piracy.
You've drifted from your original claim that rentals don't make sense for digital goods, into railing against the effectiveness of DRM, while presenting your argument as railing against the idea of DRM itself. DRM is ineffective, yes, but that doesn't mean the concept is inherently bad. It just means the implementation is bad. It's certainly quite plausible that there is no way to produce good DRM, but that would be a different argument.
I'm not interested in debating the merits of implementations of DRM, nor of its morality (as it is quiet unlikely that an argument about the morality of DRM will ever sway any participant, as this is not a topic where logic and reason tends to apply).
If you want to try and argue again as to why you think the concept of renting digital goods doesn't make sense, feel free. But you'll have to go back and address my original reply again.
Two arguments combine and reinforce the conclusion that DRM is never needed. To clarify:
1. Rental of digital goods doesn't make sense for me (explained above).
2. Even if you can come up with sensible reason for rentals of digital goods, DRM is still ineffective so there is no point of using it anyway, which makes rental unenforceable which kind of makes it pointless even more and brings the argument back to #1.
> I'm not interested in debating the merits of implementations of DRM, nor of its morality
That doesn't fit with your statement that "that doesn't mean the concept [of DRM] is inherently bad". Unethical nature of it makes it inherently bad. Ineffectiveness of it in combination with always crippling the usability makes it inherently bad. Security and privacy threats it represents makes it inherently bad. Implementation is always bad because it's always aimed at crippling usability and treating all users as potential criminals by default. It's the definition of DRM. So there can't be a good implementation, otherwise it wouldn't be DRM anymore.
> as it is quiet unlikely that an argument about the morality of DRM will ever sway any participant, as this is not a topic where logic and reason tends to apply
Why not? Ethics has its logic. I explained in this thread why DRM is unethical. The logic is pretty straightforward and similar to how it's explained that police state is unethical.
So far I never saw proponents of DRM coming with any convincing arguments against either of those objections. They either claim that since many users are ready to accept DRM's overreaching policing it's not unethical, or they claim that DRM is actually doing something useful. Neither of that is convincing, because many users have no clue or don't understand the nature of DRM, so their acceptance doesn't mean much. And DRM is proved to be ineffective on the constant basis. I'm yet to hear any other argument which actually makes sense.
> Rental of digital goods doesn't make sense for me (explained above).
You mean "stated above". You never adequately responded to my comment, instead drifting off into the weeds of railing against DRM.
> Unethical nature of it makes it inherently bad.
You're taking it as a given that it's unethical. You haven't proved that yet, you merely made an analogy to a police state.
> treating all users as potential criminals by default
The perfect DRM would enforce the IP rights without interfering with legitimate use. Such a perfect DRM would not, in fact, treat users as potential criminals. Certainly not any more than, say, merchandise tags in retail stores. I doubt you rail against those.
What does treat all users as potential criminals is those unskippable FBI warnings at the start of movies. But that's not DRM.
Granted, DRM implementations in general are flawed, and those flaws do impact legitimate users. But that's not always true. For example, I wouldn't say that the DRM iTunes uses for movies/TV is crippling otherwise-legitimate uses. Which is to say, it's never stopped me from enjoying my movies or TV shows the way I wanted to. Granted, I've never wanted to watch my TV shows on, say, an Android device, but the ability to view iTunes content on an Android device is not something I purchased the rights to in the first place.
> Why not? Ethics has its logic.
And yet you haven't even attempted to use logic to defend your claim that it's unethical. You've just made sweeping generalizations and analogies, with the expectation that I would agree with you.
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In any case, I did say I'm not interested in debating DRM, and I'll say that again. If you want to try to make an argument for why rentals don't make sense, using some justification other than "because rentals require DRM and I believe that DRM is unethical", go ahead (but you should go back and reply to my original comment, not this thread). But you don't really seem interested in defending that statement, instead you just want to talk about DRM. And I would rather not.
Which one? About no bearing (I didn't see what to respond there), or about risk of users downloading the whole catalog at once? I responded to that (the service can charge some fee per file to prevent such thing). Or you mean about that Netflix has to negotiate something? The discussion wasn't about what is handed to Netflix by the publishers, it was about the concept of renting of digital goods which I find to be illogical. So please point me to the comment you want me to answer to, because I'm not sure which one that is.
> You're taking it as a given that it's unethical.
For me it is. I can expect that some people have different view and find it normal. After all some people find extreme Orwellian policing of society acceptable. It's not normal for me and never would be.
> The perfect DRM would enforce the IP rights without interfering with legitimate use.
Perfect policing system would prevent all crime without interfering with legitimate activity and without suspecting innocent people. I doubt such thing can exist. Increasing policing to extreme levels of total surveillance is not perfect policing because it equals to suspicion by default and it clearly interferes with legitimate activity. That's what DRM is. Overreaching preemptive policing.
I.e. the logic of DRM goes like this:
1. All users are potential thieves.
2. We need to prevent all of them from doing anything that is not authorized.
3. Let's build some technical measures and deploy them on users' systems and devices (since there is on other way to achieve the goals of #2).
4. Let's enjoy piracy free world.
They eagerly do #3, while #4 obviously utterly fails (it doesn't stop them from doing #3 for some reason as we discussed above). Now, I see huge problems with 1-3. Firstly, all users are assumed criminals. It's insulting and disgusting and it's not comparable to a lock on a store or tags like you said. Because of #3 - i.e. users' private digital space is invaded for the sake of deploying the enforcement of all these policies.
Imagine some police claiming, that all people in the country are potential criminals, so they need to invade all people's houses with police cameras to prevent any potential crime. That's what DRM does in essence. House is one's private area. One's computer / system / program one uses is one's digital private area. Invading it with preemptive policing measures is unethical and overreaching and prone to all kind of abuse.
> And yet you haven't even attempted to use logic to defend your claim that it's unethical.
See above, I expanded on my previous brief explanations which I assumed were sufficient.
But a book is not a movie. You can't take your physical book and let 500 people read it simultaneously. So there's no need for even considering restrictions on what you can do with your physical book. The closest thing that comes to mind is scanning and re-printing the book 500 times and distributing that. And you can't do that. That's illegal.
> I don't see how it correlates with any necessity for DRM.
Because of the extreme ease of reproduction + distribution, coupled with the near zero chance of being caught, is a strong incentive to violate IP law.
> Limited time of rental is justified for physical goods. For digital it's not (I explained above why).
No you didn't. What you said has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the validity of limited-time licensing of the right to view content.
> I don't see any sense in limiting access. Netflix can charge the same thing for unlimited access, plus allowing making backups and still make the profit
Hah, in your dreams. Netflix's ability to negotiate (with the content providers) for the legal right to stream content to you is predicated on there being limitations. The more unrestricted the access, the more they have to pay.
Not only that, but if you did remove all limitations (and restricting access to the duration of your membership is, of course, a limitation), then there would be no reason for people to stay Netflix members for longer than it takes to download and save all the movies they want to watch for the next few months. Subscribe for one month, download 6 months worth of movies, unsubscribe. Doesn't sound like a great business model, does it? But of course they couldn't do this even if they wanted to, because no content provider is going to give Netflix a license to re-license the content to Netflix subscribers in perpetuity.
> No, DRM can't enforce it (since this stuff is pirated practically instantaneously). So why is it used?
Because it's better than nothing. New content is pirated pretty fast, sure, but stuff doesn't stay easily available forever. Netflix doesn't deal in new content anyway (barring their recent ventures into producing their own content, which is a different discussion).
Without DRM, if I have a friend with a Netflix subscription, I can just ask him to grab a few movies and send them to me. Not only does this work even if the movies aren't easily available on BitTorrent, but it's also a lot safer because nobody can track this (whereas BitTorrent does have a non-zero risk of being tracked, or of quality problems, or fakes, etc). At this point it's about convenience. Make it hard enough or risky enough to acquire the content for free, and people will decide it's easier to just pay for it. And that's what DRM does.
Granted, DRM solutions do not work particularly well. But in the eyes of the rights-holders, it works better than nothing.
---
To clarify, I'm not an advocate of DRM. I would much rather get content without it. DRM-free content is more convenient to work with than DRM'd content. But there is a vast gulf between saying "I'd rather have DRM-free content" and saying "All content must be DRM-free". The former is something I can ask for. The latter is just wishful thinking.