How Digital Rights Management Works

not copy protected, right. Yeah, you can transfer this as many times as you like, and we encourage you to share this with everyone. Go ahead and have everyone hand delivered copy of our podcast freely distributed. Absolutely, But that's not the case for all audio files or video files

that you'll find in digital format. That's true. Um, actually yeah, many different kinds of files, video games, software, all of these, uh can come with a certain restriction which uh and the BIZ is the is known as digital Rights management or d r M. That's good. I actually thought that was DERM. Yeah, yeah, I think some of the opponents to DERM would agree, and there are a lot There are a lot. DRM is one of those hot button issues on the Internet where people get really really fired

up about it. That's true. And that's true well uh speaking as a uh you know, as a musician myself, Uh, I see, I see positives and negatives to it. You know, I wouldn't want necessarily somebody to buy a copy of a CD that my band is put out, rip it and distributed freely for everybody to have. And then suddenly, you know, uh, there are no copies of the CD

being sold because it's freely available online. Right, I see a value to dr M, but there are some particularly restrictive uh drms out there, and that those especially are the ones that raise the ire of the general public, I think. Right, So let's let's kind of lay the groundwork here and kind of explain what what all of

this is. Um. So on the side of the people producing the content that has the DRM in it, um, what their point of view is is that they've got this product they're offering for sale, and they don't want it pirate ID and then distributed throughout the Internet to just about anyone who has a connection, UM because you know, obviously it hurts their bottom line, it hurts their profits. They don't make any money off of that. And so that's where you hear about companies saying that piracy is

this huge problem on the Internet. Now that that's debatable. Um, people argue, Uh, if the argument is that we lose this amount of money because of piracy, the counter argument is the people who pirated that stuff, were they really going to buy it? And if they weren't going to buy it, did you really lose money? Because if no one was going to buy that product in the first place, then you're right back where you started from before the

piracy happened. Now that doesn't excuse private piracy by any means I mean, but it is one of those counter arguments. So DRM is one of the approaches to try and head off piracy. Um. It's this, Uh, it's it's usually within a digital file. It's usually some code that requires a key that exists on a server somewhere for you to be able to transfer that file from one location to another, like to your from your computer to your iPod for example, or other m P three player, or

even a computer to another computer. Or if you have to upgrade your computer, let's say that you go from XP to Vista for some reason, you might need to be able to activate that key again. Um, Otherwise your we won't be able to access that file. Yeah. For example, UM, chances are you're probably listening to this podcast through uh

the iTunes store and Apple. Apple has what it calls fairplay, which, uh if you buy a CD or I guess if you buy an album from iTunes and you want to play it on your computer, you know that computer is authorized to do that. You can authorize up to five computers to to play that file and you can you know, any iPod that is registered at that computer can can do that, and you can burn it to a CD.

And as long as you're listening to it through iTunes, uh, through a registered computer, you can listen to it as much as you want to. Um. Now, if you're like me and you have five computers registered, if I wanted to, uh, you know, pop in a backup CD of iTunes files that I had on my work computer, I would be stuck because I've already got five computers registered. Actually one of them is an old hard drive that is now out of my computer, So I really should de authorize

all of those again. But UM, you know, essentially they say, yeah, you can make make copies, you can make backups to this file because we know that you can only uh play this on a on a computer that has been authorized by us to do that, and that actually can present some problems if the service goes belly up. Yes, and that's happened several times in this year, as being two thousand eight, just in case people from the far off distant future are listening to our podcast. But yes,

several times this year we've had services halt uh. Services that offer dr M to music they've stopped. Um. And these aren't necessarily small services. These are usually big names um MSN, ber Soft Networks, that's a pretty big name, Yahoo Music, Walmart. Now we should say that all of these services offer DRM free music now, but that's that's where the problem is. They used to offer dr d r M to music. But that gets so much bad

press in the blogosphere. Um, it gets so much resistance and there are so many potential problems that a lot of these companies said, you know what, we're going to move to a DRM free business model, which sounds great except that that now you have a problem. What do you do with all the DRM music that's already out there that people have purchased before the switch. And the one solution is that you just run the servers that have the key the the the key that needs to

be activated. If you want to move port your music from one machine to another, you could just run those forever. Um. It's not really economically feasible to do that, though, I mean, you could use those machines for something else if you if you stop doing that. But if you stop doing that, that means that you have locked down those files on the computers of the people who purchased that music. And

they purchased purchased it legally. You know, they didn't pirate this, didn't steal it, So you're kind of punishing your customers in a way. Yeah, yeah, another alternative to that. And and but all these services gave their their users some notice that they were going to shut it down. Sometimes another too, Yeah, Walmart, I think was like two weeks something like that. UM and Yahoo was a little tighter.

MSN was a little uh more out in front. And they actually pushed back their their date on switching off the servers because they got such a response from people who had purchased files. I said, you know what, you're right, We're gonna hold off a little bit longer than we had planned to give you more time. Yeah, But basically the solution that I had read about most frequently was suggesting that people make an audio CD of these tracks and then re ribbed them back to MP three files,

UM or whatever format you happen to use. Problem with that is it degrades the audio quality, so you know, it's it's passing passing it through a couple of filters. Essentially, it basically removes compression information and more than that information. Let's let's let's think of it this way. More than that. What's one of the big big things about digital files. They're so attractive. There's no physical format that you have to deal with. You don't have to store something, you

don't have to be this is it. It kind of defeats the purpose for the digital file in the first place. If you just wanted a physical format that you could have and then you could, you know, rip music off of it whenever you wanted, you'd go out and buy the c D. You wouldn't go buy the digital files.

So now what they're saying is that you have to go out by blank c D s, put a CD in there, burn your files your music to that CD, and then put in another computer waiting, which does strip it of the d r M and also some of the quality of the files. As Chris mentioned, UM, but it also means that you've got another c D thing around, not if you're using a rewritable one, you can use the same CD over and over rickon. But other other than that, it's really, you know, it's not a very

green method to deal with this problem at all. You're generating more waste. It's the the you can Chris is laught because you can see them about to explode. This is one of those things that get no. This is this is one of those issues that does get me

riled up. I agree with with people like Veronica Belmont who she's a podcaster as well and a host of several different tech related shows UM who Her argument was that why shouldn't why doesn't Why why don't they offer a certificate so that you could purchase the new DRM free version of whatever files you bought UM using that certificate and then you you don't have to worry about you can just delete the old one if you want to, and you would have a DRM free version. I think

that's a great gesture. Now, granted it does create a headache for the providers, because you have to figure out, how do you say, all right, well, they can only get the files that they previously purchased because they you know what if you use that certificate to buy all new files and so essentially they just gave away a whole bunch of product for free. And you know, in business,

that's usually considered a bad move giving anything away for free. So, uh yeah, there's some issues there, but I think it's I think it shows a much better approach to customer service than just saying, hey, go out and buy some blank CDs and you know, you're on your own and

after October nine, that's it. I mean, well, speaking of customer service, that that actually takes me in in a different direction because one of the other things that Jonathan and I talked about for this podcast was the long anticipated and um hotly hyped Well that's an interesting way to put game from Electronic Arts Old Spore. Yes, everybody, everybody, you know, everyone was talking about it, and uh I was one of these people that's that's very excited to

see this game. Well, when it came out, it turned out that they that Electronic Cars had put in an DRM system very similar to Apple's fair play in which you could install the game on three computers, but only three computers, and if you wanted to install it on another computer, you had to call the company to have

them give you an additional code. Uh. This uh made a lot of people unhappy, right extremely unhappy, vocally unhappy, to the point where they actually started going on too Wears sites and downloading broken copies of the game, cracked copies of the game so that they could play it without this digital rights management embedded in the game. Not only that, but they would go on to Amazon and then negatively review the game, not on the merits of the game itself, which many people say, is is a

fun game and it's enjoyable and play reviews. It's gotten good play reviews, but a lot of the if you went on to Amazon, I think I think they've managed to purge most of these by now. But the average vote was coming out to being like one and a half stars. And you're thinking, well, this game was getting

such great reviews elsewhere, why is Amazon? Why is it tanking on Amazon's Because Amazon allows average people who just register on the site to come in and and rank anything, rate any product, and um, there was a concentrate effort by people who opposed this d r M to come in and and just completely squish the score down to nothing based on the d r M, not on the game. Um so you had all these different reviews that just kind of slamm d A for the whole DRM strategy.

Uh and, uh so it made some news just based on that as well. Sure, I mean and and to e A's credit, they did go and bump it up to five computers that you could install it on. Um you know, speaking from my personal viewpoint on this, I see where people are coming from that. It's the it's the principle behind it that you know, Hey, I bought this game, I should be you know, if I forgot ten computers in my basement and I want to have people come over and place four, you know, I I

want to be able to do that. I want to be able to put it on these computers or you know what happens if my computer dies and I put it on another computer ten years from now. I want to still be able to play this game, but I'm definitely gonna have a new computer by then, and so many different iterations of the operating system that I'll run out of the d R M R UM. I just think that, uh, you know, people are being a little

hard on the a Uh. It just seems it just seems to me that, you know, if they're willing to give you another code, if you could say, well, you know, my my hard drive tanked, I need to get another code for this. You know, I do think they probably you know, three machines was probably too few. Um, you know, but by the time that a lot of people's computers die, Sport two is going to be out right well so yeah, but I mean to go on Amazon and rate the game poorly that that was, it just seems like it's

a little too far. Yeah, that was definitely a little childish. But but aren't there games that are there any old games that you still play occasionally or I mean, assuming that you can find an emulator or something that allows you to play them, right right, Well, a lot of those are on matt Classic for me since the Mac user, okay, so for the normal for the normal user who doesn't use a Mac, Yeah, yeah, I mean I've got a

Mac two. Don't get me wrong. I mean I'd like to joke an Apple hater, but yeah, I own a PC as well, And there are games from ten years ago that I play and if they had had these restrictions, I wouldn't be able to do that. And I think another issue here is not just that you know, e A stepped over the line necessarily, It's that it's one of those issues that that that gamers and music lovers have been dealing with for so long. It was kind like the straw that broke the camels back in a way.

Think about some of the other big DRM issues. Besides the fact, I mean we we had with Microsoft going down, in Yahoo going down, and UH and the and Walmart going down with their d r M servers, there was the syndication that, hey, if something happens, will I be able to move this game again? I mean what if, like what if the e A somehow has a collapse or they decided to turn off there there. If it's if it's web based, then that means my game is stuck on this computer and I will never be able

to get it off there. Um, that's a legitimate concern. And and think also we should also point out that while we're talking about digital files and digital distribution mainly in this podcast, that's not the only place you find DRM DRM is on physical products as well, like DVDs and CDs. Uh. Sony had a huge brew haha back in two thousand and five about this. Yes, yes, they

stalled UM on a music CD. You could put a music CD into your computer and it would immediately start to incorporate these files that Sony had put onto the c d UH that were meant to prevent people from copying music left and right. Willy nilly, but yes, but what they really were where it was really was a virus. It was. It was pretty much a computer virus. And it UM it would attach to not intentionally, but that's what it was. It would attach to your your computer's

root kit. And and theoretically that could have a nice little back door for trojan programs down the line. And it hung, it hung people's computers up to it wasn't you know no it And and there was some spywear type of functionality in it as well, where where the computer was literally monitoring your every move on that machine and sending reports back. I mean, it's it was. There have been enough really really bad DRM stories for people to really kind of get upset kind of the way

I do. Where we start to get riled up, so that when something like this happens, you just especially with Sport, I mean you gotta the combination of not just the d r M, which was a little probably over the top. I don't even think, yeah, maybe a little draconian. I wouldn't even go that far. I'm like you, you know, I understand their need to protect their investment, but you're talking about a game that had been hyped for so long, and people have been waiting for it for for two

years essentially, and it kept getting pushed back. Expectations were so high, emotions were already at the tipping point, right, and this drm thing where you're like, I've been waiting for this game for two years and now you're telling me that it has all these restrictions. People just blew their tops. I mean yeah, and then when you have these other stories about the servers going down, people are still upset. It's it's not hard to understand why people

get riled up a out this. Now. There's just gotta be a way for a company to say, you know, I made this, I want to make some money off of my hard work, and there has to be a middle ground in between that and the customers saying, look, you know, if you guys go out of business, I still want to be able to play this game, or listen to this music or watch this video. Uh. And and so there's gotta be some middle ground which both

sides can agree. I mean this, there are companies out there, just like the ones we had already mentioned to have dropped the DRM. There are companies out there that are are now offering these files without DRM. And I don't think they're suddenly seeing a huge drop in profits. I mean, Amazon was going DRM free pretty much for their music before anyone else was. In fact, that's that's why I

love Amazon Music. Um, not that I mean I have iTunes on my computer too, but I love Amazon Music because I know that I'm not going to get a DRM file when I when I buy that music file. And I mean, so the business model works, it's I think it's pretty much clear that they're gonna be pirates who are gonna go out there. They're gonna figure always around this d r M. I mean, that's the problem is that these these solutions are really punishing the the

legitimate customer more than the pirates. And and uh, I don't think the pirates are really causing that much economic stress for these companies, or at least not as much as as they would have you believe. Well, ultimately, I think it's gonna end up being a system in which the middleman just gets cut out. Um, you're gonna have your game studio, or your artists or your author uh.

You know, people like Neil Gaiman and Corey Doctro have been releasing uh some of their books in you know, PDF format so that freely, so that people read them. And they're finding that people are reading the PDF and then going out and buying copies of the book. And I think ultimately, when you get down to it, people

want to do the right thing. You know, there's always somebody, but uh, you know, I think people if if you could say, hey, what if you paid me five bucks for this CD and you just go ahead and enter your credit card number, you can have the MP three files, go ahead and tell your friends you know what you think of the record, I think people would rather pay the artist less money and get the thing without any drm for it, because I think that's going to breed

loyal team on customers and they're gonna keep coming back and going you know, hey, I like your book, Hey I like your game. You know, here's twenty dollars for it, and go right to the source and go ahead and pay them less money kind of approach. That's a bummer for the publishers. Yeah, well, but we see that. We're seeing that with like artists like Trent Resner has done that,

Radiohead did that. Jonathan Jonathan Colton built his career on offering his music for free and then saying if you like it, you know, you can buy the tunes here um or you can just download them, uh and freely distribute them and alter them as well. As you're not trying to make money off of it. I'm fine with it.

And he's doing then quite well, I think. So, yeah, there are ways around this without without relying on the dangers of d r M, and that I think that's the main thing is that if if it weren't for the fact that it impacts your ability to use this product that you have purchased, people wouldn't be so up in arms about it. But because it actually can affect your your experience while you're using what you have paid good money to use, I mean that's where that's where

tempers are gonna splare up like mine. Yeah. I guess that was a good conversation slash rant. Yeah. Alright, well, I guess we'll wrap that up about d r M and we will talk to you against soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's Eddy. Are you