The Problem With DRM Is The Name?

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An HBO executive says that the real problem with DRM is the name. Quit laughing…it gets better, he wants to call it “Digital Consumer Enablement” instead. After that, everything will be okay and people will love it.

Digital Consumer Enablement, would more accurately describe technology that allows consumers "to use content in ways they haven't before," such as enjoying TV shows and movies on portable video players like iPods. "I don't want to use the term DRM any longer."
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Sorry, I know you told us to quit laughing, but that's not a likely occurance. The laughter stopping that is ;)
 
I wonder if this is the same HBO exec that recently was fired for sexual harassment I believe. I heard this on my local radio station coming to work today lol.... ((FM97 WLAN))
 
Saw this comment on Slashdot... Consumer Choice Enablement, has a nice ring to it.

I'm not going to call it piracy anymore. I prefer Consumer Choice Enablement. CCE allows consumers (not customers, since you won't be paying for the service) to enjoy content not only in ways they haven't before, such as on portable video players like the iAudio A2, but at a more reasonable price than they have been offered in the past. This is also a win-win situation for the content creators as it alleviates all packaging and most distribution costs, as well as providing excellent word-of-mouth advertising for FREE!
(http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=234265&cid=19072543)
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He has a point. They promote it enough it won't be long before some soccer mom walks in to a Best Buy and asks, "I need a new computer, and make sure it has that Digital Consumer Enablement stuff... so I can watch things on my ipod."
 
Said executive went on to also say, "If the RIAA and the MPAA changed their names, I bet everyone would love them too!" :p
 
Calling the banhammer "Kyle's fairy wand" won't make anybody want it any more than they do now. :eek:
 
Maybe people won't mind AIDs if we rename it and put pretty stickers next to the name. Its the next new cool thing.:p
 
I'm sorry, I must be confused, all I read was something like this:

"People don't like RAPE, perhaps that's just because it's such a smelly word. HBO's chief technology officer Bob Zitter thinks so, he wants to ditch the term RAPE in favor of “US,” or “Unwanted Sex.” Speaking at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association show in Las Vegas, HBO's top techie said the new term would better describe all the peachy ways that victims could dictate how predators access content:

Unwanted Sex, would more accurately describe technology that allows consumers "to use content in ways they haven't before," ....
"
 
This reminds me of the old adage about painting or polishing a turd...
 
Cummon guys…

You all have to remember that he is a highly paid executive. Companies shell out millions to these kind of people because they are smartr (LOL) then us! He earns his salary by thinking up stuff that doesn’t make sense to us.. not because it is wrong, but because we aren’t smart enough to realize just how great DRM really is.

Maybe if I get an MBA (Masters in Bullshitting administrators) I will understand!!

;)
 
well, I'd say he is half right.

I see WAY too many people having hissy fits because some software has the DECODING of DRM media, where I'm sure they would be even more pissed off if they couldn't play their new dvd's or whatnot because their player is "DRM FREE!" (No CSS/macrovision) and won't play SH*T (i.e. they just payed for nothing).

The problem is the ENCODING of media with some form of DRM. People with a complete lack of understanding get the too goofed up and it just pisses me off. OH DRM! MUST BE BAD! :rolleyes:
 
clement said:
well, I'd say he is half right.

I see WAY too many people having hissy fits because some software has the DECODING of DRM media, where I'm sure they would be even more pissed off if they couldn't play their new dvd's or whatnot because their player is "DRM FREE!" (No CSS/macrovision) and won't play SH*T (i.e. they just payed for nothing).

The problem is the ENCODING of media with some form of DRM. People with a complete lack of understanding get the too goofed up and it just pisses me off. OH DRM! MUST BE BAD! :rolleyes:
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wow, please excuse my grammer etc. the sabres game is about to start...........:D
 
That's the funniest thing I've heard all day. Lets change some other terms in everyday use so that our lives seem more pleasant. Here are some recommendations:

Robbery: Dynamic Income Redistribution
Ignorance: Intellectual Resource Conservation
Greed: Automatic Self-Realization Process
Executive: Parasitic Human Simulacrum
HBO: Crap
 
They just don't get it. I wish government wasn't in their back pocket so fair use could be legal again. :rolleyes:
 
As if this world isn't politically correct enough already.....
 
clement said:
well, I'd say he is half right.

I see WAY too many people having hissy fits because some software has the DECODING of DRM media, where I'm sure they would be even more pissed off if they couldn't play their new dvd's or whatnot because their player is "DRM FREE!" (No CSS/macrovision) and won't play SH*T (i.e. they just payed for nothing).

The problem is the ENCODING of media with some form of DRM. People with a complete lack of understanding get the too goofed up and it just pisses me off. OH DRM! MUST BE BAD! :rolleyes:
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Have to agree with that. A lot of people, it seems, fail to make the distinction between the enabling aspect of the technology and the 'rights intrusion' aspect of it.

But changing terminology wouldn't serve as anything other than an exercise in political correctness, as mentioned. The real problem most of us are confronted with is the abundance of clowns who, because they have personal issue with the 'rights intrusion' aspect of the technology, seems to assume that everybody else should have issue with that as well. Those people see cause and justification for embarking on a political campaign to spread their agenda wherever and whenever they see mention of the technology, and changing the terminology used to refer to it isn't going to change that.

We'd still cop a barrage of bullshit from anti-DRM activists whatever words we used. There is, unfortunately, far too many of them who have no sense of appropriateness in regard to time and place.
 
This really is screwed up..
Locked down, proprietary, play it our way or get sued, buy the same crap multiple times so you can play it on the device of your choice = Enablement???????? wtf??

This is a marketing thing.. DRM has a bad rap, so they are going to change the name and hope the masses don't catch on.. Would not be surprised if we start seeing commercials to that effect soon on HBO
Sadly, the majority will not catch on at all..
 
GORANKAR said:
...= Enablement???????? wtf??
...

Sadly, the majority will not catch on at all..
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Ever considered that the "masses" understand it perfectly well and just don't give a shit? I'd suggest you don't be so elitist and dismissive.

Plenty of people like me out there. Do I like DRM technologies? No, not at all, really. Do I see them as having any appreciable impact on me? No, not at all really.

It's no big deal at all to me that I need a CSS decoder to play DVDs. The CSS encoding caused me a weensy, mild hiccup for all of about 5 seconds when it comes to making backup copies of my stuff, but you get that.

It's no biggie to me that iTunes, Zune or whatever else cruddy proprietary crap adds its own protections to stuff. They're not the only way to get hold of the content, and if a distribution system adds its own proprietary protections I simply don't use it. Nobody's compelled to have an iPod, for goodness sake. If I want portable music I rip my own CDs to whatever I'm using.

Are people worrying that one morning we'll wake up and find that all the CDs and whatever else have somehow disappeared, and that the only way we'll be able to obtain music is via some proprietary, protected download service which restricts us to only ever being able to play a song twice? Forget that. It ain't ever gonna happen.

The majority "catch on" all right. It doesn't really take long for people to find ways of getting around copy protection when copy protection is getting in the way of their perfectly above-board usage. Most of them simply accept the copy-protection as an inevitability in a commercial world, is all. They don't go jumping up and down about it all day, and getting themselves all flushed about it!
 
Catweazle said:
We'd still cop a barrage of bullshit from anti-DRM activists whatever words we used. There is, unfortunately, far too many of them who have no sense of appropriateness in regard to time and place.
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I think you're on a forum with the ineternets largest group of anti-drm activists. There is nothing enabling about the technology, its not technology. Its a fucking rootkit you paid for on a cd.
 
LOL

Nah, I've seen worse elsewhere. There are places where there's noboby at all with any common sense amongst the 'rebels without a clue'.


(Before any of you zealots go having a coronary about that comment, all I've said there is that embedded into media or media ddistribution mechanisms it's a disabling technology, embedded into playback devices it's an enabling technology, and that most people couldn't care less anyway. I wasn't arguing that you're wrong. Simply pointing out a definitional reality that's inescapable, basically.)
 
Catweazle said:
Ever considered that the "masses" understand it perfectly well and just don't give a shit? I'd suggest you don't be so elitist and dismissive.

Plenty of people like me out there. Do I like DRM technologies? No, not at all, really. Do I see them as having any appreciable impact on me? No, not at all really.

It's no big deal at all to me that I need a CSS decoder to play DVDs. The CSS encoding caused me a weensy, mild hiccup for all of about 5 seconds when it comes to making backup copies of my stuff, but you get that.

It's no biggie to me that iTunes, Zune or whatever else cruddy proprietary crap adds its own protections to stuff. They're not the only way to get hold of the content, and if a distribution system adds its own proprietary protections I simply don't use it. Nobody's compelled to have an iPod, for goodness sake. If I want portable music I rip my own CDs to whatever I'm using.

Are people worrying that one morning we'll wake up and find that all the CDs and whatever else have somehow disappeared, and that the only way we'll be able to obtain music is via some proprietary, protected download service which restricts us to only ever being able to play a song twice? Forget that. It ain't ever gonna happen.

The majority "catch on" all right. It doesn't really take long for people to find ways of getting around copy protection when copy protection is getting in the way of their perfectly above-board usage. Most of them simply accept the copy-protection as an inevitability in a commercial world, is all. They don't go jumping up and down about it all day, and getting themselves all flushed about it!
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I don't quite understand your point, you are saying DRM is good and yet you site many instances where you simply break the law and circumvent DRM all together. It seems to me that you and all the "anti-DRM activists" you talk about want the same thing, the only difference is you dont give a shit if you break the law, where the "anti-DRM activists" want the law or the technology changed so that it isn't illegal.

Now more to the point, change the name of a bad concept and it will still be a bad concept.
 
I don't quite understand your point..
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I was merely commenting on the dismissive assumption that people holding different views must "not understand". I could've simply typed out:

"No need to be an arrogant bastard!"

But I had time to kill, so I didn't. :)
 
the guy must be smoking crack... or he has done absolutely no research on why content is pirated.

My proposed solution is:
1- make content available without restrictions
2- make it affordable

If a movie was 5 bucks from you, or I had to take my chances getting caught pirating... I'd spend 5 bucks... especially if your delivery method is faster and better than the P2P networks, which frankly are a pain in the butt. Hell, partner with cable companies + allow 2 downloadable movies per month for a few bucks extra.

Since your content is expensive + I can't do anything with it except for play it in a super expensive device, I don't buy from you + have taken my chances on P2P.

The days of creating Disks to sell at retailers is coming to an end... get over it... modify your business model so you don't end up belly up.
 
If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's probably a goose. Noooooo. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's probably a duck! Naming it something else does not negate the fact on what it is.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I will not stand idly by and let others be fooled by you.
 
Catweazle said:
They're not the only way to get hold of the content, and if a distribution system adds its own proprietary protections I simply don't use it.
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You are not looking ahead. Not long from now, all good content will be released exclusively with DRM attached. When that happens, the warez movement will quickly die because no one will have access to a clean file. Personally, I don't think this is a bad thing. But make no mistake: DRM may seem like an "option" now, but it won't be for long. And when all media will only run on a DRM compliant player, DRM compliant players take on the aspect of "consumer enablement". This is the exec's point. Of course, it sounds ironic to us because we understand that, on a larger level, the system constitutes a deliberate disablement. I personally hate the name and hope it doesn't stick. (Even though I support DRM).

Nobody's compelled to have an iPod, for goodness sake. If I want portable music I rip my own CDs to whatever I'm using.
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Once again, that will last until all CDs ship with DRM, and you need a DRM compliant ripper to rip them, burner to burn them, and player to play them.

Are people worrying that one morning we'll wake up and find that all the CDs and whatever else have somehow disappeared, and that the only way we'll be able to obtain music is via some proprietary, protected download service which restricts us to only ever being able to play a song twice? Forget that. It ain't ever gonna happen.
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;)

The majority "catch on" all right. It doesn't really take long for people to find ways of getting around copy protection when copy protection is getting in the way of their perfectly above-board usage. Most of them simply accept the copy-protection as an inevitability in a commercial world, is all. They don't go jumping up and down about it all day, and getting themselves all flushed about it!
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Right now, DRM is gotten around because companies always release their content in some channel that isn't managed. For instance, DVDs and CDs in stores. Thus pirates have access to clean files. But if there are no clean files, you can't get around it. The HD encryption key crack was a fluke, not the norm. I don't know much about it, but it most likely happened because a company insider got the key and released it (or a second party publisher failed to keep the key secure). Plenty of other DRM systems have gone years without being cracked. For instance, video game consoles use a form of DRM to prevent unauthorized discs from being run. If that DRM was cracked, we wouldn't need to mod our Xboxs to run unsigned code. But no one has been able to crack it. It's very easy to use a key which is too big to realistically brute force. Shit, normal xbox uses as 128-bit key and no one has brute forced in five years, even though there's an online distributed computing effort to do it. But newer schemes use 512 bit encryption. Working together, it would take all of the super-computers in the world centuries to brute force these new keys. It's effectively unbreakable.

Theoretically, if the entertainment industry was able to pull together an adopt a universal DRM standard which allowed for interoperability between devices, and it worked really well, and all the hardware manufacturers got on board and started producing compliant parts, would you have a problem with it?
 
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