Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you so? Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: I did an episode titled the DRM Episode, and it
Speaker 1: was fittingly enough about the history and evolution of DRM
Speaker 1: that published back in January. D r M is digital
Speaker 1: rights management, and simply but digital rights management is all
Speaker 1: about finding ways to restrict access to digital material to
Speaker 1: only those who have permission to access it. Now, we
Speaker 1: mostly think about it as a way of preventing theft
Speaker 1: and piracy, though it does not do those things very
Speaker 1: well at all. DRM has also introduced a legal puzz
Speaker 1: old here in the United States. See it has long
Speaker 1: been held that it is totally legal for someone to
Speaker 1: make a copy of media they have purchased for the
Speaker 1: purposes of having a backup. So, while it would be
Speaker 1: copyright infringement, if I were to go out and say,
Speaker 1: buy a compact disc, and then come back home and
Speaker 1: use my computer to copy that compact disc onto blank
Speaker 1: compact discs, and then I go out on the street
Speaker 1: and start selling those to passers by for a huge
Speaker 1: markdown that would be illegal. It is, however, totally legal
Speaker 1: if I were to go out and buy that same CD,
Speaker 1: come home, copy it with my computer, put it on
Speaker 1: a second CD, and use that as a backup for
Speaker 1: my own personal use. That's Toad's fine, completely acceptable. Well,
Speaker 1: then we come to copy protection, and there are lots
Speaker 1: of different kinds of copy protection, and it is against
Speaker 1: the law to circumvent or to make or even own
Speaker 1: tools intended to circumvent copy protection. So it would be
Speaker 1: legal for me to produce a copy for my own use,
Speaker 1: but it's illegal to get around the copy protection. Though
Speaker 1: I should add there's some disagreement on that point. Some
Speaker 1: say technically it is legal to bypass DRM in order
Speaker 1: to make a copy of something if it's just for
Speaker 1: your own personal use. However, it's still illegal to own
Speaker 1: the software that makes it possible to bypass dr M
Speaker 1: in the first place. So again you still run into
Speaker 1: this circular argument. Yes, you can make a copy, but
Speaker 1: it's illegal for you to get around the thing that
Speaker 1: prevents you from making a copy. And if you can't
Speaker 1: get around copy protection, then there's no way for you
Speaker 1: to make a copy. So it might be legal for
Speaker 1: you to create a copy. It's just illegal to get
Speaker 1: around the thing that prevents you from doing that. Because
Speaker 1: laws are fun, right, and there are a ton of consequences.
Speaker 1: Uh in how DRM was defined in the Digital Millennium
Speaker 1: Copyright Act and section twelve oh one in particular, which
Speaker 1: is the bit that says it's illegal to try and
Speaker 1: get around copy protection or DRM. So companies have used
Speaker 1: that passage for the justification of all sorts of shenanigans,
Speaker 1: including denying the right to repair or to restrict who
Speaker 1: can actually make software for their products. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of anticompetitive behavior that has been fueled by this frankly
Speaker 1: poorly worded piece of legislation. So there are a lot
Speaker 1: of ways where the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or d
Speaker 1: m c A has really hurt consumers and companies. So
Speaker 1: today I wanted to talk about a different, unintended consequence,
Speaker 1: one that is particularly infuriating. So the whole point of
Speaker 1: the d m c A was to create rules that
Speaker 1: would stop people from stealing dit dull stuff right to
Speaker 1: stop piracy. However, people are still doing that. There are
Speaker 1: still plenty of people stealing digital content. In fact, the
Speaker 1: folks who are doing the stealing are the ones who
Speaker 1: are breaking dr M and they're getting unfettered access to
Speaker 1: the stuff they stole. So in the process of stealing
Speaker 1: whatever it is they're going after, they're stripping the d
Speaker 1: r M from that thing. That means they get to
Speaker 1: experience that thing without any DRM. Meanwhile, law abiding folk
Speaker 1: like you and me, I assume we are stuck with
Speaker 1: the busted products that have dr M all up on them.
Speaker 1: So in other words, the people what are doing the
Speaker 1: stealing have a superior product as the scarlet which once said,
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem fair. So in today's episode, we're going
Speaker 1: to look at some examples of how dr M had
Speaker 1: a negative impact on legitimate customers. And I was really
Speaker 1: inspired to do this because of something going on at
Speaker 1: Microsoft and its Xbox Online service. So, as the name suggests,
Speaker 1: Xbox Online is an online component for the Xbox line
Speaker 1: of consoles. Microsoft has servers running and Xbox consoles will
Speaker 1: check in with those servers. Now, it was almost a
Speaker 1: decade ago when Microsoft announced how the Xbox One console
Speaker 1: was supposed to work, And when that announcement went out,
Speaker 1: it was that the Xbox one was going to be
Speaker 1: online all the time. It would have a persistent online connection.
Speaker 1: In fact, it would require a persistent online connection, and
Speaker 1: that this would end up having big benefits for players.
Speaker 1: There'll be a lot of features that would be enabled
Speaker 1: because of this connection. However, a lot of people got
Speaker 1: really concerned about some elements, like would that prevent you
Speaker 1: from being able to purchase used games, something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people really depend upon. They can't necessarily afford
Speaker 1: to buy a game at full price, so they wait,
Speaker 1: they go out, and they buy it used once the
Speaker 1: price comes down, and they play their games that way.
Speaker 1: But would this online component kind of act like a
Speaker 1: type of DRM. Would it check in with that copy
Speaker 1: of the game with the server look to see if
Speaker 1: that copy of the game had been registered with some
Speaker 1: other console, and would it then prevent you from playing
Speaker 1: the game. This was a real concern because it is
Speaker 1: a possibility. In fact, a lot of people are arguing
Speaker 1: that this could have just been a scheme to sell
Speaker 1: more copies of games, eliminate the secondary market entirely, and
Speaker 1: hurt the consumer. Ultimately, Microsoft would walk back the announcement
Speaker 1: and changed its plans and no longer required the Xbox
Speaker 1: One to have this persistent internet connection, which totally change
Speaker 1: things up. That was a weird E three, But there's
Speaker 1: still an online component it for Xbox, and there still
Speaker 1: is DRM sitting on top of that online component, and
Speaker 1: it's active for lots of games. And on Friday May six,
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty two, the servers running this DRM started
Speaker 1: to have some problems, which meant that Xbox owners found
Speaker 1: themselves unable to purchase new games, or to start online
Speaker 1: gaming sessions, or even launch some of their games that
Speaker 1: they already have purchased and downloaded to their machine because
Speaker 1: server side DRM runs a quick check to make sure
Speaker 1: that the copy of a game that is being initiated
Speaker 1: is a legitimate copy of the game, meaning that the
Speaker 1: person who's running it actually bought it. So this is
Speaker 1: kind of like a parent calling in to check on
Speaker 1: their kid a lot, and if the answers aren't satisfactory,
Speaker 1: that kid is grounded. So with these servers being down,
Speaker 1: it meant that this check in could not happen. The
Speaker 1: copy of the game not be able to get the
Speaker 1: go ahead from the server to allow the game to load,
Speaker 1: so without that verified check in, the games would not launch.
Speaker 1: It's now May nine, and some Xbox users report they
Speaker 1: are still experiencing this problem. So people who went through
Speaker 1: all the right steps, they bought their games legitimately, they
Speaker 1: have a connection to the internet, they are finding themselves
Speaker 1: unable to play certain titles. They are being punished for
Speaker 1: playing properly. Meanwhile, people who might have a pirated copy
Speaker 1: of the game with the DRM stripped from it where
Speaker 1: it's not doing this online check in, they could potentially
Speaker 1: still be playing those games. DRM critics have argued that
Speaker 1: Microsoft should really change it's DRM policy so that games
Speaker 1: that are meant to be played offline can be played
Speaker 1: offline even if the Microsoft servers are down. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, these are games that are not online dependent.
Speaker 1: There's no competitive or cooperative play. It's meant to be
Speaker 1: played on your native Xbox in your home and that's it.
Speaker 1: And you know, you have to also remember some folks
Speaker 1: live in places where they might not even have a
Speaker 1: good Internet connection. It seems reasonable to expect that you
Speaker 1: should be able to play an offline single player game
Speaker 1: because you know there's no online component. But here we are.
Speaker 1: There are people who are being affected by this, and
Speaker 1: in fact, we've had so many examples of games doing
Speaker 1: this specific thing. In particular I am reminded of the
Speaker 1: hit Man series because I've certainly encountered this. Anyone who
Speaker 1: has played hit Man three has likely run into the
Speaker 1: message that the hit Man servers are offline, or you
Speaker 1: might end up in the middle of a gaming session
Speaker 1: get a temporary disconnection and you can't play anymore, or
Speaker 1: it'll let you play, but it's like nothing's really counting anymore.
Speaker 1: In fact, some players would get into situations where server
Speaker 1: disconnects happened so frequently that the game would become unplayable.
Speaker 1: And you would think that shouldn't be an issue because
Speaker 1: hit Man is a game that runs natively on your computer.
Speaker 1: But there are just enough connected features in hit Man
Speaker 1: three that it's required to have these check ins. One
Speaker 1: to verify that the copy you're playing is legit, and
Speaker 1: too to keep track of things like how you're doing
Speaker 1: versus say, your friends who also play hit Man three.
Speaker 1: So there are some value added features in there. I
Speaker 1: don't know how many people really use those that much
Speaker 1: compared to just playing the game, but they do exist. Now.
Speaker 1: When hit Man three became available on Good Old Games
Speaker 1: or go o G, things got ugly because generally g
Speaker 1: o G has this policy of offering up DRM free games,
Speaker 1: specifically because DRM can hinder a legit players experiences. But
Speaker 1: hit Man three has this requirement of checking in with
Speaker 1: a server, and the inclusion of server based DRM prompted
Speaker 1: many g o G customers to review Bomb hit Man three,
Speaker 1: giving it very low ratings due to the server requirement.
Speaker 1: Go O G contacted hit Man three customers and gave
Speaker 1: them the option to refund their purchase. When we come back,
Speaker 1: i'll talk a little bit more about d r M
Speaker 1: and video games, and then we're gonna go beyond that
Speaker 1: to look at d r M in other areas of tech.
Speaker 1: But first let's listen to these messages, all right. One
Speaker 1: of the big companies that specializes in video game DRM
Speaker 1: and also anti cheat technology is called Deneuveau d E
Speaker 1: n U v O. Now, anti cheat is really understandable,
Speaker 1: right because, at least for competitive online games, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a necessity. It is incredibly frustrating to hop online
Speaker 1: to play a game only to get shut down immediately
Speaker 1: because someone else is using cheat software that gives them
Speaker 1: an unfair advantage. So a strong anti cheat strategy is
Speaker 1: really useful in those respects. And and I certainly like that.
Speaker 1: But the d r M side is another matter. So
Speaker 1: critics say that Deneuvos software over taxes your you know,
Speaker 1: the players computers and their CPUs, as well as rights
Speaker 1: to players storage a lot, which can decrease the lifespan
Speaker 1: of storage, like if it's a solid state drive, it
Speaker 1: can start to really affect the longevity of that drive.
Speaker 1: These are charges that the company has denied, but several
Speaker 1: journalists have performed tests of games both running with Deneuvo's
Speaker 1: software being active of and running with Deneuvo's software disabled,
Speaker 1: and the tests seem to support the accusation that the
Speaker 1: software has a measurable negative impact on computer performance. And
Speaker 1: that's assuming that the software is working. Like the Hitman
Speaker 1: three example, there have been cases in which games using
Speaker 1: Deneuvo solutions became unplayable because of server issues. But let's
Speaker 1: move away from video games. We could spend all day
Speaker 1: talking about how DRM has had a negative impact on
Speaker 1: video games. We could even talk about the earliest times
Speaker 1: where you had computer companies or game companies saying that
Speaker 1: there would be a requirement for an online persistent connection
Speaker 1: even for single player games, and how players reacted to that.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of other examples of DRM
Speaker 1: going wrong outside of the video game world, so we'll
Speaker 1: look at a few more. So, let's talk about printers
Speaker 1: and toner. Several printer manufacturers have implemented DRM in an
Speaker 1: effort to funnel customers into purchasing official toner cartridges from
Speaker 1: those companies. You know, it's a long standing joke that
Speaker 1: buying a new printer is super cheap. It's the toner
Speaker 1: that'll that will really set you back. That's thoroughly a joke.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's the idea of printer companies selling
Speaker 1: you a printer because it will lock you into their
Speaker 1: ecosystem where they can continuously sell you the toner for
Speaker 1: much more money, and they keep making cash off of
Speaker 1: a single customer. Right because you're going to run out
Speaker 1: of towner, you're gonna have to buy new ones. So
Speaker 1: obviously these companies are going to take steps to restrict
Speaker 1: what kind of toner you can use so that you
Speaker 1: have to buy it from them. That's how they're gonna
Speaker 1: make all their money. They can do all they could
Speaker 1: be a loss leader on printers and make it up
Speaker 1: with the toner they sell. HP for example, started doing
Speaker 1: this in the HP printer would scan the toner cartridges,
Speaker 1: and if the cartridge proved to not be an official
Speaker 1: HP cartridge, the printer would then give the user a
Speaker 1: message reading quote the following ink cartridges appeared to be
Speaker 1: undetected or damaged. Replaced the ink cartridges to continue printing
Speaker 1: end quote. The printer wouldn't let you print even if
Speaker 1: the third party cartridges were otherwise perfectly compatible, So even
Speaker 1: if for any other reason it should work, the printer
Speaker 1: would say, Nope, these are bad, these are defective, get
Speaker 1: rid of them. Cannon actually went a step further. The
Speaker 1: Pixma MG six three twenty model is like a lot
Speaker 1: of printers, and that it has a built in scanner
Speaker 1: so that you can scan documents and get a digital
Speaker 1: version of your document. But the Cannon, once it would
Speaker 1: run out of toner, would disable all functions, including the scanner. Now,
Speaker 1: scanners don't use any toner at all. They literally just
Speaker 1: scan a document and create a digital copy, so not
Speaker 1: one dot of toner has to be used to do that.
Speaker 1: So users complained that Cannon was purposefully deactivating its printers
Speaker 1: functions to force folks into buying more expensive Cannon toner
Speaker 1: then we got the chip shortage, which caused way more
Speaker 1: headaches for both Cannon and its customers. See, the way
Speaker 1: that Canon was implementing DRM in its toner cartridges was
Speaker 1: to include a very small microchip that identified the toner
Speaker 1: as being a Cannon branded cartridge. But then we get
Speaker 1: into the pandemic, and then not long after that, we
Speaker 1: started hitting that massive semiconductor shortage that we are still
Speaker 1: into this day. Among the many technologies affected by this
Speaker 1: shortage where Cannon toner cartridges. But this created an awkward problem.
Speaker 1: The new Cannon cartridges didn't have the DRM chips because
Speaker 1: of the semiconductor shortage. That meant that Cannon printers were
Speaker 1: looking for DRM confirmation and couldn't find it even with
Speaker 1: official Cannon cartridges. So even if you went through the
Speaker 1: trouble and expense of buying an actual Cannon toner cartridge,
Speaker 1: your Cannon printer wouldn't recognize them, and Cannon's own d
Speaker 1: r M would prevent you from using your printer. So
Speaker 1: Cannon had to send out information to customers on how
Speaker 1: to bypass the DRM, which means, of course, that you
Speaker 1: could have tried that same method without using Cannon cartridges
Speaker 1: at all, so Cannon actually had to tell its customers
Speaker 1: how to get around the gate keeping it had put
Speaker 1: into place in order to restrict what kind of ink
Speaker 1: you could use. Now, in some cases a company may
Speaker 1: have had no choice but to develop and deploy DRM.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Apple's fair Play DRMS solution, which
Speaker 1: hasn't been a thing for many years, so this is
Speaker 1: not a current issue. But back in the day, here's
Speaker 1: how you would listen to digital music on a personal
Speaker 1: device like an MP three players. Specifically, we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about iPods, So you would go and you would
Speaker 1: buy your brand new iPod. Uh, So you would get
Speaker 1: some sort of music management software. In this case, we
Speaker 1: have to talk about iTunes, the Apple version of that.
Speaker 1: So this is how you organize music, how you get music,
Speaker 1: and you would put music on that management software iTunes
Speaker 1: in a couple of different ways. So in the very
Speaker 1: earliest days, the only way was really to purchase a
Speaker 1: music c D, put it into your computer that has
Speaker 1: your music management software on it, your iTunes, and use
Speaker 1: iTunes to then rip the music off the CD. Not literally,
Speaker 1: the music would still be on the CD. You're just
Speaker 1: really copying the music files. Um and converting them into
Speaker 1: a format that is easier to store, and this would
Speaker 1: go into your iTunes software. It would be in a
Speaker 1: database and it would be something you could easily get to,
Speaker 1: and you would have a digital copy of those songs,
Speaker 1: and there'll be no DRM on that music. You would
Speaker 1: have ripped it from the c D and it would
Speaker 1: be DRM free music files. And in the very earliest
Speaker 1: days of iTunes, this was the only way you could
Speaker 1: get music the iTunes system, as in the management system
Speaker 1: for music that existed before the iTunes Music Store did,
Speaker 1: so you would use it to really just organize your
Speaker 1: music collection and then transfer that music collection to your iPod.
Speaker 1: But once the iTunes Music Store opened up, well, then
Speaker 1: you had another option. You could buy music, either entire
Speaker 1: albums or often individual tracks off the digital store. Now,
Speaker 1: in either case, if you wanted to put digital music
Speaker 1: onto your iPod, you had to connect your iPod to
Speaker 1: your computer using an actual physical cable and you would
Speaker 1: synchronize the iPods library to that of your computer's library.
Speaker 1: So with Apple is pretty easy assuming you were working
Speaker 1: with all Apple products. Uh, if you had a Mac
Speaker 1: and an iPod, it was pretty easy. If you had
Speaker 1: a PC and you were running iTunes on it, it
Speaker 1: was more of a headache. So you could rip music
Speaker 1: from your CD s where you could buy new music
Speaker 1: tracks which would get added into your iTunes management software,
Speaker 1: and then Apple would just automatically add those tunes to
Speaker 1: your iPod the next time you connected it to your
Speaker 1: computer to synchronize with your iTunes database. But the big
Speaker 1: music publishers were wary of digital music. They had already
Speaker 1: weathered the storm of recy in the napster days, and
Speaker 1: so the music labels, which pretty much had the leverage,
Speaker 1: demanded that Apple create and used DRM to protect music files.
Speaker 1: And so Apple did because if it didn't, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: have access to these massive companies music libraries, and the
Speaker 1: iTunes music store would have gone nowhere. You wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had anything to sell on it. So Apple thus created
Speaker 1: fair play. Now, one of the things Apple did was
Speaker 1: that it would not allow any other d r M
Speaker 1: music onto an iPod. It had to be fair play,
Speaker 1: DRM or nothing, which meant if you bought a track
Speaker 1: from a different digital store, you would be out of
Speaker 1: luck when it came to putting that track on your
Speaker 1: iPod because these other digital stores also had to comply
Speaker 1: with the music labels and include DRM on their tracks,
Speaker 1: and Apple would not allow any DRM other than fair
Speaker 1: Play in its ghos system, and Apple wouldn't license fair
Speaker 1: play to any other company. So it essentially was either
Speaker 1: you rip music from CDs or you have to go
Speaker 1: through the iTunes music store. Those are the only two
Speaker 1: options you have. You can't buy music from other digital stores,
Speaker 1: so companies like real Player or real Play began to
Speaker 1: reverse engineer Apple's fair play in order to develop similar
Speaker 1: DRM that would fool Apple's ecosystem into thinking it was
Speaker 1: fair play. That way, you could purchase music from these
Speaker 1: other stores and get that music on your iPod. That
Speaker 1: would give you operate options to buy music that's not
Speaker 1: on Apple's store, or you can buy it for less money.
Speaker 1: Like you know, real Plays tracks were sometimes half as
Speaker 1: much as what Apple was charging. So Apple then accused
Speaker 1: the real Player company of essentially acting like a hacker,
Speaker 1: and Apple updated its fair play systems, and subsequently, once
Speaker 1: the update went out, when you synchronized your iPod with
Speaker 1: your computer, you would find that any tracks you had
Speaker 1: bought from those other digital stores like the Harmony store
Speaker 1: would go bye bye. They'd get deleted. And there was
Speaker 1: a whole class action lawsuit brought against Apple for this
Speaker 1: because people wanted the freedom to buy music wherever they
Speaker 1: liked and then put it on their iPods. Apple actually
Speaker 1: ended up winning that lawsuit, however, and ultimately it all
Speaker 1: became a moot point because a few years later, Apple
Speaker 1: discontinued fair play entirely, and at that point it was
Speaker 1: Apple that had the leverage over the music companies. Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs himself actually argued that DRM really only hurt legitimate
Speaker 1: customers and so it was just a terrible business idea
Speaker 1: to use it. Okay, We've got a couple more examples
Speaker 1: I want to give before we end this episode, but
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break. Earlier in the episode,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that you could music on an iPod by
Speaker 1: ripping the music from a compact disc, and that is true,
Speaker 1: but compact discs could also have their own DRM copy
Speaker 1: of protection on them, and this brings us to one
Speaker 1: of the most famous DRM catastrophes, that of Sony b
Speaker 1: mg s copy protection strategy in two thousand five. So
Speaker 1: Sony b MG decides that it wants to really control
Speaker 1: how customers can listen or rip music from Sony b
Speaker 1: MG albums, and to do that they leaned on some
Speaker 1: software XCP, which was a copy protection software, and another
Speaker 1: best called Media Max c D three. Now, this pair
Speaker 1: of software programs were included on something like fifty different
Speaker 1: albums within Sony b mg s library, and there were
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of copies of these fifty albums. So
Speaker 1: if you were to purchase one of those c d s,
Speaker 1: and then you were to put that c D in
Speaker 1: or a computer, you would be presented with an end
Speaker 1: User License Agreement or you LA e u l A.
Speaker 1: Now we all know that hardly anyone reads those things. However,
Speaker 1: it turns out that even if you had read it,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have known about what would happen next because
Speaker 1: there was no mention of it within the u LA,
Speaker 1: And what would happen was ridiculous. Whether you clicked on
Speaker 1: accepting the ULA or not, the CD would surreptitiously install
Speaker 1: that DRM software on your computer. Those two programs. Now,
Speaker 1: if you had a Mac, there was some good news
Speaker 1: because the software would be secretly installed on your computer,
Speaker 1: but you would get a message from the Mac operating
Speaker 1: system once the software tried to change the operating system
Speaker 1: and it would ask are you cool with this, and
Speaker 1: you could say no, I'm totally not cool with that. However,
Speaker 1: for Windows machines, Windows of machine owners didn't get any
Speaker 1: warning at all. It just happened. So the software would
Speaker 1: alter the operating system, essentially behaving the same way a
Speaker 1: root kit would from malware. So a root kit is
Speaker 1: software that gives someone root access to your machine. Essentially,
Speaker 1: this is the worst case scenario where a hacker gets
Speaker 1: total control over your computer. They might lock you out,
Speaker 1: they might secretly use it without you knowing. They could
Speaker 1: do all sorts of things. While the software that Sony
Speaker 1: b MG but on its CDs didn't do this explicitly.
Speaker 1: It did not actually act like a root kit, it
Speaker 1: behaved in a way similar to it. Like from the outside,
Speaker 1: it would look like it was behaving like a root kit,
Speaker 1: which meant that anti virus software would likely identify it
Speaker 1: as a root kit installed on that computer. Plus, it
Speaker 1: actually did create security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers,
Speaker 1: and that did happen once hackers figured it out. So
Speaker 1: just by putting the CD into a Windows PC, you
Speaker 1: would make that PC more vulnerable to attack, and it
Speaker 1: gets worse, there was no way to uninstall the software,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile, the software was always running in the background,
Speaker 1: so it was also consuming processing power and impacting computer performance.
Speaker 1: So not only was there no way to get rid
Speaker 1: of it, not only did it make your computer more vulnerable,
Speaker 1: it also made everything run worse on your machine. And
Speaker 1: to say that Sony b MG faced a backlash would
Speaker 1: be putting it lightly. The company scrambled to address the problem,
Speaker 1: h its first solution actually ended up creating new security
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities while it was supposedly deactivating the initial software. Uh
Speaker 1: so that was not great, right when your solution is
Speaker 1: at least as bad as the original problem, and also
Speaker 1: a point of irony. Later on, researchers would accused Sony
Speaker 1: b m G S DRM of containing code from various
Speaker 1: open source programs in violation of those programs individual licensing agreements.
Speaker 1: So in other words, Sony b MG was making use
Speaker 1: of code without proper permission to use that code, which
Speaker 1: meant Sony b m G, S d r M was
Speaker 1: in itself a sort of copyright violation, which is kind
Speaker 1: of poetic. Sony would issue a recall of all unsold
Speaker 1: CDs that were harboring this DRM uh and a couple
Speaker 1: of class action lawsuits followed, and it ended up being
Speaker 1: a highly publicized and extremely expensive PR disaster for the company,
Speaker 1: and yet DRM persisted. Now, there are lots of other examples.
Speaker 1: We could talk about. Curig, for instance, instituted DRM with
Speaker 1: its Curig two point oh machine moving forward, and that
Speaker 1: would mean that these Curig machine, which are coffee machines.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar, you put a little pod of
Speaker 1: coffee into the machine and you push a button and
Speaker 1: it brews a cup of coffee for you. Well, the
Speaker 1: DRM meant that these machines would only operate with Curig
Speaker 1: branded coffee pods or k cups as they called them,
Speaker 1: Kurig printed special ink. There's like a sticker on the
Speaker 1: tops of the pods that the Curig two point o
Speaker 1: machine and later would scan for. So the machine would
Speaker 1: scan to look for the presence of this stuff on
Speaker 1: the pod, and if there were no ink found, while
Speaker 1: the machine would not work. It would not it wouldn't
Speaker 1: allow you to brew that cup of coffee. So if
Speaker 1: you bought it from a third party and it lacked
Speaker 1: that sticker or that ink, no dice even if it
Speaker 1: was a Curig branded pod from before they started doing
Speaker 1: this practice. It wouldn't work because the earlier Curig pods
Speaker 1: didn't have this this ink on them, and what followed
Speaker 1: was a massive backlash from customers. Kurig saw an influx
Speaker 1: of negative reviews and a drop in sales as well.
Speaker 1: Third party companies began to produce pods that would fool
Speaker 1: the Curig into thinking that it was a Curig branded
Speaker 1: pod when it wasn't. Customers were upset that Kurig was
Speaker 1: essentially deciding which coffees they should be allowed to drink.
Speaker 1: It was really messy. Kurig weathered the storm mostly but
Speaker 1: eventually settled a lawsuit accusing the company of using anti
Speaker 1: competitive practices to prevent anyone else from producing pods that
Speaker 1: were compatible with Curig brewing machines. The company also brought
Speaker 1: back a device that they had discontinued called the my
Speaker 1: K Cup, which is actually a reusable coffee filter slash
Speaker 1: cup that allows customers to put their own coffee into
Speaker 1: the cup and use that within a Curig machine. So
Speaker 1: that's one way of stepping around it where you're not
Speaker 1: having to buy the coffee straight from Curig. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we've seen this sort of stuff a lot. In fact,
Speaker 1: we've seen it a ton, I'd say, like the last
Speaker 1: decade or so, maybe the last fifteen years. Really, we
Speaker 1: started seeing companies looking for ways to create new revenue streams.
Speaker 1: And the main way a lot of companies focused on
Speaker 1: was how can we get customers locked into like a
Speaker 1: subscription based model or a model where they must continue
Speaker 1: to purchase things from us so that the thing that
Speaker 1: they initially bought continues to work. That that has been
Speaker 1: like a massive strategy that customers in general hate, are
Speaker 1: typically hate UM And it's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: DRM is necessary because without DRM, then the customer has
Speaker 1: the freedom to go wherever they want to get the
Speaker 1: stuff what makes the device continue to work. And that
Speaker 1: might be a different source, right Like for my my printer,
Speaker 1: I might find a compatible cartridge that costs, you know,
Speaker 1: a third of what it would cost me to buy
Speaker 1: the official brand. I'm obviously going to be tempted to
Speaker 1: go with that one, assuming that my printer will actually
Speaker 1: let me use it. Um. Yeah, it's a it's a mess.
Speaker 1: And like I said, DRM plays an important part in that.
Speaker 1: And uh, I guess the alternative would be these companies
Speaker 1: would eventually phase out dr M, but it would likely
Speaker 1: mean that we would see much higher price tags on
Speaker 1: some of these devices because the company would want to
Speaker 1: make up that revenue elsewhere. And it might mean that, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to sell this at a higher cost
Speaker 1: because previously we were selling it low since we knew
Speaker 1: we would make it up in the subscriptions or additional products.
Speaker 1: So there there is a tradeoff here that even if
Speaker 1: we get rid of d r M, it may mean
Speaker 1: that the things we have been purchasing will get more expensive. Uh,
Speaker 1: the individual stuff that we use on those machines might
Speaker 1: not get more expensive, but the machines themselves could, and
Speaker 1: I don't think people are super keen on that either.
Speaker 1: We would like the best of both worlds, like no
Speaker 1: DRM and still low prices, but you can't get at
Speaker 1: all anyway. That wraps up this episode. I know it's
Speaker 1: a quick one, but we've got a special episode tomorrow,
Speaker 1: so I just wanted to do a fast episode for today,
Speaker 1: and I definitely wanted to talk about it because of
Speaker 1: the Xbox Online issue that I saw earlier today. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The
Speaker 1: best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for the show is text Stuff hs W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. Zero