Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hey, everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Polette. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here at How Stuff Works, and with me
Speaker 1: as always is my lovely and talented co host, senior
Speaker 1: writer Jonathan Strickland. Howdy, and uh. It's a good thing
Speaker 1: that you're listening to podcast on this format because it's
Speaker 1: not copy protected, right. Yeah, you can transfer this as
Speaker 1: many times as you like, and we encourage you to
Speaker 1: share this with everyone. Go ahead and have everyone hand
Speaker 1: delivered copy of our podcast freely distributed. Absolutely, But that's
Speaker 1: not the case for all audio files or video files
Speaker 1: that you'll find in digital format. That's true. Um, actually yeah,
Speaker 1: many different kinds of files, video games, software, all of these,
Speaker 1: uh can come with a certain restriction which uh and
Speaker 1: the BIZ is the is known as digital Rights management
Speaker 1: or d r M. That's good. I actually thought that
Speaker 1: was DERM. Yeah, yeah, I think some of the opponents
Speaker 1: to DERM would agree, and there are a lot There
Speaker 1: are a lot. DRM is one of those hot button
Speaker 1: issues on the Internet where people get really really fired
Speaker 1: up about it. That's true. And that's true well uh
Speaker 1: speaking as a uh you know, as a musician myself, Uh,
Speaker 1: I see, I see positives and negatives to it. You know,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want necessarily somebody to buy a copy of
Speaker 1: a CD that my band is put out, rip it
Speaker 1: and distributed freely for everybody to have. And then suddenly,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, there are no copies of the CD
Speaker 1: being sold because it's freely available online. Right, I see
Speaker 1: a value to dr M, but there are some particularly
Speaker 1: restrictive uh drms out there, and that those especially are
Speaker 1: the ones that raise the ire of the general public,
Speaker 1: I think. Right, So let's let's kind of lay the
Speaker 1: groundwork here and kind of explain what what all of
Speaker 1: this is. Um. So on the side of the people
Speaker 1: producing the content that has the DRM in it, um,
Speaker 1: what their point of view is is that they've got
Speaker 1: this product they're offering for sale, and they don't want
Speaker 1: it pirate ID and then distributed throughout the Internet to
Speaker 1: just about anyone who has a connection, UM because you know,
Speaker 1: obviously it hurts their bottom line, it hurts their profits.
Speaker 1: They don't make any money off of that. And so
Speaker 1: that's where you hear about companies saying that piracy is
Speaker 1: this huge problem on the Internet. Now that that's debatable. Um,
Speaker 1: people argue, Uh, if the argument is that we lose
Speaker 1: this amount of money because of piracy, the counter argument
Speaker 1: is the people who pirated that stuff, were they really
Speaker 1: going to buy it? And if they weren't going to
Speaker 1: buy it, did you really lose money? Because if no
Speaker 1: one was going to buy that product in the first place,
Speaker 1: then you're right back where you started from before the
Speaker 1: piracy happened. Now that doesn't excuse private piracy by any
Speaker 1: means I mean, but it is one of those counter arguments.
Speaker 1: So DRM is one of the approaches to try and
Speaker 1: head off piracy. Um. It's this, Uh, it's it's usually
Speaker 1: within a digital file. It's usually some code that requires
Speaker 1: a key that exists on a server somewhere for you
Speaker 1: to be able to transfer that file from one location
Speaker 1: to another, like to your from your computer to your
Speaker 1: iPod for example, or other m P three player, or
Speaker 1: even a computer to another computer. Or if you have
Speaker 1: to upgrade your computer, let's say that you go from
Speaker 1: XP to Vista for some reason, you might need to
Speaker 1: be able to activate that key again. Um, Otherwise your
Speaker 1: we won't be able to access that file. Yeah. For example, UM,
Speaker 1: chances are you're probably listening to this podcast through uh
Speaker 1: the iTunes store and Apple. Apple has what it calls fairplay, which,
Speaker 1: uh if you buy a CD or I guess if
Speaker 1: you buy an album from iTunes and you want to
Speaker 1: play it on your computer, you know that computer is
Speaker 1: authorized to do that. You can authorize up to five
Speaker 1: computers to to play that file and you can you know,
Speaker 1: any iPod that is registered at that computer can can
Speaker 1: do that, and you can burn it to a CD.
Speaker 1: And as long as you're listening to it through iTunes, uh,
Speaker 1: through a registered computer, you can listen to it as
Speaker 1: much as you want to. Um. Now, if you're like
Speaker 1: me and you have five computers registered, if I wanted to, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pop in a backup CD of iTunes files
Speaker 1: that I had on my work computer, I would be
Speaker 1: stuck because I've already got five computers registered. Actually one
Speaker 1: of them is an old hard drive that is now
Speaker 1: out of my computer, So I really should de authorize
Speaker 1: all of those again. But UM, you know, essentially they say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can make make copies, you can make backups to
Speaker 1: this file because we know that you can only uh
Speaker 1: play this on a on a computer that has been
Speaker 1: authorized by us to do that, and that actually can
Speaker 1: present some problems if the service goes belly up. Yes,
Speaker 1: and that's happened several times in this year, as being
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, just in case people from the far
Speaker 1: off distant future are listening to our podcast. But yes,
Speaker 1: several times this year we've had services halt uh. Services
Speaker 1: that offer dr M to music they've stopped. Um. And
Speaker 1: these aren't necessarily small services. These are usually big names
Speaker 1: um MSN, ber Soft Networks, that's a pretty big name,
Speaker 1: Yahoo Music, Walmart. Now we should say that all of
Speaker 1: these services offer DRM free music now, but that's that's
Speaker 1: where the problem is. They used to offer dr d
Speaker 1: r M to music. But that gets so much bad
Speaker 1: press in the blogosphere. Um, it gets so much resistance
Speaker 1: and there are so many potential problems that a lot
Speaker 1: of these companies said, you know what, we're going to
Speaker 1: move to a DRM free business model, which sounds great
Speaker 1: except that that now you have a problem. What do
Speaker 1: you do with all the DRM music that's already out
Speaker 1: there that people have purchased before the switch. And the
Speaker 1: one solution is that you just run the servers that
Speaker 1: have the key the the the key that needs to
Speaker 1: be activated. If you want to move port your music
Speaker 1: from one machine to another, you could just run those forever. Um.
Speaker 1: It's not really economically feasible to do that, though, I mean,
Speaker 1: you could use those machines for something else if you
Speaker 1: if you stop doing that. But if you stop doing that,
Speaker 1: that means that you have locked down those files on
Speaker 1: the computers of the people who purchased that music. And
Speaker 1: they purchased purchased it legally. You know, they didn't pirate this,
Speaker 1: didn't steal it, So you're kind of punishing your customers
Speaker 1: in a way. Yeah, yeah, another alternative to that. And
Speaker 1: and but all these services gave their their users some
Speaker 1: notice that they were going to shut it down. Sometimes
Speaker 1: another too, Yeah, Walmart, I think was like two weeks
Speaker 1: something like that. UM and Yahoo was a little tighter.
Speaker 1: MSN was a little uh more out in front. And
Speaker 1: they actually pushed back their their date on switching off
Speaker 1: the servers because they got such a response from people
Speaker 1: who had purchased files. I said, you know what, you're right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna hold off a little bit longer than we
Speaker 1: had planned to give you more time. Yeah, But basically
Speaker 1: the solution that I had read about most frequently was
Speaker 1: suggesting that people make an audio CD of these tracks
Speaker 1: and then re ribbed them back to MP three files,
Speaker 1: UM or whatever format you happen to use. Problem with
Speaker 1: that is it degrades the audio quality, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's passing passing it through a couple of filters. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it basically removes compression information and more than that information.
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's think of it this way. More than that.
Speaker 1: What's one of the big big things about digital files.
Speaker 1: They're so attractive. There's no physical format that you have
Speaker 1: to deal with. You don't have to store something, you
Speaker 1: don't have to be this is it. It kind of
Speaker 1: defeats the purpose for the digital file in the first place.
Speaker 1: If you just wanted a physical format that you could
Speaker 1: have and then you could, you know, rip music off
Speaker 1: of it whenever you wanted, you'd go out and buy
Speaker 1: the c D. You wouldn't go buy the digital files.
Speaker 1: So now what they're saying is that you have to
Speaker 1: go out by blank c D s, put a CD
Speaker 1: in there, burn your files your music to that CD,
Speaker 1: and then put in another computer waiting, which does strip
Speaker 1: it of the d r M and also some of
Speaker 1: the quality of the files. As Chris mentioned, UM, but
Speaker 1: it also means that you've got another c D thing around,
Speaker 1: not if you're using a rewritable one, you can use
Speaker 1: the same CD over and over rickon. But other other
Speaker 1: than that, it's really, you know, it's not a very
Speaker 1: green method to deal with this problem at all. You're
Speaker 1: generating more waste. It's the the you can Chris is
Speaker 1: laught because you can see them about to explode. This
Speaker 1: is one of those things that get no. This is
Speaker 1: this is one of those issues that does get me
Speaker 1: riled up. I agree with with people like Veronica Belmont
Speaker 1: who she's a podcaster as well and a host of
Speaker 1: several different tech related shows UM who Her argument was
Speaker 1: that why shouldn't why doesn't Why why don't they offer
Speaker 1: a certificate so that you could purchase the new DRM
Speaker 1: free version of whatever files you bought UM using that
Speaker 1: certificate and then you you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: you can just delete the old one if you want to,
Speaker 1: and you would have a DRM free version. I think
Speaker 1: that's a great gesture. Now, granted it does create a
Speaker 1: headache for the providers, because you have to figure out,
Speaker 1: how do you say, all right, well, they can only
Speaker 1: get the files that they previously purchased because they you
Speaker 1: know what if you use that certificate to buy all
Speaker 1: new files and so essentially they just gave away a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of product for free. And you know, in business,
Speaker 1: that's usually considered a bad move giving anything away for free. So,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, there's some issues there, but I think it's
Speaker 1: I think it shows a much better approach to customer
Speaker 1: service than just saying, hey, go out and buy some
Speaker 1: blank CDs and you know, you're on your own and
Speaker 1: after October nine, that's it. I mean, well, speaking of
Speaker 1: customer service, that that actually takes me in in a
Speaker 1: different direction because one of the other things that Jonathan
Speaker 1: and I talked about for this podcast was the long
Speaker 1: anticipated and um hotly hyped Well that's an interesting way
Speaker 1: to put game from Electronic Arts Old Spore. Yes, everybody, everybody,
Speaker 1: you know, everyone was talking about it, and uh I
Speaker 1: was one of these people that's that's very excited to
Speaker 1: see this game. Well, when it came out, it turned
Speaker 1: out that they that Electronic Cars had put in an
Speaker 1: DRM system very similar to Apple's fair play in which
Speaker 1: you could install the game on three computers, but only
Speaker 1: three computers, and if you wanted to install it on
Speaker 1: another computer, you had to call the company to have
Speaker 1: them give you an additional code. Uh. This uh made
Speaker 1: a lot of people unhappy, right extremely unhappy, vocally unhappy,
Speaker 1: to the point where they actually started going on too
Speaker 1: Wears sites and downloading broken copies of the game, cracked
Speaker 1: copies of the game so that they could play it
Speaker 1: without this digital rights management embedded in the game. Not
Speaker 1: only that, but they would go on to Amazon and
Speaker 1: then negatively review the game, not on the merits of
Speaker 1: the game itself, which many people say, is is a
Speaker 1: fun game and it's enjoyable and play reviews. It's gotten
Speaker 1: good play reviews, but a lot of the if you
Speaker 1: went on to Amazon, I think I think they've managed
Speaker 1: to purge most of these by now. But the average
Speaker 1: vote was coming out to being like one and a
Speaker 1: half stars. And you're thinking, well, this game was getting
Speaker 1: such great reviews elsewhere, why is Amazon? Why is it
Speaker 1: tanking on Amazon's Because Amazon allows average people who just
Speaker 1: register on the site to come in and and rank anything,
Speaker 1: rate any product, and um, there was a concentrate effort
Speaker 1: by people who opposed this d r M to come
Speaker 1: in and and just completely squish the score down to
Speaker 1: nothing based on the d r M, not on the game.
Speaker 1: Um so you had all these different reviews that just
Speaker 1: kind of slamm d A for the whole DRM strategy.
Speaker 1: Uh and, uh so it made some news just based
Speaker 1: on that as well. Sure, I mean and and to
Speaker 1: e A's credit, they did go and bump it up
Speaker 1: to five computers that you could install it on. Um
Speaker 1: you know, speaking from my personal viewpoint on this, I
Speaker 1: see where people are coming from that. It's the it's
Speaker 1: the principle behind it that you know, Hey, I bought
Speaker 1: this game, I should be you know, if I forgot
Speaker 1: ten computers in my basement and I want to have
Speaker 1: people come over and place four, you know, I I
Speaker 1: want to be able to do that. I want to
Speaker 1: be able to put it on these computers or you
Speaker 1: know what happens if my computer dies and I put
Speaker 1: it on another computer ten years from now. I want
Speaker 1: to still be able to play this game, but I'm
Speaker 1: definitely gonna have a new computer by then, and so
Speaker 1: many different iterations of the operating system that I'll run
Speaker 1: out of the d R M R UM. I just
Speaker 1: think that, uh, you know, people are being a little
Speaker 1: hard on the a Uh. It just seems it just
Speaker 1: seems to me that, you know, if they're willing to
Speaker 1: give you another code, if you could say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: my my hard drive tanked, I need to get another
Speaker 1: code for this. You know, I do think they probably
Speaker 1: you know, three machines was probably too few. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: but by the time that a lot of people's computers die,
Speaker 1: Sport two is going to be out right well so yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean to go on Amazon and rate the
Speaker 1: game poorly that that was, it just seems like it's
Speaker 1: a little too far. Yeah, that was definitely a little childish.
Speaker 1: But but aren't there games that are there any old
Speaker 1: games that you still play occasionally or I mean, assuming
Speaker 1: that you can find an emulator or something that allows
Speaker 1: you to play them, right right, Well, a lot of
Speaker 1: those are on matt Classic for me since the Mac user, okay,
Speaker 1: so for the normal for the normal user who doesn't
Speaker 1: use a Mac, Yeah, yeah, I mean I've got a
Speaker 1: Mac two. Don't get me wrong. I mean I'd like
Speaker 1: to joke an Apple hater, but yeah, I own a
Speaker 1: PC as well, And there are games from ten years
Speaker 1: ago that I play and if they had had these restrictions,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be able to do that. And I think
Speaker 1: another issue here is not just that you know, e
Speaker 1: A stepped over the line necessarily, It's that it's one
Speaker 1: of those issues that that that gamers and music lovers
Speaker 1: have been dealing with for so long. It was kind
Speaker 1: like the straw that broke the camels back in a way.
Speaker 1: Think about some of the other big DRM issues. Besides
Speaker 1: the fact, I mean we we had with Microsoft going down,
Speaker 1: in Yahoo going down, and UH and the and Walmart
Speaker 1: going down with their d r M servers, there was
Speaker 1: the syndication that, hey, if something happens, will I be
Speaker 1: able to move this game again? I mean what if,
Speaker 1: like what if the e A somehow has a collapse
Speaker 1: or they decided to turn off there there. If it's
Speaker 1: if it's web based, then that means my game is
Speaker 1: stuck on this computer and I will never be able
Speaker 1: to get it off there. Um, that's a legitimate concern.
Speaker 1: And and think also we should also point out that
Speaker 1: while we're talking about digital files and digital distribution mainly
Speaker 1: in this podcast, that's not the only place you find
Speaker 1: DRM DRM is on physical products as well, like DVDs
Speaker 1: and CDs. Uh. Sony had a huge brew haha back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five about this. Yes, yes, they
Speaker 1: stalled UM on a music CD. You could put a
Speaker 1: music CD into your computer and it would immediately start
Speaker 1: to incorporate these files that Sony had put onto the
Speaker 1: c d UH that were meant to prevent people from
Speaker 1: copying music left and right. Willy nilly, but yes, but
Speaker 1: what they really were where it was really was a virus.
Speaker 1: It was. It was pretty much a computer virus. And
Speaker 1: it UM it would attach to not intentionally, but that's
Speaker 1: what it was. It would attach to your your computer's
Speaker 1: root kit. And and theoretically that could have a nice
Speaker 1: little back door for trojan programs down the line. And
Speaker 1: it hung, it hung people's computers up to it wasn't
Speaker 1: you know no it And and there was some spywear
Speaker 1: type of functionality in it as well, where where the
Speaker 1: computer was literally monitoring your every move on that machine
Speaker 1: and sending reports back. I mean, it's it was. There
Speaker 1: have been enough really really bad DRM stories for people
Speaker 1: to really kind of get upset kind of the way
Speaker 1: I do. Where we start to get riled up, so
Speaker 1: that when something like this happens, you just especially with Sport,
Speaker 1: I mean you gotta the combination of not just the
Speaker 1: d r M, which was a little probably over the top.
Speaker 1: I don't even think, yeah, maybe a little draconian. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't even go that far. I'm like you, you know,
Speaker 1: I understand their need to protect their investment, but you're
Speaker 1: talking about a game that had been hyped for so long,
Speaker 1: and people have been waiting for it for for two
Speaker 1: years essentially, and it kept getting pushed back. Expectations were
Speaker 1: so high, emotions were already at the tipping point, right,
Speaker 1: and this drm thing where you're like, I've been waiting
Speaker 1: for this game for two years and now you're telling
Speaker 1: me that it has all these restrictions. People just blew
Speaker 1: their tops. I mean yeah, and then when you have
Speaker 1: these other stories about the servers going down, people are
Speaker 1: still upset. It's it's not hard to understand why people
Speaker 1: get riled up a out this. Now. There's just gotta
Speaker 1: be a way for a company to say, you know,
Speaker 1: I made this, I want to make some money off
Speaker 1: of my hard work, and there has to be a
Speaker 1: middle ground in between that and the customers saying, look,
Speaker 1: you know, if you guys go out of business, I
Speaker 1: still want to be able to play this game, or
Speaker 1: listen to this music or watch this video. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and so there's gotta be some middle ground which both
Speaker 1: sides can agree. I mean this, there are companies out there,
Speaker 1: just like the ones we had already mentioned to have
Speaker 1: dropped the DRM. There are companies out there that are
Speaker 1: are now offering these files without DRM. And I don't
Speaker 1: think they're suddenly seeing a huge drop in profits. I mean,
Speaker 1: Amazon was going DRM free pretty much for their music
Speaker 1: before anyone else was. In fact, that's that's why I
Speaker 1: love Amazon Music. Um, not that I mean I have
Speaker 1: iTunes on my computer too, but I love Amazon Music
Speaker 1: because I know that I'm not going to get a
Speaker 1: DRM file when I when I buy that music file.
Speaker 1: And I mean, so the business model works, it's I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty much clear that they're gonna be pirates
Speaker 1: who are gonna go out there. They're gonna figure always
Speaker 1: around this d r M. I mean, that's the problem
Speaker 1: is that these these solutions are really punishing the the
Speaker 1: legitimate customer more than the pirates. And and uh, I
Speaker 1: don't think the pirates are really causing that much economic
Speaker 1: stress for these companies, or at least not as much
Speaker 1: as as they would have you believe. Well, ultimately, I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna end up being a system in which
Speaker 1: the middleman just gets cut out. Um, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: your game studio, or your artists or your author uh.
Speaker 1: You know, people like Neil Gaiman and Corey Doctro have
Speaker 1: been releasing uh some of their books in you know,
Speaker 1: PDF format so that freely, so that people read them.
Speaker 1: And they're finding that people are reading the PDF and
Speaker 1: then going out and buying copies of the book. And
Speaker 1: I think ultimately, when you get down to it, people
Speaker 1: want to do the right thing. You know, there's always somebody,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, I think people if if you
Speaker 1: could say, hey, what if you paid me five bucks
Speaker 1: for this CD and you just go ahead and enter
Speaker 1: your credit card number, you can have the MP three files,
Speaker 1: go ahead and tell your friends you know what you
Speaker 1: think of the record, I think people would rather pay
Speaker 1: the artist less money and get the thing without any
Speaker 1: drm for it, because I think that's going to breed
Speaker 1: loyal team on customers and they're gonna keep coming back
Speaker 1: and going you know, hey, I like your book, Hey
Speaker 1: I like your game. You know, here's twenty dollars for it,
Speaker 1: and go right to the source and go ahead and
Speaker 1: pay them less money kind of approach. That's a bummer
Speaker 1: for the publishers. Yeah, well, but we see that. We're
Speaker 1: seeing that with like artists like Trent Resner has done that,
Speaker 1: Radiohead did that. Jonathan Jonathan Colton built his career on
Speaker 1: offering his music for free and then saying if you
Speaker 1: like it, you know, you can buy the tunes here
Speaker 1: um or you can just download them, uh and freely
Speaker 1: distribute them and alter them as well. As you're not
Speaker 1: trying to make money off of it. I'm fine with it.
Speaker 1: And he's doing then quite well, I think. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are ways around this without without relying on the
Speaker 1: dangers of d r M, and that I think that's
Speaker 1: the main thing is that if if it weren't for
Speaker 1: the fact that it impacts your ability to use this
Speaker 1: product that you have purchased, people wouldn't be so up
Speaker 1: in arms about it. But because it actually can affect
Speaker 1: your your experience while you're using what you have paid
Speaker 1: good money to use, I mean that's where that's where
Speaker 1: tempers are gonna splare up like mine. Yeah. I guess
Speaker 1: that was a good conversation slash rant. Yeah. Alright, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we'll wrap that up about d r M
Speaker 1: and we will talk to you against soon for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Because it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think.
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