Category: Digital Rights

Apple: When is enough DRM enough?

Posted by DarkJedi – February 18, 2009

Coming from the company, who’s CEO a year back claimed that he would love to be able to provide music over iTunes without DRM, one could be surprised to see Apple’s latest claim: Jailbraking a phone is suddenly against the DMCA... Suddenly you find Apple siding with the likes of MPAA and realize one thing: Apple is only against DRM as long as they keep complete control of their customer and their market. The entire ecosystem around Apple’s products, from the iPod to the iPhone and iTunes are surrounded by guarding technologies that “protect” the customer against other choices than that of Apple. Meanwhile the customers are complaining widespread about DRM… A complain that apparently goes on deaf ears at Apple!

Naturally Apple gets its fair beating on blogs and criticism for being this arrogant on the DRM issue, but one would not expect them to receive a direct attack on this issue from Microsoft. However, Steve “Throwing Chairs” Ballmer apparent goes out criticising Apple for being a closed company… Guess it takes one to know one :)

It is, none the less,  strange to hear Steve Jobs talk about Apple as an open company, when their entire moneychain is built around fencing in their customers completely. In my opinion they should rethink their strategy and become an open company! But who cares?…. As long as there are customers for their fenced-in technology they will continue to build more DRM into their products!

The Game of Protection

Posted by DarkJedi – February 17, 2009

What is the difference between protecting your Intellectual Property from Illegal Copying and Trying to control the consumer and the free market? The difference is often difficult to spot if you are a company in this digital age apparently… The first thing that goes wrong is that you start of with the assumption that every possible customer is a criminal. The second thing that goes terribly wrong is that you mistake illegal copying with stealing. You do not loose the original when you copy – big difference! Imagine someone stealing the Mona Lisa compared to someone who can make a perfect duplicate… BIG difference! The third and last mistake is that companies thinks that this problem can be solved using DRM…

How did they expect their customers to react when they are essentially taking over the rights of the customer’s PC? … And when customers complain they keep singing that old, worn-out song of piracy problems even though nothing in the ever-booming sales numbers of videogames supports this! Let’s be realistic here. This has nothing to do with piracy and the company already knows this. They are instead fighting a market they have little or no control over and which costs them millions of dollars each month: The second-hand game market. Normally you would not be against the forces of the free market and just be happy that you are in a market that keeps growing with incredible speed in the midths of a major financial crisis… but not in this market! They want to control the customer, their PC and instead lease their products for full price…

Of course when you act that way in the face of your customers you better not mess up and that’s exactly what Epic did with their major title “Gears of War”. Of course EA had already created a great fuss on the market by creating some of the most restricted DRM on the games market ever on their release of their major hope, Spore, which was suppose to take over the success of The Sims. However, they quickly found out that in this digital age gamers will let their voices be heard quickly once you try to screw them like EA did. It didn’t help that the CEO of EA came out and showed the whole world what little understanding of their customers and how much arrogancy EA had at that point. Later on EA put the same titles on Steam – now without the DRM…

Now, there’s no denying that piracy exists to some degree, but since the numbers can never be validated it will always be used as a poor excuse. However, as Valve and others keep reminding us: Pirates are just unsatisfied customers! Why not try to find out at what price mark pirates vanish, like you do with other software in third world countries? Why not offer the choice between a cheaper copy with DRM and the “normal” game for a normal price without DRM – thereby letting customers show their intent with their vallets. Naturally this can only be done if the companies start to make it clearer on the boxes for their games what restrictions actually applies when they sell DRM-ridden titles.

Ubisoft has already had its trouble with DRM and are now searching for new alternatives. They have now released their newest Prince of Persia game for PC without DRM to see how it fares. Naturally it can easy become a quick excuse for Ubisoft: “See… We did it without DRM and we didn’t sell 100 million copies over night! Pirates will never change!”. A poor game will never sell – even without DRM.

At this point in time gamers are fed up with non-functional DRM schemes that only hurts the paying customers. Pirates never feel the poor quality of DRM since their version never contain any, which in itself is the clearest point one can make in this matter. The DRM doesn’t help because every title is out there in a pirated version – WITHOUT DRM – so only the remaining paying customers are being screwed. Lately gamers, together with the EFF, have started speaking out publicly about the many problems in DRM, which are illegally taking away user-granted rights without consent.

Let’s hope that some headroom is finally made. The situation is unacceptable. We all know that DRM is doomed to fail. A perfect solution doesn’t exists and never will. It is clear now that this situation with ever increasing strictness of DRM is a passing period – however, one that is annoying to be living in. In five years time everything will be digitally sold and shipped and at that point those silly schemes will have been replaced by a few centralized, transparent dsitribution solutions, like Steam. God, I wish I had a time machine… and so should many of the game publishing companies! EA and Epic aren’t the last to make a big public scandal on DRM and who knows which company will end up being remembered as the Sony of the gaming world with their version of the XCP copy protection and the following massive lawsuit, followed by a publicity nightmare… I can’t wait :)

Sony’s problem

Posted by DarkJedi – February 7, 2009

Red as blood. That is the only way to describe the latest numbers of lacking income at Sony. A company that once was at the top of the hardware business with enormous successes such as the Walkman, the Trinitron TV technology and the PlayStation 1 and 2. A hardware company that lead the business with innovation for many years. Now the times have changed and some might be wondering why. The answer, however, is painfully obvious… Sony is no longer one company, but rather a gathering of businesses with opposite directed interests.

The three faces of Sony is their hardware business, Sony Pictures in the movie industry and Sony BMG in the music business. The main problem appears, however, in their software department. While the hardware business is trying to create open, innovative hardware, the two content businesses Sony Pictures and Sony BMG is trying to prevent that hardware from being used in piracy. Here is where the customer gets completely forgotten. We then see failures such as the rootkit fiasco in their CD publishing part and the Walkman relaunched that was supposed to smash the iPod but failed completely because of unusable software as it was too ridden with DRM and copy protection technology making it impossible for customers to use. The Walkman’s price was slashed by more than half, but little did it help. The software was useless and people kept returning their Walkmans as they saw them as broken.

Sony, however, learned nothing from this. They still struggle with technologies that Sony Pictures and Sony BMG wanted to push in order to control their customers. Think of the many failed formats Sony has tried to push: ATRAC, MiniDisc, SACD, MemoryStick and so forth. ATRAC is a perfect example here. When the rest of the market had already accepted MP3 as the standard and Microsoft was pushing WMA Sony kept forcing their poor customers onto ATRAC and nothing else. After several years of being practically the laughing stock of the MP3-player market with a ridiculously small percentage they finally yielded to MP3 and released the Walkman player which could play both formats. However, the software was so riddled with DRM og copy protection technologies that it failed completely. Hardware is only as good as its software. Why didn’t they learn?

Even though music has been distributed over the Internet for nearly fifteen years Sony BMG and the rest of the music industry still hasn’t found a digital strategy. In this field Sony is also showing its many faces. It wants to give its customers as many options as possible, but also to completely control their use. This can be seen clearly in the fact that Sony is one of the companies pushing the hardest for the power to use selectable output – a technology that takes away a lot of the consumers rights without asking. So on one side Sony wants to push HD content in all your equipment – on the other side Sony wants complete control to fully disable all your equipment and remove the ability to display the HD content.

Then came the PlayStation 3 and Sony’s newest push of technologies. Now it wanted its customers onto the Blu-Ray path, so that it could force new copy protection technologies onto its poor customers. Another HD technology riddled with DRM. However, when one focuses too much on technology and marketing and forgets about software, which has always been Sony’s soft spot, one is set up for a major disappointment – especially when one is as arrogant as Sony Entertainment. The PlayStation 3 didn’t quite know what kind of machine it wanted to be. It wanted to be a game console, but also a media center and a Blu-Ray player… but as everyone knows: The Jack of All Trades is a Master of None… And that also happened with the PlayStation 3, who is suffering greatly on the market today.The holiday sales has shown that in this time around Sony is way behind its two competitors…

What Sony failed to do Nintendo did to perfection. They focused their console on a major market and didn’t put everything into the console – only what the market was asking for. The result is remarkable – especially compared to the once master of the market, Sony. Even their newest competitor, Microsoft, understood where they needed to beat Sony. Microsoft didn’t have Sony’s innovation in hardware or even remotely their experience in this field. When it comes to software, however, Microsoft is million miles ahead of Sony. They made the right tools for developing software on their platform and they made a brilliant working network service in Live far ahead of Sony’s PSN, which most of all looked like a small afterthought from Sony in hindsight of Microsoft’s success. Microsoft success came from ensuring a lot more titles than Sony did – especially when it came to exclusives, where Sony was once master. Sony simply forgot that consoles are about games. At the same time Microsoft is cutting prices making it harder for Sony to sell consoles, who are already seen as expensive…

Times has changed. Hardware is no longer everything. These days a console is measured by its software and in that field Sony is having serious problems – not only with its countless delays, but also with the quality of the software, which almost always fails to live up to the hype. A clear example of Sony’s problem with software is that every game studio claims that it is much simpler and thereby cheaper to develop on Microsoft’s Xbox platform compared to Sony’s PlayStation platform – even such former Sony exclusives as Square Enix.What is Sony’s response to this criticism? Well, even more strange… They claim that they have made it difficult to develop on the PlayStation 3 on purpose to make it last the ten years they somehow expect this console to last – even though it is far behind all its competitors in every way… sheeesh!

The strangest thing about this is that Sony doesn’t seem to learn anything. They keep on lying through their teeth and spinning numbers in their marketing. They keep on screwing their customers with DRM and copy protection and the removal of consumer rights, using lobbying. One would think that a company that makes a PR nightmare like the CD rootkit would learn something, but it doesn’t seem to happen. What Sony needs a common sense czar…

Digital Music or Digital Protectionism

Posted by DarkJedi – January 25, 2009

For many years the digital sales have only gone one way – up and up! Consumers wants an easy to use music and movie download service that just works. iTunes is already doing what the music business should be dreaming about. Alternative earnings are hitting the music business from unexpected sides, such as the console market. Most businesses would be happy in such a situation. In the midst of a financial crisis they have upcoming market with unlimited potential, but how are they reacting now that they haven’t done anything to spur this development for more than a decade?

Well, not very inspiring to say the least. The Greedy Business ™, consisting of the Big Four in the music business, IFPI, MPAA and the likes of those, instead wants to crumble the rights of the Internet users and expect special threatment on the Internet. They want complete monitoring of the Internet – and naturally they do not want to pay for it. For some reason they expect the tax payers to pay for monitoring themselves in order for the Greedy Business ™ to misuse this monitoring for protecting their market. They are dead scared that the powers of the market is shifting and they want to use fear and money to pull their weight around to ensure that no one starts making money on innovation in this business.

In the mean time the Greedy Business ™ are spending their time publishing papirs on Internet piracy to get some support to their “take-control-over-the-internet”-scheme. Naturally these papirs are as filled with errors as the one would expect from these blind managers. They simply doesn’t know the rules of the scientific world and instead are just proving how little truth they have in what they claim instead. Perhaps they should invest all that energy into innovation instead – might be a welcome change!

The problem for the Greedy Business ™ is perhaps that they simply weren’t ready for the realities or for the fact that most business have to actually do something in order to earn money. Instead they just kept on claiming that it was the pirates’ fault – not theirs. They did nothing to better the situation – just kept on complaining! What a normal business would do in such a situation is to change ones strategy (or actually make one in this case), not act like a spoiled child and start suing your customers thereby ruining your market of tomorrow. However, the Greedy Business ™ kept on acting like idiots without an idea in what direction they wanted to go and showed no understanding of what their market demanded what so ever!

Even when it is going perfectly in their sales in the midst of a financial crisis they keep on crying piracy … Won’t you guys just shut the f*ck up and die soon?!

A taste of Apple?

Posted by DarkJedi – January 24, 2009

I have often been asked why I don’t switch to Apple. Looking at their products you find a nice finish, easy-to-use, but somewhat expensive range of products. I don’t mind paying good money for good quality – never have. The problem I have with Apple is more about the way the want to control me as a consumer. Just because I choose to buy one Apple product doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be able to choose another firm to deliver products for me in the future.

The best way to illustrate what you get with Apple is using the beach. When you buy a normal bambus PC you get a large, confusing beach, filled with occasional litter and you don’t really know when the Sun will shine. When you invite your friends onto your beach they often can find the way or take a long time getting there – arriving frustrated.

With Apple you get a sandbox filled with the most pretty, delicate sand. The Sun is always shining and there is no litter. Taking a trip to the beach for you becomes a breeze and an enjoyable experience. Then the problem starts. Your friends wants to visit you, but the only way they can get into your sandbox is to buy one themselves – then everything works perfectly.

The second problem comes when you want to buy a grill for bringing on your trip to the beach.  On the normal beach you can just go to any store and buy any grill you want, but not with your sandbox – only one grill is available… and it’s from the same guys who sold you the sandbox and the price is outright ridiculous. The same problem appears when you want to buy a ghettoblaster for playing music on your beach, a parasol for protecting against the sun and it continues making you pay more and more for products for which you have no alternative. No other ghettoblasters is allowed in your sandbox, sorry!

The third problem arrives when you start to get bored with your expensive ghettoblaster and your grill and you want to play something in your sandbox. You go to the Sandbox Store, but find little of the games your friends are playing on the beach. The games you can choose from are expensive, comes out years after the beach guys have enjoyed them for years and no one else are playing them anymore.

The fourth and final problem comes after a while. When you have seen anything there is to see in you little sandbox you want something bigger. You start poking around the corners and suddenly you realize that you are not on a beach, but rather on a small fenced-in pierce of sandbox with high walls around and a artificial sun hovering above. When you want to dig a small hole to build a sandcastle in your sandbox with your expensive sandbox(tm) shovel you can only dig down ten centimeters because the sandbox is no larger than that. Suddenly you realize that this is not a beach, but only a sandbox – and a very expensive one… and then you realize why I don’t go for Apple’s products :)

The lesson here is simple – Don’t fence me in!

On Gaming Piracy…

Posted by DarkJedi – December 21, 2008

I just read this rather long, but somewhat serious, article on Piracy in regards to computer games… Naturally a business guy like that would end up with a conclusion sounding like this: Don’t do piracy and it’s okay to do DRM as long you behave!

Well, frankly I don’t quite agree! I hate piracy as much as the next guy. No, I don’t find it to be an “okay demonstration against some big business, who is doing you wrong!”. People that pirate are just freeloaders! They do not understand the massive commitment and work it requires to make a game these days – even a poor game (which the market is apparently filled with). I don’t like demos myself. They always leave all kinds of crap on my computer and I hate those regular re-installs. I can, to some degree, understand those people that claim that too many titles these days are utter crap, wasted money, or just not enough bang for the money (like Mirror’s Edge with only 6 hours of gameplay) and therefore try out the pirate version before shelling out good cash. However, guys that use this excuse over and over and never actually buy anything as they keep claiming that there are no good titles: Shut the fuck up! If there were no good titles how come you spend 20 hours plus every week gaming?!… I hate those guys! Stop complaining about game quality when you don’t support good games! Stop complaining about poor performance, too many bugs, poor service when you are using a pirate version, riddled with malware and virusses! Buy good games … it’s that easy!

Games are often good value for money – especially compared to movies, where you get 1,5 – 2,5 hours of entertainment for the approx. same price where the games often deliver 20 – 40 hours of gameplay and a more immersive and often better social experience!

However, the one area where I hate the conclusion of that article is on DRM… I refuse to accept that crappy DRM schemes on my computer! I am not a pirate, i am not a thief… I have 60 plus original titles on my PC alone, not counting my console games… I refuse to receive a copy of a game that denies me much more than the pirate version, which is available for free! Instead offer some free extra stuff and good online parts for us paying customers – NOT CRAPPY DRM-schemes! Hint: they don’t work and they are a nightmare to support! Just give it up and let the market decide! Then it will be easier for the companies to expose the ever growing freeloaders! Yes, I know… companies like EA will still make a lot of poor value titles or easy follow ups on public franchises without any proper content or gameplay, but then don’t buy them … And don’t go for the pirate version of a game you claim is poor!

I hate those double standards… It is easy to shout your moralistic view all over the internet and find a common voice… It is a bit more difficult to live by those beliefs! And believe me when I say that you fucking freeloaders don’t make it anymore easy on those of us that actually pay for good games and don’t pirate! So grow up and smell the free market! Vote with your wallet, not your sorry cry-baby voice!

Now, another reason I personally hate DRM is something that is rarely mentioned in the internet article, but matters a lot for me. I take backup of my games. I hate having to have the physical disc laying around everywhere. In the fully digital distribution age this will not be a problem, but we are not there yet, so it is! Therefore I make backups on my NAS, which is a nice way to access my games when I want to play them. A nice solution, I like to think. The problem is with titles that contain DRM that I have to go to shady sites on the Internet to get noCD patches to get them to work without a DVD in the drive. Why should I be punished for being a faithful customer compared to the pirate? Why shall I be forced onto shady sites to get noCD patches to be able to make backups? How come the industry themselves aren’t offering my this as a faithful, paying customer? There is a reason I complete stopped buying games with DRM… They do not supply me with the options I need. This is a digital age – I should be able to handle my product in a digitally flexible manner!

So, instead of pirating games because you don’t want to pay for the honest work of men and women in the gaming inudstry stop playing games. If you want to change the industry start paying for games, but only those that do it right!

If companies, like EA, doesn’t listen to you then… well… they’ll find out in the one language that company can understand – MONEY!

DRM : Is the gaming industry growing up?

Posted by DarkJedi – December 3, 2008

Even though I do not expect an old-timer company like Electronic Arts (EA) to see this coming before the rest of the industry have done it for years it actually appears that the gaming industry is slowly moving towards an adult perception of Digital Rights Management, DRM. The views of the customers are often completely left out of this debate. Every time a customer speaks up he is automatically called a pirate by the backwater companies that act like some sort of Mafia from the old USSR – not a company who lives in a free market world. The difference between the different approaches by companies in the gaming industry is becoming apparent. Companies like Valve is famous for their grown up opinions on this issue, while EA is known for their backward perception of the world. In an article by Ars Technica this difference is clearly shown… Worth a read :)

The Console War : Sony – Please grow up!

Posted by DarkJedi – November 19, 2008

Just because you cannot seem to offer anything of value, especially concerning films and HD-content, on that “mediacenter”console of yours, please stop acting like a spoiled child!

We all know how you tried to market the PlayStation 3 like a center of HD content and we also know that your PSN doesn’t contain anything of value and absolutely nothing of HD value!

Instead of blocking Microsoft’s excellent attempt at providing what you have failed to do, please start making your own attempt at delivering something of value to your customers.

It is simply a childish act and shows that you can’t be trusted to run both a music, movie and game business at the same time without getting your childish feelings hurt and instead screw your customers. It’s enough just to see how you handled the enormous amount of Sony product-placement in a James Bond film, but this?

Seriously, Sony, grow up – and fast!

UPDATE: … And so they did (for the time being :) )!

And note to Microsoft: “Please join the digital age soon!” !!!

EA: Lost contact with the law as well…

Posted by DarkJedi – October 30, 2008

In an, by now, unsurprised move by Electronic Ass (EA) they have suddenly given themselves the right to remove your legally bought right to your games if you in their eyes misbehaves in their forum. Apart from the fact that this is clearly illegal since none of their customers have signed any waiver, which throws away their right to their legally purchased expensive content, it is right up EA’s alley. They can decide when you are behaving badly and then when they want you to pay for all your content again – nice move! In the real world where we divide the power into three institutions we are lucky to be protected by the law and not even EA can choose when they want to set aside that law or not. Of course this a nice way to further attack the game-renting market, which they already attacked directly with their 3-install expensive games. Apparently “full control” is the only way EA can think these days on that planet of theirs: User-control with ultra-restrictive DRM, Market-control with “3/5-install-games” and now they think they have control of user demand with their latest streak of madness… Well, another reason to avoid the userfriendly void that is EA.

It is never a pretty sight when a company suddenly consists of 80% lawyers, 17% marketing and only 3% people actually doing something… It happened with the music business and now EA can join them as the first of the gaming publishing company!

However, one would think that a company consisting of 80% lawyers could at least read the law, instead of sitting on that strange planet of theirs and making up their own rules?

EDIT: Now at least some of their 80% lawyers will have something to do up to Christmas :)

EA : Lost contact with the real world?

Posted by DarkJedi – October 15, 2008

After perhaps the most criticized game launch in history with Spore EA has been fighting with a PR nightmare their blinded analysts could never have foreseen. EA that for once are bringing a quality game line up, including “Dead Space” and “Mirror’s Edge” are now faced with a group of fans that feel betrayed by the company. They are angry that pirates get a far better deal on the versions of the games that can be found on the internet – and I am not talking about the price.

Most gamers spend several thousand dollars on their gaming rigs and they are not about to let control of that expensive pierce of hardware in the hands of EA’s runaway DRM-software.

The problem is that EA is no longer a game company, but just a publishing house filled with blinded analysts living in a world which is divided up into only two groups of people: Loyal Customers who apparently buy every EA game and countless expansion pack or the evil pirates who would never pay a dime for a game. It’s right up there with a certain american president’s dividing of the world into good and evil.

Every stupid comment from EA these days seems to be bridging the gap between this lost company and their former loyal fans. I, for one, own more than 30 original EA titles and that is not going to change… No, I’m not going pirate even though EA wants you to think that! I’m just dropping EA from my shopping options just like I dropped every music CD out there with DRM…

Let me know when EA becomes a gaming company and returns to reality again….