GOG Launches FCKDRM To Promote DRM-Free Art and Media (torrentfreak.com) 150
An anonymous reader shares a report: GOG, the digital distribution platform for DRM-free video games and video, has launched a new initiative designed to promote content without embedded DRM. The platform aims to promote GOG and other companies with a similar ethos, including those offering DRM-free music, books, and video. "DRM-free approach in games has been at the heart of GOG.COM from day one. We strongly believe that if you buy a game, it should be yours, and you can play it the way it's convenient for you, and not how others want you to use it," GOG said in a statement. While Digital Rights Management is seen by many companies as necessary to prevent piracy, GOG believes that its restrictions are anti-consumer and run counter to freedoms that should exist alongside content ownership.
DRM doesn't work (Score:5, Informative)
DRM is easily circumvented BS, harms legitimate users, and should be removed from the landscape.
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*Is routinely* removed from the landscape. Publishers don't like this, but it always happens.
DRM is not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two problems with copyrights and related rights, and both aren't DRM.
The first problem is that the original meaning of the copyright contract - right to monopoly sales (and profits) for a LIMITED TIME in exchange for placing the work in the PUBLIC DOMAIN once the limited time is over - has been destroyed. The LIMITED MONOPOLY is today being called "intellectual property" and the effort to make it perpetual has only increased.
The second problem is that what was essentially a CIVIL matter - the violations of the LIMITED MONOPOLY, has now been turned into a CRIMINAL MATTER.
Thus, the society, which feeds the "IP lawyers" has been shafted twice. Once by giving up its rights on the "copyright" contract, and then by paying for its enforcement.
DRM is just the icing on the cake of misery we suffer at the hands of the "IP lawyers".
DRM is more than mere insult added to injury (Score:1)
No, DRM isn't just icing on the cake. It causes additional, new problems along a whole other dimension.
You described some problems with copyright, but nevertheless a bunch of us think that copyright is basically a good idea. We're better off with copyright, than without it. You have some legitimate gripes about how it got fucked up and I'm
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if copyright were for limited times and civilly enforced, then those problems would be addressed, no?
Some of them.
Granting a monopoly is a dangerous pseudo-solution. Why? Because monopoly grants excess economic profits, and these tend to be invested in the political process to extend the monopoly rather than do something else. Why? Well, because extending the monopoly extends the amount of profits.
So, even if you get to curb the "intellectual property" thing to some saner limits, in a few year or decades th
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The explosion of businesses due to online commerce, digital content, personal computing - as far as gaming goes - the majority of products released today aren't even physical products an
There are places where "DRM" does work (Score:1)
In niche industries where each customer pays tens of thousands of dollars per user or small work-group for specialized software, DRM works.
However, the "rights management" is the contracts and the lawyers, and the "digital" is the large number of digits in the dollar amounts in the penalties laid out in the contracts. Severe violations can result in a lawsuit that can bankrupt the customer.
In such cases, the customer may even PREFER that software help enforce the contract to make it more difficult for a ro
Re:DRM doesn't work (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a piece of software that harms piracy.
It's called steam/gog and it does work by making the original games as good or better than the pirate version by allowing you to get it as easily as the pirate version and having dedicated servers etc..
But when you put DRM in a game, you make the pirate game better again, and you really don't want to make the pirate game better than the original game.
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It's called steam ...
... But when you put DRM in a game...
To be clear, do you actually believe that Steam doesn't have very stronly enforced DRM?
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It have the option, but it's not what made steam an effective tool against piracy.
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No, availability is the tool against piracy. That doesn't mean that DRM isn't still inherently bad. Good lucky with your library if Steam goes out of business. You'll be relying on the kindness of strangers.
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DRM has never been about combating piracy because pirates easily circumvent it. At the most it prevents casual piracy by those who haven't learned how to use google. DRM is really about preventing resales, lending, and enforceing region locking. That is, the people being punished by DRM are those who legally purchased the product.
Moving Against the Tide (Score:5, Interesting)
Given the broad move towards content streaming, and Kindle Unlimited, I'm not hopeful that people will increasingly move towards ownership of what media they consume. Noone cares about DRM of Netflix streams because they accept that they can't do whatever they want with the stream. Steam now allows refunds, so if the DRM prevents the game from working, you can refund it. Legally it's the EULA and not the DRM that prevents you from owning your media, and that practice is a larger problem that doesn't seem to be going anywhere either.
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EULAs carry absolutely no force of law and can be disregarded.
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I'm afraid that's not true.
Though parts of them may be unenforcable, try copying Microsoft Office and distributing it and then telling Microsoft and see how far it gets you in court.
The EULA is the only way you have any rights to the software *at all*. Like the GPL is the only way you have any rights to GPL-d software *at all*. Without it, i.e. if you try to declare it invalid, you have *zero* rights to the software whatsoever.
That's not to say that everything in a contract is legal, the law has things ca
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If you try copying Microsoft Office and distributing it they'll get your ass sued because of copyright infringement and not because of breaching their EULA.
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If
Statutory rules of software copyright (Score:4, Informative)
The EULA is the only way you have any rights to the software *at all*.
Without a EULA, the software would be subject to the statutory rules of software copyright. In the United States, these rules carve out exceptions for the owner of a lawfully made copy to do the following:
- resell that copy (17 USC 109 [copyright.gov]);
- copy the software into RAM to execute it (17 USC 117(a)(1) [copyright.gov]); and
- make private backup copies, but not distribute those copies to others (17 USC 117(a)(2) [copyright.gov]).
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You are describing copyright law, not a EULA.
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Indeed... like all the privacy and other problems, it's not that we can't solve them, it's that nobody cares.
Every person who has Alexa in their living room.
Every person who uses Steam or Netflix or whatever else.
None of them care. They paid for certain rights, got them, and enjoy them. Beyond that, the "ideal" of ownership is, to them, too difficult to obtain and they can't be bothered.
It's a political/legal issue that basically affects a tiny minority of users, who probably don't purchase that content a
Re: Moving Against the Tide (Score:1, Insightful)
Go fckurself. Your apathy and complacency just contributes to the problem. You know better, which makes it even worse.
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Have you ever tried to make a game and sell it? Only the other day on here I was reading an article about "review copies " that were basically scammed out of games-makers. Something that DRM could stop.
There are numerous instances of games-makers tracking pirated downloads, and releasing games without DRM to see how they fare. Piracy is rampant. Even for a small indie, it's a problem... I can't imagine how you think that will scale for a profit-seeking business.
That's not to say that all DRM measures ar
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I've seriously considered my "big project" games that I've worked on for years and I can't picture how you'd get anything back if they were non-DRM or open-source. It just wouldn't happen.
And yet GOG keeps going strong. Maybe your "big project" games are just shit?
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Legally it's the EULA and not the DRM that prevents you from owning your media, and that practice is a larger problem that doesn't seem to be going anywhere either.
I don't know what the law actually says here, but there's a long tradition of owning media and rights attached to that ownership. It seems unlikely to me that a EULA could completely invalidate those rights. I know that EULAs try to do this, but that their enforcement status is ambiguous. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] calls their legal status "somewhat unclear."
I think the longer this stays uncertain, the more likely we are to wind up in a irreversible situation - one where EULAs are broadly accepted by the public and bindi
I don't care about Netflix DRM (Score:2)
DRM devalues your product (Score:5, Insightful)
The value of a product is by definition what someone else is willing to pay for it. Not your asking price. Not even how valuable you consider it. I treasure the wedding ring of my grandmother and wouldn't sell it for millions, even though the average jeweler would probably only pay a few 100 bucks for it. And that is actually the price I could sell it for, not a dime more.
The argument many companies field for DRM is that without, their product becomes easy to copy and hence worthless because it can be multiplied at the whim of the one holding it. What they fail to understand is what they're competing with. They are competing with the product being offered for free. Not legally, true, but for free. You cannot compete with 'free' on price. Unless you'd be willing to pay people to take your product, something that has rarely been done in history, at least without the added requirement to actually use it and pay that way in some other fashion.
What you can compete on is convenience and value. DRM now devalues your product, in the eyes of the customer. With DRM, I cannot easily transport it from my laptop to my desktop, I have to enter keys or insert some physical medium somewhere or, in its worst incarnation, I have to be online all the time and maybe can't even play sensibly the first few weeks after launch because the servers the DRM wants to connect to are overtaxed. These are all problems a cracked version does not have.
A cracked version of even the most fiendishly DRMified product can be used on any computer at any time by any person without jumping through any hoops. At worst it may even be that the buyer of a genuine copy cannot play because the DRM-Servers are not responding while someone who did not buy the game but instead got it from an illegal source can.
This is the main danger of DRM to your product. Because here is what happens: People talk with each other. User A who bought your product, and now cannot play, talks with User B who copied it, and who will show User A how to get a copy himself. User A doesn't even feel guilty because not only did he pay good money for a product he cannot use, he feels cheated by you and has exactly zero problem with a potentially existing conscience copying the game. He paid for it, so according to his moral attitude (and, frankly, probably almost everyone else's too) he has the right to use that game. This is how he learns that copying a game isn't that difficult.
Next time he omits the step that is of no value to him. I.e. buying the game that he then has to copy anyway to actually play it.
DRM damages your product in the eyes of the one paying for it, i.e. the one whose opinion about the value of a product actually matters. Whether you consider it more valuable with DRM is irrelevant.
Steam, GOG and various other online distribution channels have proven that people are willing to pay for games delivered with convenience and hassle-free. Knowing that you get the game you want quickly and easily, not having to store it locally while you don't play it, being able to transfer save games easily between computers and even to other players, a centralized modding repository and so on, these things are of value to people, and they convince them that they're better off paying a few bucks for a game rather than downloading what hopefully is the game, fiddling with it to make it work and then spend some more hours trying to figure out how to add mods or integrate someone else's save games.
Add value to your products and people will buy them. Remove value and people will find other ways to get them in a more valuable version.
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How does pirating a product devalue it? If the pirated product is passed off as a genuine one (as is the case with articles like clothing or other fashion accessories) and of inferior quality, the brand value gets damaged, this is correct. But that's also not the case with illegal distribution of software, in which the people involved usually know that they do not use the genuine product.
The product is not any less valuable. When a million people copy your game, its value to me does not change. Either it is
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Just because someone else is offering a product cheaper does not make your product any less valuable.
Of course it does. Many people who would be satisfied with the lesser product will stop demanding your product; they were paying for more than they were using. Others will perceive it as having less value even if they are currently still willing to purchase it, and will wait longer to make a purchase, or possibly even purchase something else in the interim.
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You honestly think that someone who wants Battlefield will buy CoD instead if he spots BF being available on TPB? For real?
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> When a million people copy your game, its value to me does not change. Either it is worth the asking price or it is not.
Yes and in a so
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Whether you get my money for your product depends on the price you stick to it and the value I attribute to it. If I consider the price on par or lower with the value I give it, I buy. If not, I don't. This is why value is the key factor in the game here.
That you want to offset the costs and make a profit is a given, but you have to see the transaction from the point of view of the one who can decide whether or not it happens: The buyer. He, and only he, is the key factor here.
Whether that person copies the
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Actually, if you add DRM to your product, the value to me, as a potential buyer, goes down. If I have to expect the game to no longer work after a year or two when you turn off your always-online servers, the value of your product is that of a game I can only play for one or maybe two years, not one of a game I can play for however long I consider it good enough to be played.
I guess it's easy to see why the value for something like this is lower.
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While I don't condone this train of thought, it is sadly the way things are going. What we get to see more and more is this sequence of events:
1. Buy content
2. Try playing it
3. Notice it doesn't work
4. Find content in TPB
5. Download content
6. Play content
If that happens repeatedly, I can fully understand if the user omits steps 1-3 since they essentially are pointless to him.
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Value of a good doesn't necessarily equate to the end cost of the good. It's a factor, but I have the right to set whatever price I want on an item. Your only right as a consumer is to buy or not buy it. That's it.
> I treasure the wedding ring of my grandmother and wouldn't sell it for millions
This is a shit example. That diamond in that wedding ring (or any modern one) costs the De
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Value of a good doesn't necessarily equate to the end cost of the good. It's a factor, but I have the right to set whatever price I want on an item. Your only right as a consumer is to buy or not buy it. That's it.
Slight correction. Asking price is what you mean, not value. And yes, the asking price is only influenced by manufacturing cost insofar that the cost establishes the minimum asking price (barring any cross financing), since selling below would mean that not producing is more sensible. The customer assesses the value of a product and compares the value he attributes to the product with the asking price. If the value I give a good or service is higher than the asking price, I buy. If it isn't, I don't.
This is a shit example. That diamond in that wedding ring (or any modern one) costs the De Beers company a handful of dollars. They sell it to you for vast sums more. They do this partially by artificially restricting the availability of natural diamonds, calling lab created diamonds less valuable, and telling women that your man doesn't love you if he doesn't give you a piece of a shiny rock - specifically the TYPE of rock that De Beers says is valuable.
Again,
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I didn't misrepresent what I said. Asking price is what I was talking about, it's not necessarily equated to value.
> C'mon, this was a pretty civil exchange 'til here and you actually had a few arguments that deserved an answer, did you really have to end with an ad-hominem? Next time I should read the whole reply first before starting to address the points...
Fair point - my apologies. I'm a creator and it bugs me incessantly t
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You certainly have the right to receive compensation for your creation. You also have the right to set the terms, but in the end, it's the buyer that decides whether he accepts that price and the terms attached. And the terms become more and more the reason why I don't buy. There have been quite a few games in the past that I really wanted. Because I love the franchise, because I loved the idea presented, but then I saw the terms and decided that I cannot accept them. The 2013 Sim City was such a title. I h
Re:DRM devalues your product (Score:5, Insightful)
You make some decent points, but I feel compelled to call you out on this one:
>But more importantly if I say I want to be paid for you to listen to my music then that's my inherent right. You don't have a right to listen to it.
No. Absolutely false. Once you release your music so that anyone else can hear it, sharing that music becomes their inherent right - the right to share information predates even the existence of language.
The only thing that stops them is copyright law - a completely artificial legal monopoly granted to you, that artificially restricts their inherent rights to share information. That's granted as a social compromise designed to encourage the creation of more content, but you have absolutely no inherent right to expect it. The only inherent right you have is to either never create the music in the first place, or to never share it with anyone else.
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Hold onto that thought. > That's granted as a social compromise designed to encourage the creation of more content, but you have absolutely no inherent right to expect it.
That's what any right is. A social compromise. Laws, rights, etc are ALL built around the ideas of having social constru
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And now, you've completely lost any legitimacy you may have had.
Comparing the natural rights of copying information and to exist, to the artificial right of legal monopoly as if they
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At least as long as it doesn't keep them from playing the game [softonic.com]...
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Well, that small minority even got Amazon to stop selling it due to complaints [softonic.com]...
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Actually, I was one of those buying Skylines. Pretty nice game, actually. Wouldn't have bought it without SC2013, though.
Thanks, EA! ;)
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Now I'm curious, who am I shilling for?
And where's my paycheck?
Good faith (Score:1)
I'd like to think that people are moral enough to generally act in good faith when the other party is acting in good faith. I believe that applies to software and piracy. An example would be opening the source to products once they're essentially obsolete. Or require a one-time online activation when a product is installed, but releasing a patch to remove the need for online activation when the servers are taken offline.
Copyright length also needs to be shortened and be different depending on the type of wo
GOG is successful, despite instant piracy (Score:5, Insightful)
They manage to thrive, even though every one of their releases immediately ends up on the torrents and other channels to download.
That says more about the actual value of DRM than it does about piracy.
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GOG and CD Projekt succeeds because they make fantastic games (Such as the Witcher).
They also don't abuse their customers either through nickel and dime DLC packs, or DRM and spyware.
Other companies and platforms could take a lesson.
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That's because a pirated copy does not equal a lost sale. Most people turn to piracy because of a lack of funds, or "principle" which would prevent them from purchasing a copy anyway. Anecdotally I have seen people pirate a game of dubious quality rather than risk the funds, but I would argue that would often just be a sale and return, rather than a lost sale.
It's like the case when an 11 yo with a 20 dollar a week allowance who downloads 1000 songs. Did the record companies loose 1000 dollars? No. At
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Yes, it does.
Producer says "I will give you Thing in exchange for $Amount."
Person A says "OK," and hands over $Amount, and gets a copy of Thing. A sale has been made.
Person B says "No." No sale has been made.
Person C says "I do not want to give you $Amount, but I want Thing," and illegally copies Thing. Producer has lost a sale, because Person C got Thing, but Producer did not get $Amount.
The point is, there's a difference between 'not making a s
I'm a fan of gog. (Score:3)
No steam lock-down installer bullshit, no DRM, awesome games, great deals, an abundance of great old and new games, a website not built by complete morons ... All in all a very, very good e-commerce offering for digital goods.
This is how it should be done. I'll probably support their initiative for that reason alone.
My 2 eurocents.
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No, it isn't. Just because somebody snarkily re-acronyms something doesn't make it the truth.
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The rights of one party act as restrictions on others.
If I have the right to life, you are prohibited from killing me. If I control copyright on a work, you are prohibited from copying it without permission.
So they are essentially the same thing, and the initialism has always been Rights.
Restrictions for more parties than rights (Score:2)
The rights of one party act as restrictions on others.
In DRM, the majority of people act as the restricted party, not the party with rights. Therefore, DRM is "digital restrictions management" for more parties than it is "digital rights management".
If I have the right to life, you are prohibited from killing me. If I control copyright on a work, you are prohibited from copying it without permission.
The prohibition of murder isn't quite the best example. In the case of copyright, far more parties are affected by the restrictions than enjoy meaningful exercise of the rights. This imbalance does not apply to the prohibition of murder.
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But it is the truth
I will never forget... (Score:4, Interesting)
I purchased Carmageddon TD2000. It was an expensive game when it came out. I had a pretty beefy computer back then (for the day) but the game play was so laggy that it was basically unplayable. It was so unplayable that I read the entire manual. I noticed something that stuck a note in my mind. There were two lines (don't remember the exact words so I am paraphrasing it) that were at odds of each other. The first said that the game is copy protected. The second said that you are entitled to make one back up copy of the game. They had an email address so I emailed them about it. I asked since I am allowed to make 1 legal backup copy, but the game is copy protected, how do I do it. I was shocked when I got a reply from them. It only had two words in the email (other than my quoted text). It just simply said "You dont". Pretty much summed up what corporate thinks of the people who buy their games....
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The 1 legal copy that you are allowed to make was not a backup copy but the copy on your computer to play the game.
This odd phrasing was codified in laws specifically for software.
Support DRM-free alternatives! (Score:1)
I buy PC games from GOG. No GOG, or at least another DRM-free store, no sale.
If we want DRM to die, we have to change the supply/demand curve so that happens. It has to become a death knell to release your game without a DRM-free version, because people won't buy locked down shit. We have to support companies that release DRM-free games... which many are doing nowadays.
People need to stop this mentality that they need game X. You don't need it. It's a luxury item, and there are hundreds of other great
Does GOG allow the resale of a product? (Score:1)
And do the platform support that transfer?
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The game doesn't have DRM so you can sell it directly to another owner. There's no support on GOG to do this, since there's no DRM, no need to "have support" for it. Just sell it directly.
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There's nothing to prohibit you from doing so physically, but the platform itself doesn't reflect that action. So you can download the backup installer, then burn it to a disc and sell it once. (That would be the licence transfer you are entitled to for that copy) but the platform has no way to detect or update your account after doing so, so you could do it again. (Being in breach of copyright.) Of course, I'm also sure that the ToS prohibits doing this period, but that's just legal wording until someone e
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That was quite a bit of text making it somewhat unclear.
But the terms are such that you aren't allowed to sell your copy (make a new one but abandoning yours so to say.)
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This should had ended with a question mark.
GOG is the method Nintendo *should* follow (Score:2)
DRM pun in Witcher 3 (Score:2)
That was funny and not very subtle