OneAndOneIs2

In response to my post about watermarks, there were a couple of comments I wanted to address fully.

One was an AC saying DRM is great & watermarking useless because DRM means artists get compensation because you can't pirate their work, while watermarks don't prevent P2P sharing of that work.

The other was essentially saying that no protection methods at all should be applied, that information should be allowed to flow freely across the internet without any restrictions at all.

Fairly opposing views, really :o) I don't fully agree with either.

Let me start by talking about copyright. Copyright is the protection applied to an "intellectual" creation such as a story, a painting, a performance, and so forth. More recently, it's been broadened to include code for computer programs as well.

This protection states that the person who creates a work is the owner of it, and has certain rights about what is done with it: He can, for instance, allow one publishing company to distribute copies of it whilst forbidding another. He can also sell it at whatever price he wishes to, subject to market pressures of course.

Now, some P2P users hold the opinion that "information wants to be free" and justify downloading music rather than buying it by pointing out that it doesn't cost the creator anything for those copies to be made, so why should he be paid for it?

This is, essentially, a point of view that calls for the abolishing of copyright: It demands that the creator of a work should not be allowed to control the distribution of that work.

I don't agree with that. I'll be the first to argue that copyright is being over-applied these days: It lasts too long, and in many cases no longer serves the public interest, which is why it was originally created. Copyright is supposed to encourage creators to create by guaranteeing them the opportunity to be rewarded for it. It is not supposed to give Disney perpetual rights to monopolise Mickey Mouse.

For a personal example: I've got a few articles online. I've actually had a request for permission to have one of them published in a magazine. Without copyright, my permission wouldn't have been needed: They could simply have put it onto their mag. without my permission and enjoyed making money from my efforts. That's hardly fair to me, is it?

Or a more widespread problem lack of copyright would give: GPL software. The GPL is completely reliant on copyright to establish its copyleft: Essentially, the GPL says "This code is copyright and you aren't allowed to use it, but we'll let you use it if you abide by these terms" - remove copyright, and the GPL is worthless. Nothing would stop companies like Microsoft helping themselves to GPL code & making it proprietary: The creator would have no right to stop them doing so. Software would become essentially either proprietary (unpublished source) or public-domain, with no in-between states like GPL'ed Free Software. If you release source code, you release it to everyone, for any use they want, unrestricted.

Sure, you can make the argument about copyright not being needed for music: Artists make more money performing in concert than they do from the CDs & iTunes - they could do very well releasing music 100% free and making all their cash from concerts & "Special edition boxed set" gimmicks. But how does that work for books & movies? Websites? Blogs?

So no, I can't agree that copyrights should be removed. The creator of a work should be granted ownership of that work. Sharing copyright music over P2P against the copyright owner's wishes is illegal, and it should be. If you're against that view, you're against any intellectual creation being owned. You're even anti-GPL.

So, having established that, IMHO, copyright should exist, that just leads to the question of enforcement.

In the past, it was easy enough: Minor piracy like borrowing a CD from a library or a friend and recording it to tape was a small enough matter that it could be ignored. Piracy on a big enough scale to be a significant problem, was a case of a few people making a lot of copies, and was easy enough to shut down.

And then came the internet, MP3s, and P2P. Here, the music industry screwed up in spectacular fashion.

People were already used to buying music. Even in a world full of PCs with CD-writers, CDs were overwhelmingly obtained by buying them legally. Had the music industry immediately leapt upon MP3s and created sites where you could download MP3s at pennies per track, people would have carried on in their existing habits, and bought their MP3s. As has been demonstrated time and again, people will pay money to get things legally, even when the option exists of getting it free illegally. Piracy would never have become the problem it is today had there been a legal alternative.

But there wasn't. And when you can't get something legally, you'll get it illegally. As shown so very well by music sharing over P2P. And now, of course, people are in the habit of getting MP3s for free and the music industry is in a big flap. And along comes DRM.

And DRM, I do disagree with. And here's why:

• Firstly, it's utterly worthless. I say that unreservedly and without qualification. There is no such thing as an effective DRM scheme: If you can read a CD to play it, you can read it to copy it. Reading is reading is reading. Nothing will ever stop a hard-core pirate from bypassing DRM. (Or the average Window user who knows to hold down the Shift key). And since P2P works exponentially to make copies, it only takes one cracked CD, and the whole world can have it in the space of a day or two. DRM will never stop people who are determined to get their music without paying for it. It's that simple.
• Secondly, as stated above: The average person will take the legal option if it exists. DRM is not needed: The only people who will refuse to pay for their music are the people who wouldn't have bought it if the free option didn't exist. The music industry furiously insists that every music download is a lost sale. This is garbage, pure and simple. Any loss in sales generated by the small percentage of people who download the music & never buy it but would have had the free option never existed, is more than offset by the increased number of people who will hear the music because they downloaded it & buy the CD because of the increased publicity downloading gave it.
• Thirdly, DRM creates criminals instead of removes them. I have never downloaded a single movie: I always buy the DVD. And yet I have copy protected DVDs that I can't watch on my PC without downloading software to bypass (See point 1). In other words, I am the movie industry's model customer: I always buy and never download. And yet, they have made me a criminal by forcing me to bypass their DRM in order to watch my paid-for DVD.
• Fourthly, DRM creates criminals: It is illegal to bypass DRM in many countries. If I have a music CD, such as the new Coldplay one, I can't listen to it on my Linux PC. So what would I do after buying it & finding I can't use it? Why, I would surf on over to a P2P site & download MP3s of all the tracks. Which is illegal, even though I own the CD. By crippling the CD, the music industry will drive people to download pirate music.
• Fifthly, DRM only bothers the people it isn't targeted at: An honest user buys a disc and can't play it due to DRM. A dishonest user downloads the pirated MP3s and can do anything he likes with them.

So while I believe in copyright, I don't believe in DRM: I won't knowingly buy a disc that has DRM measures unless I know I can easily bypass it. But I would buy a watermarked disc. Because:

• Watermarks do not cripple the media: You can use it for any and all fair use purposes without any legal or technical obstacles.
• Watermarks are not trivial to remove: If you create a working MP3 of a DRM CD, then you have bypassed the DRM & all bets are off. But if you create a working MP3 of a watermarked CD, you don't know if you're removed the watermark. You don't know how many watermarks there are, or what form they take.
• Watermarks (if implemented properly) aids in enforcing copyright law by identifying the owner of the media being shared over P2P. It doesn't change the law, it merely makes it easier to enforce it. This is unlike DRM which actually changes what law you are breaking: You aren't violating copyright, you're breaking the DMCA!

So, in summary:

• Copyright is good, because a creator should be rewarded for his creation
• DRM is bad, because it only causes problems for honest users
• Watermarks are good, because they only cause problems for dishonest users