About DRM and Freedom
I now find myself in a position that i wouldn't ever think i would be in: I recently found that i am in favor of DRM (at least some form of it).
Here's the thing: I would like to publish a monthly emagazine in PDF format and charge a small amount for each issue, but i want to set a password for it or some other mechanism of the sort in order to prevent anyone from just copying it and giving it away for free, wasting all the work i've done. Is this so bad?
Maybe you're just viewing this subject from the point of big corporations inflating prices and making contents inaccessible to many people, but what about my case? You see, you can't impose freedom. You can't say that with libre software people have freedom and that the software users are in control and then restrict what the users can do with the software.
You may argue that this doesn't contribute to society or that it may even be harmful to it, but take teachers as an example: the work they do is beneficial to society - should they work for free? That's not freedom - that's exploitation. You might as well approve those slave work sweat shops in some parts of the world, because they're "working for the benefit of society".
LibreOffice3 Writer gives its users the option to export documents in PDF format and set restrictions to the use of that document (disable print, content copy, modifications,...) but those options aren't enforced. If those options aren't going to be applied why give them in the first place? I'd say this is fooling its users.
In the previous given example about LibreOffice the developers are in control - not the users. You might as well ban encryption altogether or even passwords for log ins.
There should be a more fair and balanced approach to these kind of issues, from both parts: the corporations who support DRM but that do so trying to impose draconian measures on users and the defenders of freedom that, sometimes, forget the real significance of that word.
> Here's the thing: I would like to publish a monthly emagazine in PDF
> format and charge a small amount for each issue, but i want to set a
> password for it or some other mechanism of the sort in order to
> prevent anyone from just copying it and giving it away for free,
> wasting all the work i've done. Is this so bad?
It is, as making artificial restrictions of user's freedom. There are
ways to get money from useful work like writing an emagazine, for
example accepting donations and publishing the next issue more quickly
if enough money is collected. (Wouldn't consider people reading my text
"wasting all the work", the word I use for it is "success".)
> You
> can't say that with libre software people have freedom and that the
> software users are in control and then restrict what the users can do
> with the software.
Freedom is not being controlled by others, it's not a freedom to control
what others can do. See
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.html for a longer
explanation of this difference.
> You may argue that this doesn't contribute to society or that it may
> even be harmful to it, but take teachers as an example: the work they
> do is beneficial to society - should they work for free?
Teachers I know teach students (although not all call it teaching and I
sometimes need years to realize that they taught me). They spend real
time and real work to share knowledge with other people and help them
understand it. They don't get paid for forbidding the students to help
others.
> LibreOffice3 Writer gives its users the option to export documents in
> PDF format and set restrictions to the use of that document (disable
> print, content copy, modifications,...) but those options aren't
> enforced. If those options aren't going to be applied why give them in
> the first place? I'd say this is fooling its users.
It's a good argument against password protection which can be easily
broken by users knowing the password and sharing it with the document.
Every DRM is like this, only rubber-hose cryptography like DMCA-style
laws might be effective.
> In the previous given example about LibreOffice the developers are in
> control - not the users. You might as well ban encryption altogether
> or even passwords for log ins.
Encryption and passwords can be and often are used to protect its users.
I am a member!
I think we need more details to really help.
The free software position though isn't against you making money from an e-publication. They aren't against you charging for software either. It might be difficult to charge for software where anybody who gets at it has the right to redistribute though.
What I say to this is stop being lazy and think about the consequences. Not just for your readers, but for you as well. Think about all the possible solutions and business models that could solve this problem without implementing DRM.
You can charge for a publication without implementing DRM. If the charge is reasonable it is less likely people will bother hunting it down elsewhere. If the amount of piracy is astronomical than go with an advertising based publication method and make it so easy to get at without paying for it that it makes no sense to go elsewhere.
If you can't/don't want to sell advertising there are other easily implementable solutions like: Google AdSense (amongst others). By not restricting the publication to paid subscribers you will gain the advantage of additional revenue from advertising.
There are other ideas too like have a release date for the magazine and artificially delaying the release if a certain amount of money is not raised by that date. You would still release it no matter what though. It just would be an extra X days. You would then publish the front page and the article index page to entice users to contribute. Once you find there is a story you want to read it's a lot more likely you you will contribute financially.
Preventing people to share is always bad. Please, consider a license authorizing sharing (even Creative Commons BY-NC-ND, which prevents derivative works and any commercial exploitation of your work) and find out another business model.
People may actually buy the PDF even though it is freely downloadable elsewhere. Crowd funding, as Michał Masłowski proposed, is another option, which would be the correct analogy with the teacher paid to do her work. Commercials probably are the more common way for online writers to make money. You could consider making printed copies, selling goodies, etc.
Here are some of my thoughts. Feel free to disregard all of them. :-)
On 07/07/2012 02:33 PM, name at domain wrote:
> I now find myself in a position that i wouldn't ever think i would be
> in: I recently found that i am in favor of DRM (at least some form of
> it).
>
> Here's the thing: I would like to publish a monthly emagazine in PDF
> format and charge a small amount for each issue, but i want to set a
> password for it or some other mechanism of the sort in order to
> prevent anyone from just copying it and giving it away for free,
> wasting all the work i've done. Is this so bad?
Your goal in writing an emagazine is for people to read it, right? Or is
the goal just to make money? Your goal in making music is for people to
hear it, right? Or is the goal just to make money? Your goal in
writing computer software is for people to use it, right? Or is the goal
just to make money?
The answer to those questions determines the value of DRM.
If your goal is just to make money from those willing to pay for it,
then DRM suits your needs (but only to some extent). It's the very
thing DRM was designed to do: dominate the content so it can ONLY be
used the way you want it to (limited distribution, fee-for-distribution,
etc.).
If your goal is to get people to use the content, then DRM completely
undermines your efforts. It also encourages those people who want to
read it, but don't want to pay to read it, to break the law by making
illegal copies.
In addition there is the analog hole. A user pays for a copy of the
item and displays it on their screen, or plays it through some speakers,
or prints it to a printer. You then snap a picture, take a video,
record some audio, run through a scanner, whatever.
In such cases, DRM doesn't accomplish any of the goals it had.
In short, DRM only keeps those people who are already honest honest.
But those same honest people will likely donate to your effort (if they
find value in it) in the first place.
I believe "donate" buttons should be more prevalent. There are times
I've used a free software product to accomplish some great thing that I
was so happy about, I would've right there on the spot clicked a donate
button and contributed $1, $5, $10 depending on the thing. And I would
do this from time to time.
> Maybe you're just viewing this subject from the point of big
> corporations inflating prices and making contents inaccessible to many
> people, but what about my case? You see, you can't impose freedom. You
> can't say that with libre software people have freedom and that the
> software users are in control and then restrict what the users can do
> with the software.
By definition, DRM is about creating a monopoly. That's all it does.
Ever. It creates the legal environment forcing only those willing to
kowtow to the personal whims of the individual or corporation as to how
they can access or use the content.
DRM never does anything, ever, except create monopolies (and
subsequently encourage people to break the law).
> You may argue that this doesn't contribute to society or that it may
> even be harmful to it, but take teachers as an example: the work they
> do is beneficial to society - should they work for free? That's not
> freedom - that's exploitation. You might as well approve those slave
> work sweat shops in some parts of the world, because they're "working
> for the benefit of society".
Digital media is unlike anything in history. There has never been
anything like it. It is unique in its nature because copies are
essentially free, and they are exact. That has not been true of
anything else ever in the history of mankind. There was always a labor
involved in copying, and there was an alteration from the original
(perhaps an improvement, but the copy was always different from the source).
It takes some effort to produce the initial product. A person puts in
their time, talents, knowledge, skills, whatever. They create
something. And once it's created, it takes no effort at all to produce
100% accurate duplicates (a tiny amount of electricity, and an
application of the hardware and time a person interested in pursuing the
thing already possesses anyway).
The teacher example is different. She operates individually. She's
interactive. She can respond to new questions, new situations. She has
animation, a mind, can reason, adapt, etc.
The digital content, even if its' a video, even if it's an intuitive
learning program, is completely static and is conveyed only as the
author originally presented it. It has no ability to react as a person
does, but only as it has been instructed to do so, and only on the
equipment to which it has been instructed to execute. It cannot respond
to new questions. It cannot work on new equipment. It cannot do
anything other than exactly what it was programmed to do.
Digital work is completely different from a teacher.
> LibreOffice3 Writer gives its users the option to export documents in
> PDF format and set restrictions to the use of that document (disable
> print, content copy, modifications,...) but those options aren't
> enforced. If those options aren't going to be applied why give them in
> the first place? I'd say this is fooling its users.
This is a good question. I can see the desire to have a form of lock or
key of some kind to indicate that the content has not been altered from
the original production. That way if somebody down the line gets a copy
of the work which still has my name on it, they can compare that version
to the official version I released (which has some kind of key
associated with it) to know whether or not the version they've received
has been altered. That way the integrity of my original work remains,
even if derived works have been introduced. I would actually argue that
this ability is essential. We see it in md5 checksums, SHA-1 hashes,
CRCs, etc.
This ability doesn't require passwords and locks, but can be a simple
number uniquely associated with the document, something that will
identify that document from others in some easy way.
That being said, PDFs are generally created for distribution, not
original content modification. However, there are times when only
certain people need to author content, the rest need to read it only.
Locks have purposes in these cases. It is to control access to the
content so a person can't (intentionally or otherwise) destroy a
previous work.
There are some uses for passwords, locks and keys, but they relate more
to protecting the author's content and integrity, of verifying and
maintaining the original nature of that author's work, versus any
perceived monetary benefits derived from creating a monopoly over the
content which cannot be altered, extended or incorporated into
derivative works. Especially in the digital realm. Once a work is
completed, it's there forever. It's able to be copied forever. It's
able to be used forever. It's able to be built upon forever.
The original author's work need not ever be changed or compromised for
billions of derivative works to be created from it. What the author
contributed to the digital commons will always be there.
> In the previous given example about LibreOffice the developers are in
> control - not the users. You might as well ban encryption altogether
> or even passwords for log ins.
Not so. The user has the option of using that encryption, those
passwords, the locks and keys, or not. And giving users those options
gives them both freedom and power over the technology ... which is
exactly what the purposes of free software are -- to empower users to
use those things they want, if they want, but not to keep them from
using something they want.
> There should be a more fair and balanced approach to these kind of
> issues, from both parts: the corporations who support DRM but that do
> so trying to impose draconian measures on users and the defenders of
> freedom that, sometimes, forget the real significance of that word.
It doesn't work like that in practice. Why? Because corporations have
a vested interest in owning monopolies. They have poured 100s of
millions of dollars into campaigns to get laws passed which grant them
monopolies over data, services, portions of the EM spectrum, and all
manner of other things. They are not in pursuit of what's right, fair,
best for people, best for the environment, societies, long terms goals
of humanity. Their pursuits are of one interest only: power (which
equates also to money).
All DRM *EVER* does is create a monopoly. It never does anything else.
And corporate monopolies are just not good things for anybody. Ever.
They are only good at making the owning author of the monopoly content
rich. But they do so at everybody else's expense.
Monopolies are evil. DRM only creates monopolies. DRM is, therefore, evil.
Best regards,
Rick C. Hodgin
Facing the facts:
For the first time in years i think i'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel (maybe it's just a train coming right at me to run me over. I don't know.), I think that i might have something that i can afford and like to do, and make a modest living with. What you're saying is that it's immoral for me to do so.
What if i have to cover for expenses like transportation or payed interviews and the donations ain't enough to cover it? Then, i would have to redirect my time and efforts to something else so that i could make ends meet. My project would die before it even starts. That's what i meant by "wasting my work".
Unfortunately that's the kind of world we live in. It should be different, it could be different (that's the great tragedy), but unfortunately it's not. I know we all should work hard to make things different, but in the meantime, while the world doesn't change, we all need to make a living.
I've tried hard to follow the "be the change you want to see in the world" principle and it has only hurt me. I'm not saying that i have given up trying, but i think it wouldn't hurt the world if i sold PDF files with some sort of DRM. If people don't like that sort of thing they always have the option not to buy my stuff. I'm not forcing anything on anyone.
I want people to read my work and make some money for a living. You talk about user's freedom but you expect them to be polite and willingly adhere to the licensing rules - i know that doesn't happen often in the real world. It looks like people that want to implement DRM are always supposed to be evil and that people that are against DRM are always supposed to be polite and honest.
I wouldn't mind if people printed my emagazine because that would cost them more than the price that i would be asking for it online! I just worry about someone buying one copy and then upload it somewhere on the Internet and everybody else would have a free copy.
Publicity is something that could make things more balanced, but i don't know how much companies will want to publicize on my magazine. I also intend to freely publicize free software in my magazine, but it seems awkward to do so in a DRM protected document... I just want to make a modest living with something i think i can actually do and that i like to do.
Many people don't donate to things that they usually would because they can't afford to (like i haven't donated anything to Trisquel yet because i am going trough some very, very hard times); i wouldn't mind if those people had a free copy of my work, but the problem is that if they have a free copy and they share it, then those who could actually pay for it aren't going to do so because they already have it for free.
I'm really lost in this one...
I am a member!
I find it humorous that you make the assumption that DRM is to your advantage. It probably isn't to your advantage as a writer to release your epublication with DRM. You will only be limiting your customer base. If it really is that popular it will get pirated either way. Chances are if it isn't that popular you won't be able to afford to implement DRM around it anyway. Without DRM it is fairly trivial to publish. With DRM someone else is going to get a cut and you are going to limit your potential.
Generally speaking you are better off hitting the masses with a product than trying to fill a niche in the market. :) while ThinkPenguin might be hitting a niche today you don't think it's going to be a niche for ever do you?
Focus on the masses and stop worrying about piracy. All those non-paying customers will only increase the publicity and in turn produce more readers. The number of readers willing to pay might be small. However if you had 1,000 readers paying for your work in a DRM format you might have 10,000 readers if made available without DRM- and at zero cost. Of the 10,000 1,500 might donate equal or more that of which you would have charged on a DRM'd publication.
After reading this post, I wanted to make the same remark as Chris: if I were you, I would not assume that DRM would prevent your "project [to] die before it even starts". Quite the opposite actually. Indeed, you would lose, in the first place, all readers that do not want their freedom to share to be denied (even if they may not plan to share).
Sharing is at the the basis of any community/society/civilization. Denying this freedom is evil. Everybody needs to make a living and, in my opinion, should never deny other's freedoms to do so. It would be like justifying robbing to make ends meet.
Here are some examples of journalism released under Creative Commons licenses.
Thank you for all your comments on this subject. If i do go ahead with my project here's what i will do: publish it for free and ask for donations, explaining in each issue exactly the dilemma i had with DRM and Freedom, to give people the notion to why it is so important for them to donate whatever they can. Many won't donate, but some might donate much more than i would charge for the magazine, this way compensating for those who didn't. And with some luck i'll be able to get some more revenue from payed advertizing.
I'll advertize for free in each issue some entities/projects that i want to support and can't do so financially, like Trisquel (when the time comes i'll be asking Ruben if i'm allowed to do so).
My magazine will have some original content but many will be from third parties, like selected news that i'll translate to my language. That way i'll be also contributing to them, if they'd like a copy, by helping to translate their content onto other languages.
I can imagine how it would be like if they started to have the kind of doubts i was having and decided to charge me a fee for each article i wanted to publish in my magazine! Sharing IS good!
P.S: I still hate LibreOffice for giving the options to restrict PDF documents content extraction and printing and then not applying them.
You have not written what will this magazine be about. You may find your first readers (and maybe donators) here! :-)
That's nice. :)
But the magazine will be entirely in Portuguese... I estimate that the first issue will be released in the beginning of 2013 because i want to have at least three issues already finished at that time to later compensate for some difficulty or delay that might arise in getting/preparing content. I also have to configure a web server and create a website, etc.
The magazine will be about life experiences, insight and perspective. It will also have sections where i'll review books, movies and documentaries that have touched me deeply and are a reference to me (like Orwell's 1984 or documentaries like Baraka and Earthlings); in each issue i'll also try to get into that cultural section works that are in the public domain and are freely accessible.
I'll also include a section where i source news and opinion articles that i think reflect the kind of world that we live in and the kind of mentalities that inhabit it. I think i have some sort of talent for distinguishing factual and coherent news/opinions from plain bulls**t, so many of those articles will be sourced from globalresearch.ca website. No mainstream media "creative information". Hell no!
At the end it will have a free topic section where now i think that for the first issue i'll be writing precisely about the evils and misconceptions about DRM. :)
My country is much in need for real information and unbiased views about the world and actuality. There are some excellent websites out there, but most of their articles are in English, so i'll try to get some good info for these people here.
I don't know the level of acceptance the magazine will have here, because all most people want to know about is some football player's new hot wheels or how some famous lady was dressed (or undressed) in some elitist gala, but i'll have fun doing it anyway.
I can read Portuguese. ;-)
Is your country Portugal or Brazil or Angola or Mozambique or ...?
"1984" probably is my favourite book. You may be interested in a sort of modern (2004) adaptation called "Globalia" by Jean-Christophe Rufin, who won a Goncourt award with "Rouge Brésil" (this one must exist in Portuguese; for "Globalia" I do not know).
I am a member!
You might want to do some research on your potential customer base. For instance how are you going to promote your magazine? Is the cost of promotion going to kill any profits you might make? How long is it going to take to get off the ground? To whom are you going to promote your magazine? The publishing industry is struggling as it is in much larger markets. It might be extremely difficult to build a customer base even if you give it away.
You probably won't be able to answer these questions although you should probably at least think about where you are going to promote it and to whom. Figure out how much that will cost.
Google is probably going to be prohibitively expensive. So are most other routes of advertising. Maybe you can get it bundled with a larger magazine some how. I'm not sure how that would work with an e-publication though. Maybe you can find web sites of a similar topic to help you with promotion. Give them a cut of the profits and go from there.
The idea of selling PDFs may not be bad either. All of us were arguing against DRMs and in favor of a free distribution. For instance, you could propose some articles for free on a website and propose to subscribe to a PDF version with additional articles.
I am a member!
What makes you think that using a pdf is a good idea?
Can you name any magazine that's successful and it is distributed via pdf's?
Wouldn't it be more suitable to have some form of online pay-walled site (or gratis+ads) that has the option to save the page as pdf ?
@Magic Banana: My country is Portugal. Didn't know about Globalia; i'll keep it in mind and try to find if there's some translation in Portuguese or English. Thanks for the tip!
I really don't know how i'm going to promote my magazine (maybe giving it to people i know and, hopefully, the word gets spread) :). The corporate media does all it can to distort the facts and to misguide the public, so, due to the frank and unbiased nature of my magazine, i guess that no commercial publication will want to associate itself to mine. That also applies to advertizing.
I'll try to do it for fun and, whenever i can, at zero cost and publish it only in PDF in the first year, and if the donations ain't enough and i know that it has a reasonable number of readers i'll consider going to print afterward.
The general motto of the magazine does appeal to a more mature audience, so the medium seems to be exactly the most inappropriate...
Right now the only thing i have in mind is it's graphical display. Since it's not going to print should i make it in landscape view, maybe in 1366x768 px? Wikipedia says that that resolution has dethroned 1024x768 px last year (i think). Will it display reasonably good in 10 inch screen netbooks? And i'm also learning my way around Scribus since i haven't used it before.
Globália existe em português: http://www.wook.pt/ficha/globalia/a/id/178346 :-)
Veja também essa entrevista em português sobre esse livro.
I was also thinking of Flattr to partly fund your project. In a better world where all works would be, by law, free to redistribute, the authors would make a living from a public tax (on Internet connections) à la Flattr.
You are not alone. Dominick from Jupiter Broadcasting's Coder Radio once offered DRM free software either on a smartphone app or standard software and recently made the decision to go back to DRM. One of his reasons was for people ripping off his software and creating copycats.
Btw here is the link with the talk about his app being pirated because he didn't have DRM in it.
He talks about it at the 48:30 mark: http://www.jupiterbroadcasting.com/21436/to-the-cloud-alice-cr-05/
I am a member!
DRM-free is not an effortless endeavour. Nor is DRM though. If you can't stand your work being used without compensation don't publish it to begin with. It'll solve the problem. Ultimately people pirate with or without DRM and you are only hurting your customers who are more likely to pirate if you implement DRM.
You give people an excuse and they will take it.
There will always be dishonest people. The work you do is for those who
will use it rightly. And those people will donate or participate or in
some way repay that which you give in effort to it.
On 07/09/2012 10:11 PM, name at domain wrote:
> DRM-free is not an effortless endeavour. Nor is DRM though. If you
> can't stand your work being used without compensation don't publish it
> to begin with. It'll solve the problem. Ultimately people pirate with
> or without DRM and you are only hurting your customers who are more
> likely to pirate if you implement DRM.
>
> You give people an excuse and they will take it.
