DTO DRM Versus Rental DRM
I was just thinking, but wouldn’t some of the practical arguments against DRM be invalid against rentals?
For one, when you say “rent” the implication is that of mere possession and not ownership. You “have” it but it’s not yours. Unless you are one of those people who think it’s within their right to Netflix and copy the DVDs and send it back. Which may be something that is legal somewhere, who knows. But it’s a very slippery ethical position.
Now we know (at least, you ought to) because of copyright, when you buy some movie you may “have” it, except you sort of don’t own it. You only own the physical copy. To really own the movie you have to own the copyright as well as the copy.
So in a sense, the way copyright items are monetized is just an elaborate rental scheme with variable rental periods? Which is why I think in some bizarro-alternate universe where laws made sense, it may be legal to Netflix all you want and copy every DVD you got in the mail. But let’s return to reality for now.
If we only rent and don’t “buy to own,” a lot of the fair use arguments people make suddenly have less traction. LOL @ time shifting? Do we have the right to make AMVs from rented source material, for example? It’s like, even if you created something original, you are keeping things beyond the time limitation you first agreed to. I’m not sure if those fair use arguments are any less valid overall (probably not), honestly, but it’s harder to swallow.
When it comes to download-to-own content, the analogy extends similarly with a DVD sold in a brick-and-mortar store. The media companies fear that people will copy it and distribute it (they will fear the man who copies every Netflix DVD he gets), so they slap DRMs on the stuff. It’s just like the Venetian manuscript sellers during the Renaissance that prompted the birth of copyright law in recorded history. [Or whatever the history buff that will correct me in the comments says.] But I bet most of them are comfortable if their readers were buying leases or rentals instead of permanent copies. They can probably forgo the DRM, at least with less resistance than without the time limit.
Cutting to the chase, there’s a disconnect between what we feel what we are entitled to do versus what we are programmed as right or wrong. It’s wrong to keep your movie rentals beyond the rental period, which is why Blockbuster got away with a business model for decades making $ off late fees. That’s money libraries use to supplement their income.
At the same time, rental is a concept that is foreign and disgusting to some. And these are the people who think rental is crappy value because you don’t own it when you part with your money and your rented video at the end of the day. I think that’s only because home videos is so cheap now? Do they always buy their own bowling shoes? Rollerblades? Skis? I can’t say. But it always puzzles me when people argue against a rental-based DRM video delivery platform because I convert that “it’s a rental” into a monetary equivalence. There’s nothing inherently bad or good about limited-time use with a fee. If you had to pay more to own something, that something being owned needs to convey value behind the price difference. That’s how you calculate if you want to retain your leased car, right? And if you only plan on watching something once, a rental is all you need. Watch and just be done with it.
But it makes sense why a subscription-based DRM delivery platform is the more palatable but equal alternative. Some people are less irked by it. But with the iTunes Music Store rising to its leadership position, it shows that people like quantized DTO rather than an all-you-can-eat buffet that probably cost just as much to the end user even if you have to give it up later? I don’t know.
Social engineering is a mysterious thing.
Author’s comment is sensible but one of the points I presented (I wasn’t really pushing any points in the post…) was that it may be a reasonable compromise, for DRM-free distribution, that everything is limited to rental. I guess I didn’t explicitly say that, but that’s a significant implication.
In fact this is why there’s a whole move towards streaming video. They are essentially watch-once devices at least by social engineering.
http://ani-nouto.animeblogger.net/2008/12/05/omo-on-rentals-and-drm/
If the metaphor became “download to rent” instead of “download to own”, you’d still have DRM in place to make sure the renter abided by their side of the agreement.
But yes — the content owner could easily say that they’re not willing to sell you their content, but they are willing to rent it to you. I think you’re on to something that changing to a rental model weakens the anti-DRM arguments. However, isn’t the anti-DRM argument really that what you’re receiving in DRMed goods is not “ownership”, but something else more akin to rental than ownership?
As to the fair use issues — fair use is separate from ownership. One can make fair use of copyrighted material even if one doesn’t own a copy of the material — e.g., and academic or critic is free to quote excerpts from a book that they borrow from the library.
Yeah, it doesn’t stick for fair use elements. But I was talking about the social acceptability of those ideas.
Generally anti-DRM arguments, at least credible ones, is that it cuts into their fair uses. I don’t know if there can ever be a real argument for a perfect-world, perfect-implementation DRM system. I don’t think it’s about “ownership” as much as there are some rights that are infringed which would’ve been there if not for that.
Well, the DMCA anti-circumvention stuff cuts into Fair Use, yes, but isn’t one of the major anti-DRM arguments that it removes a traditional right of resale? If you buy a book, you can sell it as a used book. If you buy a CD, you can do the same. If you buy a DRM-protected digital download, not only can you not resell it, but you may not even be able to play it yourself after a while.
Which brings us to one of the other arguments against DRM: the fact that you may lose what you consider your property when you replace your computer or migrate to a new technology for storage.
Your “rental” model, of course, undercuts this argument — the rented item is not yours to resell. I’m not sure about what it does to migrating to new storage or a new computer.
I think first sale argument against DRM is iffy at best because it’s intrinsically tied to the fact that 99% of the time a digital copy is attached to an EULA which can effectively limit your first sales rights. Plus it’s an area where the law is not even clear, so I don’t think we can say we have that right when it comes to digital media.
This is a big reason why even a “DTO” is really a “DTR” in some sense. People just don’t think that way for some reason.