Arguments Against DRM, specifically BBC iPlayer
(To be sure: This is all my personal opinion and doesn’t reflect the views of any past or present employers or organizations I am a member of!)
Sometime, DRM is confused with platform neutrality.
As I see it, there are two groups of anti-iPlayer dissenters, anti-DRMers and anti-single platformers. I don’t think they overlap, although they might superficially appear to.
Many people are complaining about iPlayer not being available on Mac OS X, and a few are complaining that iPlayer isn’t available for GNU+Linux. They are, literally, asking for a DRM system. If someone has a Mac or Ubuntu with many proprietary and DRM programs installed - eg, Google Earth - and they pay lip service to anti-DRM but talks of “cross platform problems,” their actions speak louder than words: They are not opposed to DRM, they accept it, and do not overlap with the second group.
A player that is cross platform is a secondary issue; the primary issue is software freedom. When the BBC releases a cross platform DRM iPlayer, this problem will remain.
What worries me is that when BBC does this, the cross platform dissenters will shut up so the issue will appear resolved, and the software freedom issue will be marginalised as nonsense that only effects some weird “religious fanatics.”
Here’s the overlap: If iPlayer was not a DRM system, then the software freedom community would not be legally obstructed from writing their own software - and that software would be cross-platform. This is different to asking the BBC to write a cross platform system, and substantially different from asking the BBC to write a cross platform DRM system. The simplest thing the BBC could do, after removing the DRM, would be to release the specifications of the software (ie, just describe how it works). Of course, if they release their software as free software that would be ideal.
So I think is essential to downplay the “platform neutrality” issue totally, because it implies support for DRM and obscures the issue of DRM and software freedom.
Sometimes, DRM is couched in terms of “eventually” being a problem, but I think this is questionable; if DRM will eventually stop the BBC from fulfilling its public service remit, it is stopping it right now. Don’t underestimate the power of now ;-)
If we’re unable to convince them DRM is illegitimate now, its acceptance and continued use will lead to it becoming entrenched. That diminishes the chance of future participatory culture at the BBC - since remix culture depends on the absence of DRM technology.
Sometimes, DRM and participatory “remix” culture, two substantially different issues, are sometimes combined.
But making some issue a ‘secondary’ issue that oh-so-happens to depend on another ‘primary’ issue, that is easier to convince people of, isn’t as good a strategy as it might seem. Perhaps it would be a good idea if the primary one was convincing or always true, but this is is rarely the case, and I don’t think it is here.
The BBC started to address participatory culture a few years ago, with the Creative Archive, but stopped working on it because they deemed the job of convincing rights holders to permit the public to remix the works they control as too expensive.
I think this is because, currently, the BBC sees its public service broadcasting remit as getting rights holders video seen by people - not stored by them, and certainly not remixed by them.
This assumption is seen when the BBC tries to characterize the issue as “cross platform” - because when it releases a DRM iPlayer for OS X and GNU+Linux and mobile devices, it will be getting rights holders video seen by more people. Ashley Highfield has been quite clear that, if it was easy, he would have rolled out a DRM iPlayer for all platforms already. This is also why the BBC is moving towards streaming - we are just meant to see things, not store them.
So challenging this entrenched idea is going to be very hard, harder than convincing them that DRM is illegitimate, I think.
Consider the following user scenarios:
I view a DRM streaming service, capture the streamed video data, break the DRM, make a small documentary with it, and upload it to a website. I will have acted illegally in three ways - first through contract law, since I broke the Terms of Service contract in which I agreed not to capture the stream, second though ‘plain old copyright’ law, since I have made and distributed a derived work without permission, and third though ‘copyright protection mechanism circumvention’ law, which started with the DMCA and was introduced to the UK via the EUCD, by breaking the DRM. If I get caught I can go to jail.
I download a DRM video with a proprietary program, break the DRM, make a documentary, and upload it. I will have acted illegally in two ways - distributing a derived work without permission, and circumventing a copyright protection mechanism. If I get caught I can go to jail.
I download a DRM video with free software, break the DRM, and view it as I wish - on my portable player, say. I will have acted illegally in one way - circumventing a copyright protection mechanism. If I get caught I can go to jail.
I view a non-DRM streaming service with free software, capture the streamed video data, and view it as I wish. I will have acted illegally in one way - I broke a contract. If I get caught, I can be sued might be fined, but its possible I might win and as this is a civil case, not a criminal one, I don’t fear jail time.
I download some video data with free software and view it as I wish. I have not acted illegally. I am free.
I download and view some video data with free software, and easily make a documentary and upload it. I will have acted illegally in one way - distributing a derived work without permission. If I get caught I can go to jail.
I download and view some video data with a free software iPlayer program, and easily make a small documentary and upload it to archive.org. Because the BBC used a Creative Commons license that permits remixing, and I comply with it, I have not acted illegally. I am free, in a free culture.
Now, #4 is something I’ve seen ORG push for in the past. UPDATE: #4 is nearly available, with Flash video streaming reportedly working on Mac OS X with the Adobe Flash Player, but not on GNU+Linux with GNU Gnash. Both #4 and #5 easily lead to #6, which is the appropriate place from which to work on #7, I think. And that is tough work. Some in the BBC and elsewhere do not want to encourage participatory culture at all, even.
How to convince the rights holders of the video the BBC broadcasts that using a CC-mixing license is in their interests?
I don’t know.
But I would like to see everyone campaign for #5 in the mean time. Why?
Why do I think software freedom is the primary issue?
Because all the practical problems we typically raise about software - about missing features, usability, speed, reliability, cross platform, etc - are easy to fix, unlike the problems with physical tools.
With proprietary software, only the owner has the power to fix things, so problems typically go unfixed for long periods or even forever. I’m not a programmer, but I think its wrong to give up our freedom and submit to that form of power; its very frustrating when you want some broken software fixed, can find someone to do the work, and there’s no way to get it done - without starting from scratch.
Since people writing free software typically have to start from scratch, it takes time to make something of quality. This is why free software has a varying reputation for quality and usability. Free software out competes proprietary versions in all practical aspects once it is mature, though. And fixing peoples problems is a sturdy business model, so today after 30 years of it, we have lots of great and mature free software.
But DRM means its not even possible to start from scratch - its illegal to do so. This is the exact same problem as with software idea patents.
There are a couple of reasons I don’t think #4 is ideal. The minor ToS problems are obvious, but there is a subtle bias in the concept of streaming that I don’t like: The idea of viewing instead of storing data.
Today, the iPlayer does store video on people’s own computers, making the restrictions more tantalizing and obvious to non-experts: They can realise and imagine, totally by themselves, that things could be different.
This is basis of the most effective strategy I’ve found for criticising DRM; getting them to figure out why its bogus, by guiding their own logic. I ask people, “Why can’t you copy music from your iPod to your computer? You know it is a portable harddisk, like the one on your desk for your backups, right? So why not?”
In the age of the self, people have to figure things out for themselves.
The Arguments Against DRM, specifically BBC iPlayer by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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