| I do not shop lift. When I am asked why I do not shop lift I say a bunch of stuff, but "it is illegal" is very far down the list. Hypothetical-Bob does shop lift. When asked why he says a bunch of stuff, but will include some rationalisations for why this bit of illegality is okay. "At least I only rob big shops and it's all covered by insurance and huge profits" for example. His rationalisations might not be true nor even make any sense, but he believes them. Hypothetical-Chris is a different style of thief. He burgles houses. Again, he'll justify it. "At least I'm not mugging old grannies". Hypothetical-Dave does mug old grannies. "But I am a drug addict and I need the money And there is not treatment. At least I'm not like those scumbag paedophiles." The illegality of an action doesn't appear to immediately affect whether someone does something or not. It does affect how sneakily they do it. So that's the kind of attitude that many people have about piracy. But laws have longer lasting effects. They social engineer people into "acceptable" modes of behaviour. We combine advertising campaigns against drunk driving with stiff legal penalties. We back up outrage against racism with laws mandating equal pay and no workforce discrimination. So, while DRM and anti-circumvention laws are hateful and stupid it is daft to think that they have no effect on rates of piracy. There is very little piracy on Nintendo3DS games. This is not because people love Nintendo and want competition for Sony and Microsoft and mobile gaming. It's because the encryption has held and people who could work on breaking it don't want to risk the consequences. See the amount of piracy on regular DA or Sony PSP for examples of how rapidly people adopt piracy when it's available. And people will pirate 99c games that have no drm. |
That's also a matter of social censure though. I mean, every thread I've seen on this EME fiasco has included people looking forward to the Adobe CDM, in anticipation of its being cracked. Which is illegal.
See also people talking openly and frankly online about their usage of narcotics.
Which brings me to:
> So that's the kind of attitude that many people have about piracy. But laws have longer lasting effects. They social engineer people into "acceptable" modes of behaviour.
Again: drugs. Is taking marijuana less socially acceptable now after x decades of prohibition? No. It's completely bloody normal. And laws are slowly adjusting to the facts on the ground.
Will piracy become a big old taboo, like using child prostitutes? Will it continue to be 'normal', until anti-piracy people just give up? I don't have the faintest idea. This is going to run and run.
> So, while DRM and anti-circumvention laws are hateful and stupid it is daft to think that they have no effect on rates of piracy.
Daft indeed - everything has an effect. I'd want to see some numbers either which way.
Again: DRM has the effect, at the moment, of making it easier and cheaper to access content legally (by convincing Hollywood etc to license things to Netflix and co); but harder to use such content generally rather than under certain predefined conditions. Which one of these conditions is prevailing at the moment is a matter for statisticians and the like.
I would be surprised if Firefox's decision to implement EME mattered a hoot one way or another; DRM and non-DRM content will remain available through more or less the same channels as they were beforehand.
EDIT: on nintendo's encryption, this is (finally) some kind of concern. I notice that copy-protection is getting 'better' on certain popular music software (as well as more intrusive and annoying).