<story><title>How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” would defeat DRM</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/how-four-microsoft-engineers-proved-copy-protection-would-fail/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>groby_b</author><text>I&apos;m amazed this entire discussion here focuses on &quot;DRM good&quot; vs. &quot;DRM bad&quot;.&lt;p&gt;The point is, it does not matter. We have entered a world where for pretty much the first time, the marginal cost of creating a copy of something is zero, for all intents and purposes. We don&apos;t have any economic theories (or business models) that can deal with that yet.&lt;p&gt;DRM is simply a symptom of that. The question is not &quot;can (and should) people be prevented from resharing content&quot;, the question is, &quot;what does content creation look like in a world where everything is shared&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jmsduran</author><text>A while back I was at a friend&apos;s house when we decided to watch a movie. My friend mentioned that he could stream The Avengers from his Netflix account, so taking his word on it I was like &quot;Ok awesome&quot;!&lt;p&gt;It turns out he was wrong. A Netflix search showed that the movie was only available via mail-in DVD, not Instant Watch. I joked that I was impatient and didn&apos;t want to wait a couple of days for a DVD to be mailed.&lt;p&gt;&quot;Not a problem&quot; he said; my friend just hopped onto Usenet and downloaded a Blu-ray copy of the film in about 45-50 minutes, in about the time it took to cook some BBQ for the both of us.&lt;p&gt;My argument is not about the legality of this scenario; it&apos;s that rather decentralized, open networks are doing a better job at distributing high quality content than the very corporations producing and selling this content. Considering that you have to pay anywhere from $10 - $20 a month for Usenet access, people buy into this service not because they want &quot;free&quot; movies/music, they&apos;re paying for the ability to download virtually any movie/album they want... at any time they please. It&apos;s like Netflix Instant Watch on steroids, at a more affordable price.</text></comment>
<story><title>How four Microsoft engineers proved that the “darknet” would defeat DRM</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/how-four-microsoft-engineers-proved-copy-protection-would-fail/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>groby_b</author><text>I&apos;m amazed this entire discussion here focuses on &quot;DRM good&quot; vs. &quot;DRM bad&quot;.&lt;p&gt;The point is, it does not matter. We have entered a world where for pretty much the first time, the marginal cost of creating a copy of something is zero, for all intents and purposes. We don&apos;t have any economic theories (or business models) that can deal with that yet.&lt;p&gt;DRM is simply a symptom of that. The question is not &quot;can (and should) people be prevented from resharing content&quot;, the question is, &quot;what does content creation look like in a world where everything is shared&quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>shasta</author><text>Books have been around for quite some time.  The major change isn&apos;t that the marginal cost is now zero. The incentive and techincal ability to use copyrighted works without a license has been present for a long time.  The difference is the decentralization.  In the past, if you printed a batch of unlicensed books, it was very easy to shut you down or sue you.  Now, anyone can make the copy and it&apos;s not viable to go after them all.</text></comment>