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I could copy their entire catalog now, if I wanted to. It would only be very slightly harder because of the DRM.



Yea, you could. But, you aren't going to first of all. And secondly you are a drop in the bucket. Even if you put it on all the bittorrent trackers it's still not a dent in their overall market share.

But if every subscriber could simply right-click on download because they have ZERO DRM that would be very different. I won't drone on because I already stated my case to another comment. I don't see why you guys keep pressing this point about some tech savvy people being able to get through DRM.


YouTube videos are trivial to copy, but you can't right-click on them to download. The thing is, you are holding a mathematically untenable position here.

In order to allow someone to consume your encrypted content, you must give them a valid decryption key, in some form. If you can view the content, it is literally impossible to prevent a determined user from copying it, either digitally or through the analog hole. In current computer systems there is no way to prevent making a high-quality digital copy of an encrypted media stream.

Also, since we've developed a network to propagate information around the planet at a terrific rate, that one determined user's ability to share that content is limited only by the number of people who [a] are interested in the content and [b] have the (lesser) technological skill required to obtain a copy, via file sharing networks or sneakernet.

DRM is pure snake oil. It does not and can not do anything to prevent content distribution. The only possible outcome is to inconvenience legitimate use -- thus degrading the value of your product versus the pirated media. You're already competing with "free", you might want to avoid stacking the deck further against yourself.

The ultimate conclusion here is that enforcing copyrights on digital works is impossible. It's not practical to close the digital hole, and impossible to close the analog one. I'm sorry if that impacts your business model.




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