6th June 2013, 8:26 PM
I've made my case at the Penny Arcade Report over the past week or so as to why losing consumer rights, being chipped away slowly until the law can clearly define exactly what consumers can actually expect when they "buy" digital goods, is not a good thing. Ya know, if they just changed the term on their online stores from "buy" to "license", maybe we wouldn't all be complaining as much, but as it stands, they're calling it a "purchase", so let's treat it like one.
The supporters, like Ben over at Penny Arcade Report, claim "we didn't complain with Steam". Well, we all know that ABF for one DOES complain about Steam, regularly. GR and I have put up with it for now as the least onerous of all possible DRM schemes, but now, I think the moment of trial is fast approaching. We're going to have to start figuring out exactly what it means to own digital goods, and to that end I'll happily hold Valve to task.
For my part, I still think Valve's long lost attempt to digitally sign every single download and disk with a unique identifier may be the best way to go. The unique identifier would be used not as DRM but to simply track who purchased a download if someone should find it being hosted on a web site. In other words, it would allow companies to go after the distributers of pirated games far more easily, and hence put some fear into future distributers that maybe if they upload a game, the original uploader could be tracked and prosecuted. It seems like the most effective way to tackle piracy that I've heard of, and it has the massive upside of leaving legitimate consumers entirely out of the process. Not a single legitimate buyer will be negatively affected by such digital tagging as it isn't being used for "activation" or any other sort of DRM methods, and privacy won't be an issue as the "tagged" data would exist wholly on the user's own copy and hard drives, UNLESS they upload it online themselves.
The supporters, like Ben over at Penny Arcade Report, claim "we didn't complain with Steam". Well, we all know that ABF for one DOES complain about Steam, regularly. GR and I have put up with it for now as the least onerous of all possible DRM schemes, but now, I think the moment of trial is fast approaching. We're going to have to start figuring out exactly what it means to own digital goods, and to that end I'll happily hold Valve to task.
For my part, I still think Valve's long lost attempt to digitally sign every single download and disk with a unique identifier may be the best way to go. The unique identifier would be used not as DRM but to simply track who purchased a download if someone should find it being hosted on a web site. In other words, it would allow companies to go after the distributers of pirated games far more easily, and hence put some fear into future distributers that maybe if they upload a game, the original uploader could be tracked and prosecuted. It seems like the most effective way to tackle piracy that I've heard of, and it has the massive upside of leaving legitimate consumers entirely out of the process. Not a single legitimate buyer will be negatively affected by such digital tagging as it isn't being used for "activation" or any other sort of DRM methods, and privacy won't be an issue as the "tagged" data would exist wholly on the user's own copy and hard drives, UNLESS they upload it online themselves.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)