Loss of Privacy

Rhapsody has announced that they will be shutting down their RAX DRM encumbered music system and that users will have until November 7, 2011 to convert any music downloaded before July, 2008.

On November 7th, 2011 Rhapsody/RealNetworks will no longer support certain music files you purchased before July 2008. These songs will continue to play after November 7th unless you change to a new computer or substantially update your current computer. However, we strongly recommend you back up these RAX tracks to audio CD to ensure you can continue to enjoy your music.

Once you take this small step, you can continue to play these tracks on your audio CD or rip them to any format you desire and play them on your PC.

Please don’t delay – after we shut off support for RAX files, you will not be able to play them if you move to a new computer or upgrade your operating system.

While Rhapsody is allowing its customers to back up and convert their music, it is not as easy as they claim. If you own a few tracks, it might by easy, but if you own hundreds or thousands of music tracks, it becomes a cumbersome and time-consuming task.

There is also a question of legality. While Rhapsody is telling people how to circumvent the RAX DRM, it may not legally be able to. According to US law, unless Rhapsody owns the copyrights to the songs that use RAX DRM, then they are actually aiding others in breaking the law.

Section 103 (17 U.S.C Sec. 1201(a)(1)) of the DMCA states:

Q No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

….

(A) to 「circumvent a technological measure」 means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and

(B) a technological measure 「effectively controls access to a work」 if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

In the closing of Rhapsody’s RAX DRM, we see, yet again, how the music industry is punishing those who wish to legally purchase digital music. There are so many of these companies that have shut down over the past ten years that it is difficult to fault those who turn to piracy. By doing so, users do not have to worry about the DRM. They also do not worry about making upgrades to their computers and risking the loss of their music. They also do not have to worry about the limits of how many computers they can keep their music on. They simply listen to their music where ever and whenever they want. After experiencing ten years of attempting to do the right thing only to be screwed over again and again, why would anyone want to return to unhelpful DRM schemes?

I understand that video game publishers do not like the used game market. This is mostly due to the fact that they do not get any revenue from said sales. I have never understood why this could not happen as game retailers know when they’ve sold a used copy and could easily ship a percentage of the sale off to the publisher. Capcom, however, has taken a step to try to kill the used game market, which will, eventually, drive more people into piracy.

It’s been confirmed that Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS is a game that once finished, cannot be reset for complete replay. According to both the U.S. and U.K. game’s instruction manual “saved data on this software cannot be reset.”

Basically what Capcom has done is make Mercenaries 3D a one-time play affair. Once you’ve unlocked all the goodies and played the entire game, you will not be able to erase the game’s save data and start fresh as if it were a new copy.

By doing this, Capcom has made it so that you cannot even loan the game to a friend or a relative as well as making the game useless to yourself should you want to play it again. How many times have you played a game through more than once? Now, think about the fact that, with Capcom’s strategy, you have to pay for the game again each time you want to replay it.

By acting the way they are, Capcom is losing sales and preventing gamers from playing games that they should own. Any sort of DRM prevents full functionality of a game. This results in either gamers never purchasing a game or heading down the piracy route so they can make their game fully functional. If this is the future of gaming, there are going to be a lot less sales of games in the future.

Anyone who has been to my house has seen my game collection. Yes, I replay many of them. As a matter of fact, I’m on my third time round of the original Tomb Raider. In Metal Gear Solid there is a scenario that, if you submit to Revolver Ocelot’s torture, Otacon will give you his stealth camouflage at the end of the game and you could then replay it while invisible. If I can’t replay them, I’m not buying them.

Today is the Day Against DRM.

Awareness is a key part of defeating DRM. Whether protesting outside Apple Stores in Hazmat suits as we have done in years past, handing out leaflets in front of public libraries, or sending direct complaints to senior executives at Sony, action gets attention, and creates space for change.

Take some time to read my posts about DRM, why it’s counterproductive, and how it only seems to affect legitimate users.  You can also read the numerous posts from last year about DRM.

Bioware forum poster, Arno, recently had his account suspended by EA for 72 hours because he complained on their forums. Arno could not even play his Dragon Age II game in single player mode because the DRM that comes with the game won’t allow it unless you connect to the server first. So what did Arno do that was so wrong? He said this:

On EA Live Chat they told me that that I said: “Have you sold your souls to the EA devil?”

While this is hardly worth banning someone for three days over, the bigger picture is the fact that you cannot play a game in single player mode without checking with the appropriate server.

How is this possible? When a game is purchased through the EA Store, one of the things the buyer pays for is the “licensed right” to access DRM which EA has made necessary to play their games. In the case of Dragon Age II, a single-player game, the DRM takes the form of an online authentication upon installation and then periodically afterward. While this form of Digital Restrictions Management is sometimes seen as less intrusive, this incident shows it can be more crippling than the average person perceives.

EA has since reversed their decision, but questions remain. Why would you want to force people to have DRM that periodically checks your authentication if you’re only playing a single player game? This is type of DRM is what played a large part in why I stopped purchasing video games. I have no desire to play games online and/or with other people. If I want to play in single player mode, I shouldn’t have to have my computer connected to the internet, pinging EA’s servers to do so.

With EA, you never actually own the game. You are simply purchasing a license to play the game. Once their servers shut down, for whatever reasons EA will give, you can no longer play that game.

If companies and vendors didn’t make things so difficult, most people wouldn’t resort to pirating what they want to watch.

Via reddit.