Digital rights management
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Digital rights management, shortened to DRM, is the limitation of rights for digital works such as music, movies, books and games, made as an attempt to control the use, modification and distribution of copyrighted works as well as devices that enforce these policies.
DRM techniques mostly include restrictive licensing agreements: The access to digital works, copyright and public domain is restricted to consumers by entering a website or when downloading software. DRM often works with encryption, mostly working with scrambling of expressive material and embedding of tags.
While still used by various companies like Sony and Apple, DRM has become one of the most controversial and despised practices to digital media and especially video games of all time, as they tend to break the works that DRM is enforced into or set unfair restrictions like regional lockout or online-only restriction. Because of this, users tend to find ways to break through DRM to crack software and works in order to distribute them freely, causing piracy to become actually rampant instead of protecting the works wisely. Additionally, anti-DRM initiatives like Defective by Design have been founded to protest against such systems, including sites and people that distribute DRM-free works such as GOG.com, a video game store and Kevin Macleod, a musician that produces royalty-free music.
A list of articles about DRM systems can be accessed here.
Why It Fails To Manage Digital Rights Properly
- They impose limitations on the rights of software you "own" (that they say you don't actually "own" but merely have a license to.)
- This usually causes fully cracked versions of software with DRM to give a superior experience to the game with a non-cracked DRM. Due to this, if software is cracked too quickly, piracy may be increased. Yes, you read it right.
- Opponents of DRM, particularly free and open-source software advocates and right to repair advocates, claim that the term "rights" in "digital rights management" is a misnomer due to the restrictions it imposes on consumers' rights, violating existing private property rights and restricts normal and legal user activities, such as a personal backup, lending copies to friends, fair use, etc., and instead should be referred to as "digital restrictions management", or more derisively, "digital rights malware", especially if a DRM system behaves like actual malware (see #6 thru #9).
- What doesn't help is that the DMCA protects the DRM and outlawed its circumvention. While not a bad idea on paper, it was executed terribly as it was made illegal even if you legally owned the material and circumvented it for legal activities mentioned above.
- On a side note, what's even worse is that the DMCA is abused frequently, which (indirectly) jeopardizes normal and legal activites even more.
- What doesn't help is that the DMCA protects the DRM and outlawed its circumvention. While not a bad idea on paper, it was executed terribly as it was made illegal even if you legally owned the material and circumvented it for legal activities mentioned above.
- Some DRM systems (like Denuvo) disable access to playing games offline without internet access, even if the game has a single player mode. Also, they may require accessing a server which if goes down also disables access to the game, and if/when that server shuts down permanently, the game becomes unplayable unless the developer releases an update to disable or bypass the DRM system.
- Some DRM systems are so restrictive and tedious that some authors would prefer you to pirate instead.
- Even if the game has an offline mode for single player, it may not work properly.
- They may disallow modifications to the game.
- Region locking and geo-blocking are a form of DRM, discouraging importation of games.
- They may also refuse to run the game if additional programs are present that can be used as part of game cracks, but also have legitimate uses. Nastier versions will actively try to uninstall such programs or kill their processes. Even better, they can get false positives and make the game refuse to run in the presence of totally benign software.
- Some DRM systems function like malicious software, bypassing security measures and installing background programs that are essentially rootkits, or simply have poor security flaws. Viruses can exploit these programs to allow their own code to bypass the same checks the DRM does. Modern operating systems such as Windows 10 and 11, as well as Windows Vista to 8.1 with KB3086255 update block the installation or usage of certain DRM software, such as Sony's DRM, SecuROM (through it's rarely happens, and officially still support Win10) and SafeDisc (which is common and highly got hit by these security updates), due to it being such a high security risk.
- Poorly-written DRM can actually have a detrimental effect on the system running it: the StarForce DRM, for example, was infamous for causing a packet loss issue which would make Windows step down the burn speed of a CD writer until it was running so slowly it was practically useless.
- To make matters worse, if a game with StarForce DRM is installed on Windows Vista or later, the DRM will destroy the installation of these operating systems and render the computer unbootable, most likely due to how the driver works (unless if you use a live CD/USB operating system to repair the computer), making it straight-up malicious software.
- Several of Tencent's titles and platforms (like Valorant and the Epic Games Store) contain suspicious DRM software, which led to rumors that Tencent is using that to send info to the Chinese government. If this is true, it's spyware.
- In addition, this would be illegal in the European Union as it violates the GDPR.
- Some game demos are equipped with DRM, which does not make any sense, as a demo is a free product intended for promotional use. Note the words ‘free’ and ‘promotional’, which imply that any copies distributed are actually beneficial to the publisher, as they represent the potential for future sales.
- With certain DRM systems, when a user changes any hardware component on their PC (e.g., CPU, RAM, graphics card, etc.), the DRM system can, and often will, consider the upgrade as a "new" system and invalidate the game install. This can also occur if the user doesn't even change their hardware configuration but simply does a fresh install of their operating system. If a game has a "soft" activation limit (meaning if the game is uninstalled from one machine, it can then be moved to another), the user can simply deactivate the old install; however, on games with "hard" activation limits (meaning a game can only be installed an absolute certain number of times, even if the game is reinstalled on the same PC), it requires contacting the publisher's customer support.
- Many DRM systems prevent the creation of physical backup disks or disk images, meaning if the game disk was no longer usable, the consumer would have to buy another copy of the game. Older floppy-disk based games used non-standard sectors on the physical disk as a copy protection scheme, since such errors could not be replicated easily by consumer disk duplicating software, while modern optical disc-based games use content-scrambling software.
- Many early disk-based games relied on code sheets, code books, or code wheels, collectively known as "feelies", as copy protection, and in many games, they were necessary to progress; one particular example is the Carmen Sandiego franchise, which relied on almanacs or pocket encyclopedias in order to win the game and earn rank promotions. While some of these were easy to copy, others were not; some methods of making code sheet duplication more difficult include printing codes using dark colored ink on dark colored paper (or light colored ink on light colored paper) and/or using pictures and symbols rather than text. If the code sheet or wheel was missing or otherwise unreadable, the game would be rendered unplayable. On abandonware sites or modern storefronts such as GOG, games are often modified to bypass these validation checks.
- Although more associated with high-end enterprise software and arcade boards, very few home games relied on physical hardware dongles as a form of DRM; older versions of the security dongle used the parallel or serial port, while modern examples use USB. If the dongle was missing or damaged, the software was rendered unusable.
- They often do not uninstall correctly.
- Some developers did not want to add DRM to their apps, but forced to anyway, such as Apple App Store, where Apple shoves DRM into your app, whether you like it or not. In VLC Media Player's case, that conflicts with GNU GPL license (VLC's license), which opposed DRM, so VideoLan, the company that owns VLC Media Player had to change the license to more lenient LGPL just so iOS users could install VLC, which includes DRM<ref>https://www.slashgear.com/apple-pulls-vlc-from-app-store-over-open-source-drm-dispute-08124911/</ref>. Because of this, every single app on Apple App Store use their DRM, which is mandatory in its Terms of Service.
- On some game consoles, the optical disc drive is paired to the motherboard.<ref>https://tronicsfix.com/blogs/news/ps4-ce-35888-2-error-code</ref> This is an anti repair method to prevent people from replacing the disc drive if it fails. This applies to nearly all 7th generation and newer consoles with a disc drive (with some exceptions such as the Wii and certain specific revisions of the PlayStation 4.
- While not related to games (more to music), some DRM systems, like Key2Audio and Cactus Data Shield, particularly on CDs, are intentionally violating the specifications on the format by corrupting the data if the DRM is bypassed, plus the DRM itself cause incompatibility between some CD/DVD players and car stereos, which is a violation to Red Book, thus they legally cannot use the 'Compact Disc' logo. Also, some publishers like EMI stopped selling CDs with DRM.
- Besides digital goods, such as movies, TV shows, music, e-books, digital photos and games, DRM is present in physical consumer products which can use software. DRM is often used to enforce anti-competitive practices such as vendor lock-in, which has the consequence of styming innovation.
- Apple in particular is notorious for vendor lock-in by serializing components to a specific device in an attempt to stymie third party repair of their products; even if the replacement component is sourced from the exact same vendor as the original, it will not work properly unless reprogrammed.
- Printer manufacturers use DRM to prevent consumers from using third party, refilled, or remanufactured printer cartridges, either refusing to work outright or deliberately making the print quality unusable. Also, printer cartridges are programmed to falsely report how much ink or toner is remaining, forcing consumers to buy replacements before the ink or toner is completely used up. They also impose regional lockout, preventing the import of ink from other regions.
- HP has a program called "Instant Ink", which consumers receive ink or toner cartridges for free and pay for an allotment of printed pages monthly. If the consumer goes over their allotment, HP charges additional fees for more pages; however, any unused pages can rollover into the next month, but users can't have more than three times for ink plans and two times for toner plans their allotment at any time (ex, if a user has a 100-page ink plan, then they hold a maximum rollover of 300 pages). Also, if the consumer cancels their subscription, they can't use the remaining ink or toner in the cartridge.
- In October 2021, Canon faced controversy after a user discovered that his all-in-one printer's scan and fax functions were disabled whenever the ink levels were low or no ink cartridges were installed.
- Dymo's label rolls have an RFID chip to prevent third-party labels from being used on their 550 and 5XL thermal label printers.<ref>https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/02/worst-timeline-printer-company-putting-drm-paper-now</ref>
- Automobile and heavy equipment manufacturers use DRM on their vehicles' software to force consumers to seek costly repairs by authorized dealers, preventing the consumer from either attempting to repair their vehicle themselves or have an independent mechanic perform the work. In industries reliant on heavy equipment (e.g., agriculture, construction/demolition, logging, mining, etc.), the inability to do repairs in a timely fashion, especially in the field, means lost revenue.
- Philips used DRM for its smart lightbulbs, preventing any third-party modifications.
- In 2015, Keurig attempted to use DRM on its Keurig 2.0 brewers by using a special mark on K-Cups made by Keurig themselves or authorized third party licensees, preventing the use of store-brand K-Cups, reusable K-Cups, and even older K-Cups made by Keurig themselves. This was due to the original patents covering the K-Cup brewing system expiring in 2012.
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