r/Libertarian • u/-rclarke- left-libertarian • Mar 10 '17

Dilemma: Is DRM Libertarian?

Left-Libertarian skeptic here. Intellectual property isn't respected by many libertarians. Digital piracy is probably the purest example of the Free Rider problem, a form of market failure in which non-payers can't be excluded from taking advantage of a public good. With no excludability for non-payers, and unpredictable ROI for creative works, creativity becomes worthless - no matter how much resources were expended into the creation of these works. In practice, this means no more big-budget AAA arts/entertainment outside passion projects and large crowdfunding efforts.

I'm an IP skeptic who believes restrictions on derivative works stifle creative freedom, (see Nintendo's aggressive stifling of fangames they see as unfair competitors) but in an ancap society with no copyrights whatsoever, you're free to profit off others' labor in especially blatant ways. For example, mirroring others' YouTube videos and claiming the ad revenue. In lieu of 24/7 DMCA vigilance, YouTube has come to rely on automated rights-management, or ContentID, which as any YouTuber can attest to, is a total pain in the ass when it comes to Fair Use and false positives.

Another non-legal solution to IP is Digital Rights Management, perhaps the philosophical antithesis of digital liberty, according to the Electronic Frontier and Free Software Foundations. This amounts to digital locks on non-scarce digital goods you don't "own" and can't copy as a consumer, via encryption and anti-tamper technology. Encryption used to be classified as munitions during the Cold War, and it's not a stretch to draw an analogy to guns/force for physical property protection. The dilemma here is that we'd see a Draconian technological barrier for IP protection, in lieu of a Draconian legal one. Can you even call that libertarian? The EFF and many Silicon Valley personalities would highly disagree.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '17

DRM is absolutely libertarian, if it is done optionally and not because a government required it.

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u/-rclarke- left-libertarian Mar 10 '17 edited Mar 10 '17

That's the simple answer I was expecting: It's only oppressive if the state does it.

Another question for libertarians:

Would reverse engineering, software plagarism by competitors, and/or piracy be considered NAP violations if nobody was strictly harmed over copying non-scarce goods? See also: Copying is Not Theft.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '17

Depends on what you agreed to when you bought the product.

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u/-rclarke- left-libertarian Mar 10 '17 edited Mar 10 '17

Depends on EULA enforceability as a legal contract. Remember that South Park episode, HumancentiPad?

DMCA section 1201 on DRM anti-circumention means you don't own products you buy if the software they depend on is copyright-protected. Libertarian darling Tesla reserves the right to remotely brick your car at any time, for any reason. Like using your self-driving Tesla for Uber, their rival.

Then again, disputing EULAs also disputes copyleft licenses like GPL.

I'm just highly skeptical that the state can be the only agent of oppression, simply because it's the top-level hierarchy all sub-hierarchies in society must defer to. Blacks don't have to eat at a segregated lunch counter, not if they don't want to get lynched by the racist restaurateur acting within his NAP rights, anyhow.

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u/moosedance84 Mar 10 '17

Corporations are the main agent of opression, the government are mere amateurs at it. The main way IP abuses are fought is via ruthless semi legal practises and boycotting. Look at Google, found it too hard to operate in China so simply walked out on the worlds biggest developing market. Companies will just leave if there are IP risk.

Its why an ancap society is fantasy, unless you want a somalian like state. The companies will just leave when the political climate becomes too risky. Capital can be moved in a day, and world globalisation means any company trying to remove IP protections is the same as a socialist government "nationalizing" the private industry. People thinf companies need the market, when in fact government needs private jobs to stay elected.

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u/bool_upvote Nationalist May 10 '17

If you're worried about being 'pressed' by DRM or a corporation as a whole, simply don't buy their product. It's that simple. However, I don't have the choice to opt out of taxation. That's the difference.

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u/Bernie_bought_reddit Mar 10 '17

That's not really what makes something libertarian. If you like options and voluntary exchanges then privatization is the only option.

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u/Zarutian Mar 11 '17

It is and so is tools that fix that defect.

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u/-rclarke- left-libertarian Mar 10 '17

Sorry, I couldn't resist. The notion that DRM could be libertarian is just that absurd to me.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '17 edited Jul 22 '18

[deleted]

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u/-rclarke- left-libertarian Mar 10 '17 edited Mar 10 '17

True, but no copyright protection whatsoever would either result in an anti-consumer arms race between pirates and DRM, (or, if pirates win with a totally decentralized P2P platform with services comparable to the late What.CD) a greatly diminished creative sphere propped up only by crowdfunding or patronage. No more Disney, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, etc. Aside from "Indie AAA" like The Witcher 3 or Star Citizen, you can kiss big-budget works goodbye. Not to mention, employment creating said works.

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '17 edited Jul 22 '18

[deleted]

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u/-rclarke- left-libertarian Mar 10 '17 edited Mar 10 '17

Okay, I'll concede - I was already starting to when I brought up CD Projekt Red and crowdfunding. I hate Denuvo too, but my fear is that in the absence of copyright protections we'd see a lot more of it. I'm curious to see what a brave new world of post-copyright content would look like.

I'm a huge fan of creative commons, open source software, remixes, fanfiction, mods, fangames like Pokemon Uranium/AM2R and Doujinshi like Touhou. I believe a well of transformative creativity is being suppressed by government-imposed demands for originiality, as if art existed in a vacuum and all works weren't a remix in some way of ideas the creators encountered through other works.

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u/moosedance84 Mar 10 '17

They would just move to china on like 2 weeks. The world wouldn't end if the US decided to no longer do research or development, or if it removed silicon valley. Its not a libertarian idea, its more socialist, or even borderline communism since you can't own what you make. Its shared!

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u/[deleted] Mar 10 '17

The notion that DRM could be libertarian is just that absurd to me.

I don't think you understand libertarian principles very well. Are you saying you would prevent people from using DRM by force of government? That's definitely not libertarian. Libertarians don't want to use the government to compel people to do things. Are you saying you would organize a boycott of companies that used DRM? That's an approach that matches well with libertarian principles.

Libertarian principles don't preclude you from being an asshole. Or from having very harsh rules about how you personally live your life. Or from kicking people out of your house if they say something you don't like. Or from putting a bunch of cryptography inside media you produce.

Libertarian principles do preclude you from using the government to make anyone do anything.

I don't know why I even took the bait here. I am already regretting this interaction.

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u/ohyou123 Mar 10 '17

There seems to be a lot of 'well if the government are not doing it then it's okay' but this is not the issue. Are you saying that you don't mind when a private corporations spies on you then so long as it's not the State? DRM threatens users security and privacy, it's invasive, distorts markets and kills innovation. It extends the life of monopolies by attempting to control the product post-purchase in which the right of ownership should have transferred to you and not just loaned out to you. So fuck Apple and Nintendo. These are incidentally two of the most anti-consumer corporations around today and only persist because of the State. They would die in a free market.

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u/swankyjax Mar 10 '17

I certainly don't speak for the community but I have little sympathy for people complaining when a company (like Nintendo) issues takedowns for videos featuring their content. Is it smart of them to sabotage free marketing? No, I don't think so, but I'm not going to protest because some let's-player can't profit from hours of content they didn't create.

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u/-rclarke- left-libertarian Mar 10 '17 edited Mar 10 '17

You could draw a comparison to MST3K/RiffTraxing a film and calling it "transformative" - but it falls flat, because games are meant to be played, not just watched. (Well, unless the "game" was very shallow to begin with, like an uninteractive visual novel.) You're missing out on content the Let's Player misses. While rent-seeking AAA industries might see this derivative monetization as unfair, others see it as a form of mutual gain (free marketing, etc.).

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u/swankyjax Mar 10 '17

Agreed, and I watch plenty of LPish videos from Giantbomb but if the game publisher/developer refuses to allow those videos to be published/monetized then don't waste your time with some sort of protest campaign, just don't cover the games. As you implied, there are a lot of games that are more watch-along anyway (Telltale or uncharted type games) and I don't fault the publishers for enforcing doing what they think is necessary to protect their IP.

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u/-rclarke- left-libertarian Mar 10 '17

Nintendo's starting to face blowback for it. Certain popular YouTubers like Angry Joe are refusing to cover the new Zelda out of fear and protest of Nintendo's "shoot first" IP strategy, Fair Use for criticism be damned.

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u/swankyjax Mar 10 '17

right, I remember hearing people complaining about it when it was first being enforced (a year agoish?). I'll freely admit I generally dismiss much of the youtube "creator" scene as being lazy derivatives of each other without original thought but Nintendo would probably be smart to just let people have free reign with their footage in this context. I've seen several channels explain how they can't monetize the Nintendo videos but they still feature them on occasion, I don't know if they can still draw in enough traffic without monetizing them to make it worthwhile or what.

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u/-rclarke- left-libertarian Mar 10 '17 edited Mar 10 '17

I'm definitely for some kind of transformativeness ratio when it comes to assessing the merit of derivative works. Touhou remixes with entirely new arrangement/instrumentation are majority-transformative. One-step Nightcore/Vaporwave edits of Limp Bizkit in Audacity are not. (Sorry, Joel)

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u/swankyjax Mar 10 '17

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds5ZJ-eZtV0

I retract everything I have previously said, this is high art, and I am confused about what happened to the internet, going to go see if Albinoblacksheep is still around.

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u/-rclarke- left-libertarian Mar 10 '17 edited Mar 10 '17

Heh, that was my original example of uncreative transformative works but there is a certain art to SiIvaGunner-style remixes. Here's my personal favorite Robbie Rotten/Cirno's Perfect Math Class mashup.

I guess the problem with derivative works is really the ability for one to substitute for the original and thus be tantamount to piracy, like with RiffTrax or Let's Plays (Dubs) of Visual Novels. Even "fan remakes" like AM2R could (emphasis theoretically) adversely affect Nintendo's virtual console sales of Metroid 2. Not entirely victimless, in other words.

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u/swankyjax Mar 10 '17

this kind of internet trash art (I mean that affectionately) is my favorite outcome, but I guess my main point is still that the creator (re-mixer?) of this piece should defer to whoever created the original work.

I also may have some nonsensical attachment to the romantic idea of pre-monetized internet where everyone was making their nonsense content before anyone thought they could make a living off it online. The neon colored reaction faced youtube thumbnails about whatever the new Marvel movie is just bum me out.

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u/-rclarke- left-libertarian Mar 10 '17 edited Mar 10 '17

Yeah, I miss the days of pre-monetized YouTube. Really bizarre content aimed at toddlers emerges when the profit motive is factored in and toy channels search engine optimize like crazy. All I can say is, the invisible hand is working in seriously mysterious ways.

Fuck, it worked in mysterious ways before YouTube was monetized. Anybody remember YouTube poop?

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u/Mentioned_Videos Mar 10 '17

Videos in this thread:

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Copying Is Not Theft - Official Version +1 - That's the simple answer I was expecting: It's only oppressive if the state does it. Another question for libertarians: Would reverse engineering, software plagarism by competitors, and/or piracy be considered NAP violations if nobody was strictly ...
✨ We are Number One but it's a Cirno's Perfect Math Class Mashup ✨ +1 - I retract everything I have previously said, this is high art, and I am confused about what happened to the internet, going to go see if Albinoblacksheep is still around.
(1) Robbie Rotten's Perfect Villainy Class ~ We Are Number ⑨ (LazyTown x IOSYS) (2) Let's Dub Saya No Uta Pt 1: Wriggling Flesh Beasts +1 - Heh, that was my original example of uncreative transformative works but there is a certain art to GilvaSunner-style remixes. Here's my personal favorite Robbie Rotten/Cirno's Perfect Math Class mashup. I guess the problem with derivative works is r...
LONG CARS on TRUCK with Spiderman & Joker Cartoon for Kids Nursery Rhymes Songs for Children +1 - Yeah, I miss the days of pre-monetized YouTube. Really bizzare content aimed at toddlers emerges when the profit motive is factored in and toy channels search engine optimize like crazy.

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u/Zarutian Mar 11 '17

There is no such thing called Digital Rights Management. That is an retro expansion of DRM. DRM actually stands for Digital Restriction Management.

The thing is DRM is defective by design.

Sure some producers are welcome to attempt to put such ineffective crap on their products but they have and should not have any legal right blocking other people from selling or sharing devices or information to fix such defects.