VP of digital publishing says, “I don’t want us in a position where we’re punishing a paying player for what a pirate can get around.”

“What becomes key for us is making sure we’re delivering an experience to paying players that is quality,”

To fight piracy, Early explained that Ubisoft needs to not only focus on making better, more compelling games, but also ensure that these games have more online services (which are not available to pirates) baked into them.

1. The purpose of DRM is to prevent people from copying content while allowing people to view that content,

2. You can’t hide something from someone while showing it to them,

3. And in any case widespread copyright violations (e.g. movies on file sharing sites) often come from sources that aren’t encrypted in the first place, e.g. leaks from studios.

It turns out that this argument is fundamentally flawed. Usually the arguments from pro-DRM people are that #2 and #3 are false. But no, those are true. The problem is #1 is false.

The purpose of DRM is not to prevent copyright violations.

DRM’s purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well.

As a corollary to this, look at the companies who are pushing for DRM. Of the ones who would have to implement the DRM, they are all companies over which the content providers already, without DRM, have leverage: the companies that both license content from the content providers and create software or hardware players. Because they license content, the content providers already have leverage against them: they can essentially require them to be pro-DRM if they want the content. The people against the DRM are the users, and the player creators who don’t license content. In other words, the people over whom the content producers have no leverage. 

Source: https://plus.google.com/+IanHickson/posts/iPmatxBYuj2

Fans of the artist Beck must wait until December for his new album – and if they want to hear it, they can play it themselves. As you may have heard, Beck has said he’ll issue his next album Song Reader as sheet music, rather than as a performed and produced sound recording.

The McSweeney’s site will host fan-contributed interpretations of the songs – for which (we trust) they’ll receive a performance royalty.

According to Lee Brackstone, Faber’s publishing director, it “makes a radical statement about the value and importance of performed and recorded music at a time when these very things are under threat”.

Whatever the motivation, it’s a brilliant marketing move – it’s got people talking about Beck – and an artistic statement. Here’s the source code, make the record.