Digital Rights Management

[Psy]

Why do capitalists still invest in DRM technology? The technology has never worked, Ubisoft's "uncrackable" DRM was cracked in about 28 hours, and like Diablo 3 when Assassin Creed 2 first came out Ubisoft's DRM servers were overwhelmed and you needed a crack to play the game you paid for.

So why do capitalists waste labor on DRM that at best annoys pirates? The labor required to crack a DRM is a tiny fraction to the labor required to create it, meaning all labor capitalist spend in DRM is waste driving down the rate of profit of the individual capitalist as people don't write DRM for free (though people are willing to crack DRM for free) and that is without factoring DRM encourages paying customers to pirate the commodity.

[Questionable]

Hey, nobody ever said the capitalists were smart.

It's probably the same reason we have these big Hollywood companies trying to crackdown on movie piracy instead of switching to the vastly more effective digital model. They're too lazy/afraid to enter a new market, so they try to cling to the monopoly they have in the old markets.

[MrCool]

They are trying to scare off new "pirates", who don't have the time or will to invest some time to crack a game.

[Psy]

They are trying to scare off new "pirates", who don't have the time or will to invest some time to crack a game.
It is easier to crack a game then deal with DRM because most DRM requires you to reconfigure your firewall and antivirus so it can root your system and/or talk to their server. Thus running DRM makes you system more unstable and vulnerable to attacks then running pirated software.

http://www.reclaimyourgame.com/customimages/Max-Payne-3-AV-Warning.png

[The Idler]

Partly capitalist short-term priorities. But also because DRM enables control of people.

[Leonid Brozhnev]

It's funny, I remember when Spore come out with DRM that meant those who bought the game could only install it a maximum of 3 times before they had to go out and buy a new copy, whereas the 'illegal' copies had no such limitation. Spore quickly became the most pirated game in history. I think DRM is just there to be a little bit of a nuisance, nothing more, people who are new to pirating probably won't know where to begin but for seasoned pirates it's second nature.. download, mount, install, crack, play... and sometimes block the program accessing the internet, phew, what a massive earth shattering security move that was, Max Payne 3. :lol:

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

I think it's mostly laziness and fear of new technology. I would imagine DRM sounds pretty great to older generations who are likely to make up the bulk of investors and upper management in those companies. They don't know how it works and probably have no clue that it doesn't actually work, but it's cheaper and easier for them to embrace it than an entirely new business model would be.

[Hexen]

Hey, nobody ever said the capitalists were smart.

It's probably the same reason we have these big Hollywood companies trying to crackdown on movie piracy instead of switching to the vastly more effective digital model. They're too lazy/afraid to enter a new market, so they try to cling to the monopoly they have in the old markets.

Or maybe the capitalists are smart why?

Because they know that the Industrial Revolution was when Capitalism was kicking off due to innovation which their now trying to suppress it to uphold the capitalist system and prevent a transition to socialism.

In short: Capitalists don't want another 'industrial revolution' (or the Digital Revolution) to happen which would naturally transition to socialism and finally communism and they "want to keep how things are" forever in their minds.

[Comrade Trollface]

Why does a boss go bankrupt fighting a union when he could have signed the goddamn contract and kept making profit? Because ideology often trumps material concerns.