No, that's where we are now. Not in the future, right now. It isn't working.
You fundamentally can't prevent someone copying your file. It isn't possible, full stop. You can only make it maximally inconvenient. You can't encrypt a user's eyeballs, so the media has to be transmitted in the clear at some level. Be it intercepting the LVDS signal to your TV panel or just pointing a camcorder at the screen.
The current tact is to just make it maximally inconvenient for anyone to access the file in any way. This does not consider the asymmetry in effort required. All legitimate users must deal with shitty DRM systems and broken apps, where it takes exactly one pirate to go through the effort of making a copy. Then everyone else who obtains a copy has to expend zero effort to consume the media.
Piracy is simply easier, which is why there's a resurgence now. The only sustainable option is to make legitimate consumption easier than piracy. For a lot of media, piracy is the only option to obtain a copy that will not vanish at some indeterminate point in the future. even if you paid for it.
Companies think that they can just make piracy harder, but that simply doesn't work. Once the first copy is made, the game is over. As established, there's simply no way to truly and permanently prevent a copy being created. That's simply the nature of digital media. At best, you can slow pirates down, you can never stop them. Piracy will never go away, and people need to accept that. People have been selling bootleg copies of goods since the dawn of time, there's no way to prevent it. There will always be someone nabbing copies of movies and sharing the files.
You can either waste everyone's time by trying to fight it, or you can realize that companies need to compete to survive, not just be large. If you compete with the pirates and produce a better product that people want more, well that's what capitalism is all about, isn't it?
Oh, don't get me wrong, I have zero faith in capitalism. After all, that's the entire reason we're in this situation.
However, market forces are actually very real. They just don't work the way capitalists think they do. Or rather, capitalists are convinced they can control the market through technology. Unfortunately for them, this is a technology that can't be solved or controlled.
You fundamentally can't prevent someone copying your file. It isn't possible, full stop. You can only make it maximally inconvenient. You can't encrypt a user's eyeballs, so the media has to be transmitted in the clear at some level. Be it intercepting the LVDS signal to your TV panel or just pointing a camcorder at the screen.
The current tact is to just make it maximally inconvenient for anyone to access the file in any way. This does not consider the asymmetry in effort required. All legitimate users must deal with shitty DRM systems and broken apps, where it takes exactly one pirate to go through the effort of making a copy. Then everyone else who obtains a copy has to expend zero effort to consume the media.
Piracy is simply easier, which is why there's a resurgence now. The only sustainable option is to make legitimate consumption easier than piracy. For a lot of media, piracy is the only option to obtain a copy that will not vanish at some indeterminate point in the future. even if you paid for it.
Companies think that they can just make piracy harder, but that simply doesn't work. Once the first copy is made, the game is over. As established, there's simply no way to truly and permanently prevent a copy being created. That's simply the nature of digital media. At best, you can slow pirates down, you can never stop them. Piracy will never go away, and people need to accept that. People have been selling bootleg copies of goods since the dawn of time, there's no way to prevent it. There will always be someone nabbing copies of movies and sharing the files.
You can either waste everyone's time by trying to fight it, or you can realize that companies need to compete to survive, not just be large. If you compete with the pirates and produce a better product that people want more, well that's what capitalism is all about, isn't it?