What is DRM?
DRM refers to anti-piracy software. It stands for Digital-Rights Management. More specifically, the term doesn't refer to a specific program used to stop piracy, but to technologies employed by those selling or distributing a product (be it music, a video series, a video-game, an e-book, etc.) meant to prevent a customer who bought the product from sharing it with others.
For example, an online store that sells music, but the music can only be played through their official music player app, which requires an account and Internet connection to make sure you do have the legal right to listen to a song when you press play. This would be the DRM. The DRM-free version of this would be to just let people who purchased the music download MP3 or FLAC files that they can play in any offline music player app (Bandcamp allows this1, for example, so you can say they sell "DRM-free music"). I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure it's not illegal to make a copy of the MP3 to save it in another disk, e.g. as a backup. What would be illegal is to distribute it or even reproduce it to a large audience. This means DRM ends up restricting your ability to do legal things in order to prevent illegal actions.
In all cases, a business that employs DRM will frustrate and inconvenience legitimate customers in order to prevent them from committing piracy, which means the pirated version of these products is always going to be better, as it's the same product without pesky DRM restrictions. Above, for example, the pirated version of the DRM'd music would be just a MP3 file that you could play offline in any music player. This leads some people to even purchase something, because they have the money and want to support the creators, and then "pirate" it anyway in order to have it without the DRM.
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy," Newell said. "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. For example, if a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24/7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country three months after the U.S. release and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable.
"Most DRM solutions diminish the value of the product by either directly restricting a customer's use or by creating uncertainty."
https://www.ign.com/articles/2011/11/25/gabe-says-piracy-isnt-about-price (accessed 2024-08-12)
It's undeniable that DRM in all forms is bad, but beware of anyone who complains about DRM. They try to solve a real problem: piracy. Even a 3 dollar indie game is pirated 50% of the time, and some indie games are pirated 90% of the time2. Some pirates may tell themselves they are moral, and that they only pirate because of DRM or other anti-user practices, but, in reality, most pirates just pirate because they want free stuff. The ability to quickly copy digital files distorts people's perception of the work necessary to create the original copy in first place. To create the game, a real person took risks and needed months of work. To pirate it, a computer needs a Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, and it's done in seconds. While I don't like DRM, I also don't like the belief that piracy is anyhow moral. Companies invested millions of dollars into creating DRM technologies because they actually believe that piracy is costing them millions of dollars. It's not something they just claim to create anti-piracy policies. Similarly, when Google spends millions of dollars into anti-ad-blocker technology for Youtube, it's because they actually have the data that tells them ad-blockers are costing them so much money, they would lose less money paying engineers whole engineer salaries to develop anti-ad-blocker technologies. Nobody would spend so much money fighting piracy if piracy wasn't actually hurting them in first place. Unfortunately, for everybody involved, piracy is a societal problem, and can not be solved with technology. So long as people believe it's okay to pirate, they will pirate. Thus, DRM will always exist so long as users can't be trusted not to copy and distribute content they aren't allowed to.
Security Issues
DRM, like anti-cheating software, sometimes introduces security risks to the users' computers. Essentially, since you own the computer, you should be able to do anything with it. But DRM (and anti-cheating) means you shouldn't be able to copy things (or cheat in games). In order for these technologies to work, they must wield greater power over your PC than you do. They must be able to tell you, the owner of the computer, "no, you can't do this." In some cases, this means interacting with parts of the operating system that require elevated privilege (i.e. admin access). When DRM or anti-cheating software integrates with core parts of the system, the system becomes as secure as these software. Any system is as secure as its weakest link. Windows, Microsoft's operating system, is used by practically everyone, so it's always going to be more well-tested, and therefore more secure, than any DRM or anti-cheating software that is only installed in a small portion of people's computers. In conclusion, certain DRM technologies may make your computer more vulnerable, or, in some cases, even cause problems by themselves.
I'd like to say that this only applies to small companies creating their own DRM solutions, but as we see time and again, even large companies providing software for institutions all around the globe will eventually make mistakes. The programmers are human. The people hiring those programmers are also human. Given enough time, a critical mistake will happen eventually, and in some cases, a series of critical mistakes will allow one of those mistakes to reach people's computers. The companies do not trust you to not copy their flies, you shouldn't trust them to test their software properly either. Assume DRM with elevated privilege is a risk just as any software you install is a risk.
For the record, if you install pirated software, that's a much greater risk than installing a DRM solution. If the DRM is vulnerable, you know the name of the company that developed it. You can sue them. If a pirated software was tampered, is full of malware, and turns your computer into part of a botnet, or uses your electricity to mine cryptocurrency, who are you going to sue? In these cases, I suggest to vote with your wallet and simply not buy products from companies that do not trust you. Focus your attention on DRM-free products.
Offline DRM "Downloads"
For a long time, being able to "download" music or video from the Internet meant to be able to download an audio or video file that could be copied like any other file. In modern times, that seems to be no longer true, as some of these "downloads" are actually under DRM.
Youtube and Spotify are services that let you watch video and listen to music online, respectively. They have a free tier and a premium tier. In the free tier, there are ads, and you do not need an account. In the premium tier, you have to pay a subscription, and you need an account. A feature of their premium tier is the ability to "download music/video to listen/watch offline." What they mean by this is that you can use Youtube or Spotify without Internet, which is very different from actually "downloading" music or video.
For the record, every time you watch a video in your web browser or listen to music in your web browser, you are "downloading" data from the Internet. Nobody calls the data you need to download a "download," even though it's technically a download, because it's not a file that goes to your downloads folder.
When you "download" something in Youtube or Spotify's apps, it's also not a file that can be used in anything except in those apps, so it's not really useful either.
An Alternative to DRM
A fun fact: Steam is a platform where you can buy games. It's a website where you can browse them, and an application that you install to download games in your account. Steam was created by Gabe Newell, from the "service" quote above. Steam is not a DRM solution. Steam is just a client that connects to Steam servers and downloads the game files from there if you own them. Games downloaded through Steam can actually be copied freely, and the executable files will run without Steam installed, provided that they don't have an actual DRM solution implemented in it, which Steam does provide separately for developers who want to go through the trouble.
The Steam DRM wrapper is an important part of Steam platform because it verifies game ownership and ensures that Steamworks features work properly by launching Steam before launching the game.
The Steam DRM wrapper by itself is not an anti-piracy solution. The Steam DRM wrapper protects against extremely casual piracy (i.e. copying all game files to another computer) and has some obfuscation, but it is easily removed by a motivated attacker.
We suggest enhancing the value of legitimate copies of your game by using Steamworks features which won't work on non-legitimate copies (e.g. online multiplayer, achievements, leaderboards, trading cards, etc.).
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/drm (accessed 2024-08-14)
Observe that there is a very good strategy against piracy in the quote above.
Piracy is not a problem that can be solved with technology, but it is a problem that can be amended with psychology. Pirates pirate because they get the same product as the legitimate consumer, or because the legitimate product is actually worse than the pirate version due to DRM. They really have no reason to not pirate besides their sense of morals. It turns out most people have no morals, which is why there are so many pirates.
To fix this, the only solution is to make the legitimate product more appealing than the pirated product. If users don't think legitimacy is worthy it, they won't be legitimate, so you need to make legitimacy appear worthy.
People don't like DRM that requires Internet connection to prove that you own a product. If Internet stops working for a few days, products that you paid for may stop working because they check if your license is valid every few days. I've heard that this happens with Clip Studio Paint, for example.
However, if there is something on the Internet that can't be copied and can only be participated in if you have an account, such as leaderboards, customer support, etc., things change. Now there is a real reason to be legitimate.
Pirates can feel they are smarter than legitimate consumers because they got the product for free. If they can't access certain features because they don't have an account, they'll be forced to acknowledge that they are actually inferior to real consumers, not superior to them. I think this paradigm shift is important because it just can't be healthy for any industry to have 90% of its users just pirating the products instead of buying them. It can't be healthy for creators, specially, to discover they spent all that time creating stuff just for most people to pirate it.
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