DRM 'Too Complicated' Says Gates 196
arbirk writes "BBC News is reporting on comments made by Bill Gates concerning DRM.. It seems he has got the point (DRM is bad for consumers), but that opinion differs widely from the approach taken by Microsoft on Zune and their other music related products. The comments were originally posted on Micro Persuasion. The article also has a take on Apple's DRM." From the BBC article: "Microsoft is one of the biggest exponents of DRM, which is used to protect music and video files on lots of different online services, including Napster and the Zune store. Blogger Michael Arrington, of Techcrunch.com, said Bill Gates' short-term advice for people wanting to transfer songs from one system to another was to 'buy a CD and rip it'. Most CDs do not have any copy protection and can be copied to a PC and to an MP3 player easily and, in the United States at least, legally."
Windows too? (Score:3, Interesting)
"You should buy the media [Windows] and rip it to BitTorrent for others..."
Pot meet the kettle (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows Media DRM can vary based on any number of factors but is what the RIAA wants. They want to limit how some songs are played. Some songs can be burned to cd 5 times others never at all. MSFT bowed to the pressure of the RIAA to try and undercut Apple and instead got bitten by consumers who only got confused.
While I don't care for DRM I do see the point. Of course the rights granted by the DRM must follow fair use guidelines. So far no one has done that.
Perfectly in character... (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing else he said was against DRM in any way. All the anti-DRM talk was by other people. If you can't read "We're going to shove it down your throats eventually", then you're not paying attention.
testing the market (Score:3, Interesting)
There's only one thing about DRM that I actually liked. You were, finally, buying RIGHTS for something. That means, if you ever lose your files, you could download the songs again at no charge (that was possible on some systems, IIRC). That's not the case with vinyls, tapes and CDs. You lost the vinyl, tape or CD, and you must buy a new one, and pay for the songs again. So there was no clear line of what you were buying: either the physical media, or the songs contained in it. Apparently, it was a Christian approach, kind of "body+soul", there were indivisible. You couldn't even take your scratched CD to the store and pay the price of the CD (the media alone) to get a new one. Also, this meant that you couldn't "upgrade" formats for a small sum (take your tape and pay a few bucks, and go home with a CD).
I think there's a difference there though. (Score:3, Interesting)
Music DRM is different. You want to listen to a track from one of the big labels, you have to buy the music with DRM installed. If you later wish to swap to another vendor, then.... well you can buy all your music all over again - and kick yourself for not buying CDs.
DRM does benefit hardware makers - the one who got in there early and has most of the market. If you've bought an ipod over the last 5ish years and bought music, if you want to carry on listening to it, you're going to be be buying Apple iPods until the day you die.
So you've bought an ipod, so you had to buy m4p files, so you have to keep on buying ipods, so you keep on buying m4p files....
Only options you have to escape this cycle are to stop buying music, just buy CDs, Pirate your music or wait for the next DRM-removing util to come along and go cold turkey from DRM before it's patched.
Re:erm to be fair (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft DirectPlay is a misnomer (Score:5, Interesting)
As for DRM in general, I've had my share of nightmares. I put a newish CD into my computer the other day and it tried to install a proprietary music player. My girlfriend put a DVD movie (Warner Brothers) into her computer and a similar player began installing without even a prompt. I played Trackmania Nations [trackmanianations.com] a while back and, even though it is a completely free game, it installed the infamous and dangerous StarForce copy protection software without prompting me.
I can't trust anyone but pirates anymore, so that's who I'll patronize (for content post-2004). Sorry, big media, you've failed me too many times. Companies are too greedy and DRM is too iffy to chance putting on my computer. My PC is heftier than my television or stereo will ever be and I'm not risking infection so that the MAFIAA can snoop on my private information.
Historically, no one has better understood the needs and frustrations of digital media consumers than pirates. They provide easy-to-install cracks with detailed documentation. Pirate organizations like Razor 1911 and Reloaded provide a free "service" to the public and their only competition is other similar release groups. Why do non-profit organizations provide vastly better service than legitimate for-profit companies?
Look inward, Billy Gates. Your company is guilty of all the things you point your finger at in TFA. It's cute that you urge us to rip CDs instead of buying songs online, but it's patently obvious that you're just taking a pot shot at iTunes. Put up or shut up.
Re:Interesting stance (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder if Bill even considers WGA to be DRM in his mind. After all, you can copy a Windows XP install disk (I imagine it is the same for Vista) all you want, so the Windows disk is not, in his mind, copy protected. WGA and activation are required to use Windows, but it is not required to install it. In most people's minds, this is DRM, but I could see where Bill Gates might really believe that this is not the case when it comes to Microsoft products since there is no "copy protection" on the actual media.
Profit Motive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Tech companies have everything to gain from free downloadable music on the internet. The people who make the music players, the people who make the PCs, the service providers and the people who provide bandwidth. DRM is only desirable to the people who sell music.
Microsoft has to make an effort with DRM, because the RIAA and media companies are standing by ready to sue. But that is a far cry from imagining that Microsoft is on the forefront of promoting DRM.
Re:Interesting stance (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting. And maybe that's the right way to look at it. People who are smarter than I am, are working on an improved copyright ideology in which it is the experience, rather than the data, that is protected.
In this new ideology, everyone can freely transfer any files to anyone else; information wants to be free, after all. So share your movies with everyone... in the long run, that's what the studios want anyway. You only have to purchase a ticket when it comes time to actually experience the show.
There would presumably be some kind of trusted players which would bill you two cents each time you played a song. Yes, I know that that's an infuriating idea, but what's the alternative? Charging you to own the bytes (as we do today) is equally troublesome, and worse, does not accurately charge you for the actual amount of pleasure you get.
In Bill Gates' mind, then, everyone can download the Windows install disks. WGA comes along later to impose a fee (or whatever) only on the 'experience' of running Windows.
In my mind, I'd rather pay twenty-five cents for each Word document I edit, than to pay $400 for an installation of the software that I might only use twenty-five times. What I really need is pricing granularity, which today's "purchase the file" schemes fail to accomplish. Same for songs, movies, anything. WGA is objectionable and flawed, but at least it is a more granular purchase scheme than charging per distribution disc.
You brought it on yourselves (Score:3, Interesting)
It was acknowledged by game developers in the 1980s that you would sell two copies of a game for the Apple platform, one on the East Coast of the US and one on the West Coast. Everyone else would get theirs from BBS systems. This virtually stopped game development for that platform.
While it was "sharing" cassette tapes between friends, there was no problem with "music sharing" and it was all treated as either fair use or just a cost of doing business. Today, I can buy some recording and post it on the Internet for the world to download. I can do this in some cases before mass distribution by the content owner, thereby "beating" them to the sale.
Whatever you think of content ownership and copyright, this isn't going to stand. You cannot have a situation where one group quashes the revenue and business of another group. When this happens between rival criminal gangs, the result is a gang war. When this happens between countries, the result is a war. When this happens between companies or companies and individuals, one of them is going down - and the individuals have all the advantage here.
Yes, if this situation continues the individuals will win out in the end. But it will be rather strange victory - most of what we consider today to be "commercial" and "professional" recorded entertainment will disappear. Will traveling minstrels replace them? Maybe, for the folks that can't do anything else. But no commercial entity will put up money to make a recording again.
We, the Internet using people of the world, have a choice. We can continue to "share" everything possible or we can contain our greed and selfishness and pay for entertainment. Sure, you get to choose what you pay for and you have a right to be angry when you are ripped off. But, you do not get to decide not to pay. At least not if we like the current arrangement. While patronage by the rich and powerful worked for a long time, it was an awful system.
I bought the third copy, I guess... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that's more due to the fact that the Macintosh in the 1980s was a marginal game platform at best, and the Apple II was dying a terrible death as the Apple
During the 1980s I had to get a pirate copy of one Apple game