DRM-Free Music Spells Trouble? 634
digitaldame2 writes "Many opponents of DRM have been overjoyed at recent efforts to free media from its grip. But PC Mag Editor-in-Chief Lance Ulanoff believes the whole world has gone mad. His view is that our digital economy will collapse this way, and it could be followed by countless others. 'The music industry's moves have been terrified reactions to staunch the bleeding of millions of dollars in revenue down the drain. For maybe a year, music companies thought they had the situation under control, but then album sales tumbled. Retailers, musicians, and some music-industry execs thought DRM was the culprit, and they soon joined the chorus of consumers calling for its head. Now consumers are getting their wish, and the music industry will continue to crumble. Giving up control of content and giving it away free are not rational ideas in a market economy, yet everyone's cheering.'" Is the removal of restrictions from our media really that big a deal?
DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see what the big deal about removing DRM is, either way the music industry needs to revise their business model, and removing DRM is the first step.
Giving up control? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, way wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
logical falacy (Score:1, Insightful)
Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, were it not for that, I could quote the lyrics of "Trouble in River City" from Music Man to make my point, provide a link to the MP3 (or Ogg) and maybe someone would download the song and decide to go buy the CD, or even the DVD.
I'm just a dreamer...
Remember when horses were the only way to travel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, some new technology came to the scene: the automobile. "Oh noes", the shodders cried, "our economy is going to be ruined.."
The moral of this story is: technology. It will force change. Either keep up with it, or remove yourself from the market. Music doesn't have to be paid for - not any more, and no longer will we have to worship the few and provide them economic sustenance, so that they are only able to do it, when the many can do it, themselves.
In short, grow up music-industry people. Your world is changing. All worlds change. Let the people decide what life will be, and quite crying just because you didn't see the writing on the wall.
Yes, this applies to all media/content related markets. The writing is on the wall. The only way to protect your media is to put it in hardware - books are a good example - that makes it pleasant for people to buy it from you. The world needs us all to go digital and stop raping the earth, just so the few can profit from the ignorance of the many. Let the horses back to the fields
Re:Wow, way wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Business needs to adapt or evolve (Score:2, Insightful)
DRM is that big of a deal, but the other way (Score:5, Insightful)
I do kind of feel bad for the *AA member companies. It would suck to realize that your industry was subject to a disruptive technology that was already well past the tipping point. Having said that, it's their problem and not mine. I've been buying DRM-free music for decades and have absolutely zero interest in giving up control of my possessions.
Did you hear that? Possessions. Not licensed content, not rentals or leases, but things I own. When I buy music, I own that copy no matter how much they wrongly insist otherwise. I will not pay extra to buy restrictions to prevent me from using my possessions they way I want to use them, even if that was is undesirable for its makers. As long as I'm staying within the constraints of the law and not giving copies of it to others, it's none of their business (even if they wish it was).
So sorry, *AA. You had the opportunity to do things differently, but you chose to fight me instead of making me your friend. Your actions have been so scummy that I truly don't care what happens to you now. Justice? Morals? Ethics? As you have long cast those aside, I just can't be bothered to care when people fail to use them with you. Goodbye and good luck. You won't be missed.
please explain (Score:5, Insightful)
Subscriptions and DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
I cannot help but think he was thinking about the dangers of DRM when he wrote this.
The curse of DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
DRM music was a hastle to buy, restricted how you could play it, was a pain to get on alternate computers/media, and was a predetermined quality. Not only that but you had to manage the license files and repurchase the media if it was ever corupted or lost.
Removing the DRM evens the playing field out. If the music is easy to purchase and has all the other benifits that pirated music has, it will work. People dont mind paying. You just have to offer the same product that consumers want.
If they offer a better service and experience than the pirates, they will get people to pay. The pirates would have to put more effort into service and quality. It will cost the pirates more, force them to become more visible and stable, and in the end they will be much easyer to convict and shut down.
As it stand the pirate have set the bar for what the consumer wants. The lables have to raise the bar with out charging too much.
Why it's a good idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
DRM won't matter, industry using it to kill apple (Score:3, Insightful)
People who aren't going to buy aren't going buy and will always find an excuse.
Notice now though how again the labels with provide "amazon" with DRM free tracks but only EMI will provide apple. Using there catalogs as muscle to try and make the online sale more even. Those labels are evil..
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
The only question is the timeframe and whether or not you are going to annoy your paying customers in the meantime.
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA is flamebait (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Is the removal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly.
Giving up control of content and giving it away free are not rational ideas in a market economy
They also aren't the same thing, as anyone even remotely familiar with the subject is well aware.
What isn't rational in a market economy is deliberately making the black market version of your product better than the above board original, by artificially crippling the latter. Such a policy is pretty much directly targeted at the very people who actively support your business, while doing little to impair those who do not.
If it crumbles... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the music industry crumbles it won't be because it did or did not have DRM, it will be because it failed to offer a product consumers wanted at a price they were willing to pay. No amount of DRM or hand-wringing will change the fact that for some consumers, that means competing with free. Nor will it change the fact that if they produce music that nobody wants, nobody will buy it (even for free). In short, the music industry must either change with the times or go to its grave. That's no different than for any other industry, notwithstanding the industry big-shots who seem to think that consumers owe it to them to keep them afloat.
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there is the recording industry. The recording industry is responsible for pressing CDs and putting them on store shelves.
The recording industry might need a new business model, or it might need to join the buggy whip makers and telegraph operators and just fade into yesteryear. The music industry people never really made much money from CD sales, since the record industry kept the screws so tight with everybody. Performers make their money from concerts (when they don't get screwed by promoters) and merchandise sales, anyway.
Re:Wow, way wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but I think that whole argument is fundamentally flawed.
For one thing, few musicians could make enough money to get by today from live performances alone, even the good ones.
For another thing, the idea of mass distribution won't disappear, it'll just shift to a different channel. A smart label will establish an on-line brand with a good reputation and lots of visitors coming to its web site, and use that to promote the bands it's acting for. I imagine we'll see the market shift to cheaper products that sell more copies as well. A smart label could still make a worthwhile percentage doing that, it'll just replace their old physical media distribution model and sales/pricing assumptions over time.
The only organisations that will die are stupid labels who think the physical media are the way of the future and don't understand basic economics. And frankly, they deserve to. A middleman who provides no useful service is worthless, and will lose out to more helpful competition.
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
The question waiting to be answered is whether or not DRM free music will encourage/facilitate more "illegal" file sharing. My guess is that the affect will be minimal and the appreciation towards the music industry for not tying up purchased music will only increase online sales.
I for one will never buy music with DRM.
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me? I think possibly one of the main PROBLEMS with lowered music quality is the fact that so many groups/bands today cannot tour...cannot play their own instruments with any acuity, and require too much electronic 'help'. Geez, people are paying money for acts that do tour...to watch them dance and lip-sync?!?!
Why can't groups learn to cultivate talent, take it on the road...I'll give Led Zeppelin as an example. They had most of their material for the 1st album ready to go FROM rehearsals, and playing the songs on the road. They recorded their album on their own dollar (Jimmy Page and Peter Grants) because they hadn't even signed with Atlantic records yet.
And what did they do? They toured....and toured...and toured. They did something like 3-4 tours of the US AND about the same of Europe in their first year out....hell, Led Zeppelin II was pretty much written and recorded while on the road that first year.
Those guys could play....and they did. They were well known to give 3 hour concerts. Back in their day, they tried to make sure that ticket prices were reasonable. They made sure to try to give the audience what it deserved. From this live presentation....they sold albums, which helped fuel energy for more live shows.
And look at Zeppelin...they refused to sell singles....although a few came out by the record companies against their will. They made FEW TV appearances...yet, they sold records, and set attendance records.
I'd have to say....being talented and able to perform live DID have a lot to do with their fame and fortune. I'd like to think it could be replicated for upcoming bands.
I know there are differences now that make it tougher....music genre's are so splintered now....rather than just 'rock', there are upteen different variations. Radio is consolidated more....etc. But, I have to think if a group was really GOOD, and good live...with music distribution, they could take it on the road and get famous. Where is the next Zeppelin?
Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen. And when that term is several human lifetimes, it is clearly benefiting only one entity: the corporations. The rest of you suckers don't get a look in.
Re:I stole more music before the internet (Score:1, Insightful)
How many of us are using the complaint that we can't make a 'back-up' copy of our purchased media?
Many.
Out of this number, how many made backups of our Hendrix 8-tracks, Kiss albums, Def Leppard cassettes, E.T. VHS tapes, or INXS CDs?
Any?
Before most of us heard the term MP3, I'd guess more of us repurchased CDs that were scratched or broken then 'backed them up.'
The technology to get non-tangible media (audio, video) to people has changed more quickly than those industries. I think those industries have a place to exist.
Why do we have issues? We can buy individual tracks now for a dollar, make backups for free, take thousands of songs with us on cheap players and put all of our old stuff on the PC we use in minutes.
I don't get it.
Tell me your issues. Tell me how this denegrates music and video for most of us.
Looking in the wrong place... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
A very shallow view of the situation would lead us to think that no one would make any money off the music. But...
If some of the people that read that post and listened to the music showed it to a few of their friends...
Then if a few of them wanted to see the movie...
Then if the artist put up a paypal link...
Profit.
It's riskier. The music has to be better. It puts the control in the hands of the consumer rather than the producer. There is little need for behemoth middle-men like music labels.
I see these all as good things.
It has been demonstrated that talented artists can make a living doing what they love without DRM. What has not been demonstrated is that labels can survive that way.
I'm ok with a world like that.
PS. "The Music Man" is a particularly apt example of the problem and essentially nullifies your point. Almost the entire cast, crew, and musicians involved in it's creation are dead. The only people making money off of it are distributors that made no artistic contribution to it's creation.
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I noticed in TFA is that he immediately jumps from DRM-free music to giving away all music for free, which I don't think is necessarily inevitable.
Think about this...it's been something like 7-8 years since the original Napster appeared. What if, instead of the ensuing stonewalling and lawsuits and legislative attmepts to roll back technology, the recording industry had simply created easy-to-use and DRM-free pay-for-download sites? What if they had spent their efforts and resources creating a new music distribution model that served the customers instead of reactionary tactics that had earned them nothing but bad will from consumers? Would they still lose out on sales to piracy via DRM-free media copying? Certainly. But perhaps, had they not destroyed whatever shreds of consumer good will they had, and could honestly say "Look, we gave you, the consumers, the most convenient music distribution system you've ever seen, so we ask you on the honor system not to redistribute our content or swap it with others for free", they might not be facing a customer base that largely considers them scum and would just as soon see them cut out of the picture altogether.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe everyone will freeload forever without DRM...but I can't help but think that since 8+ years since "mp3" entered the lexicon that piracy is *still* the most convenient form of digital content distribution, that perhaps the only reason why everything that they do "just digs them deeper" is that they have quite simply fully and completely alienated their customer base.
The Lesson of Borland (Score:5, Insightful)
If you believe in the claims of the DRM advocates in our big media organizations, you probably figure that Borland must have lost money horribly. Actually, they didn't; their strategy of selling without copy protection at a fair price was very successful.
The lesson I take away from that is that most people, if you offer them a fair deal, will take the fair deal rather than steal from you. I don't remember anyone ever saying "Borland deserves to have this stuff ripped off."
If you offer me music without DRM at a fair price, I will pay the price and get the music legally. I think most music fans will do the same. (Especially if they believe that their money will mostly go to the band instead of to the record label.)
P.S. The flip side of the coin is that DRM doesn't actually work. There's this thing called the "Internet", see, and if anyone anywhere in the world manages to once break the DRM, then everyone who wants to download the DRM-free version can do so. Thus DRM just hurts the actual paying customers, who then might well feel entitled to steal the next product instead of buying it.
steveha
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:2, Insightful)
By "artists," of course, I mean good artists. Pop stars will probably go broke with this model, but that doesn't bother me in the least.
Re: DRM (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a very big leap between removing DRM and giving it away free. When there was no Amazon Music Store, and no iTunes Plus there was piracy. Since the introduction of iTune Plus and Amazon's DRM MP3 store there has been piracy.
Since Radiohead sold their album as MP3s online for "whatever you want to pay" they have continued to sell CDs (Infact, In Rainbows has done very well in the US charts as a CD album).
DRM does nothing to halt piracy, the thought that it has any affect at all on piracy is quite ridiculous.
The bigger worry for the music industry is the quality of music being produced. If they continue to try and market music that no one wants, they are not going to sell it. DRM, no DRM, if people don't want to listen to the music, they wont buy it.
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:2, Insightful)
Think it as: Can You live on a revenue from works you performed earlier? Should they?
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Already renting your music collection (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong question... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, there's no question about that, it most certainly will.
The real question isn't whether there will be more illegal file sharing, it's whether there will be more legal purchases.
For a long, long time, I've asked a simple thought experiment. If you had your choice of having $500 million in sales with rampant piracy, or $1 billion in sales with twice as much piracy, which would you choose? The music industry has a history of choosing the lesser amount because of the risk of the increase in music piracy. I've contended all along that this is stupidity, that even if music piracy increases, it would be well worth it to increase their bottom line in legal music purchases. To date, they've been operating out of spite instead of common financial sense.
I hope, and I honestly believe, that as DRM-free music becomes the de facto standard in the marketplace, sales will increase as hardware manufacturers gear up to take advantage of it and people are able to listen to what they want, how they want, where they want. It's just a no-brainer to me. And I hope the MPAA is taking note, because the same principle will apply to television shows and movies also.
The question has never been about whether or not there will be piracy. The only way to prevent it is to close your company's doors and declare bankruptcy, never to earn another penny again. The only question is how willing the industry is to cut off its nose to spite its face, to forgo profits to stop something that will never be stopped.
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
It's Radiohead. Check 'em out. Also, it used to be Phish.
Proof by Confusion (Score:5, Insightful)
THE Music Industry is a myth
And by that I mean The Myth is that the is one "music industry". Specifically, what I mean when I say "the music industry" is (clearly, obviously) NOT the same thing that THEY (RIAA, etc) of the world mean.
I would suggest that we (the sane and clear thinking intelligent people of the world) understand that there are TWO "Music Industries".
- The Industry of Making Music
- The Industry of Distributing Music
DRM is all about the control of the distribution of music. What we're seeing here is a failure of that control.So what if DRM fails? So what if Music Distribution fails? So what if The Music Distribution Industry (which, basically, in its current invocation is nothing more than a protectionist racket like the MAFIA used to run) fails?
Previously the mechanical complexities involved in the distribution of physical media meant there "was room" (in a business sense) for an entity to "make this happen smoothly" and make money in the process. Now that there's less and less physical distribution, and more electronic distribution, the previous "margin for profit" is rapidly shrinking (ie there's no room for someone to skip BILLIONS of dollars from consumers for no reason).
As living proof that any idiot can make predictions about The Music Industry
- Music Distribution will be SIGNIFICANTLY LESS about physical media and more about content
- Many artists will find this is an opportunity to be more direct with their customers, and thereby collect more of the profits themselves
- Other distributors will be needed, to help shuffle bits (iTunes, Last.FM, etc)
- There will be multiple distribution models (sell bits, rent bits, subscription for bits)
- There will be MUCH MORE of a market for "free stuff" that comes with what you bought (ie "value add")
- There will be MUCH MORE of a market for premium content (ie the ultimate collectors signed-by-the-artist, gold-plated, diamond-encrusted pack)
... because it's now a significant distinguisher, as more of the market is no-longer physical - ....
- Profit???
Basically I could ramble on for a few MEGABYTES, but the main point is this:- The Entire Industry That Revolves Around Music will be much broader, deeper, richer than ever before.
Even though "the current distribution and control models" are no longer valid, nor necessary, nor are they even WANTED anymore.We need not, we should not, mourn their demise. Like a recently deceased aged relative, we've had some good memories, but towards the end it's just been messy and embarrassing.
Hold a funeral, bury the body, enjoy the wake, celebrate the new generation.
Every song is already on the P2P networks... (Score:3, Insightful)
Every single song is already on the P2P networks so how can this cause the collapse of anything?
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA == Troll (Score:2, Insightful)
The author confuses physical goods with digital goods. No problem, happens all the time. He introduces this concept though:
"So people who made wooden chairs could trade them for, say, rice, fresh fruits, or meat. In time, a monetary system was introduced to generate a larger economy." That's not how it went down. Actually, according to my conspiracy-minded imagination, money was introduced by a bunch of lazy slobs who wanted to own the whole world, by doing the minimum amount of work. They devised a system by which people would trade little beads, bits of paper, shells, whatever, as long as they controlled the supply of said fiat currency. Like the man said "He who controls the spice controls the universe".
Thanks, Lance, for perpetuating the corruption that is money. That's swell. Before, people made whatever and traded whatever. Sure, there were inefficiencies, but people did what they fail to do now: they told people what they had and what they needed. Nowadays, it's all about "How much can I get for it" or "What are you willing to pay me for". So much better, I admit. (BTW, I am a wannabe '60's hippie that Lance is talking about in the article, like you couldn't have guessed) Moving on.
"We access or play an instance of it, but ownership lies really with the creators or, if they signed the rights away, to the media conglomerate that sold the right to consume it--on a limited basis--to you."
Whoa! When did we agree to this? OK, just for the record, let it be known that unlike everything else ever created in the world that is portable, fungible, and transferable, media is different. You don't own it. You have the right to use it. OK, let me get this straight, Lance, so I don't misrepresent you or your media conglomerate sugar daddy.
If I were to purchase a physical paper copy of your magazine, just for fun, let's say...then I gave that copy of your magazine to someone else after I was done reading it, that would be copyright infringement, right? Bear with me Lance...I purchased the "right" to read your sacred text, the words that you received on high by the mighty fortress that is...Microsoft, Ziff-Davis? I forgot who your corporate masters were. Anyway, so I purchased this "right", naively thinking I had purchased a "product" instead. If I then give that holy writ away to someone else, thinking "Hey, geek-boy over there is going to get a kick out of this," have I not infringed upon your sacred copyright? Have I not transferred my right to view your copyrighted work, without your express written consent (and the written consent of ABC, and the National Football League)? Am I in trouble, Lance? Are the cops going to take me away? I want my mommy. Woe is me.
See, this is exactly why a common peasant, unwise in the ways of copyright law, would be tempted to "steal" music. The commoner understands the concept of "buying and selling stuff". We do not understand this concept of "limited transfer of rights". In fact, it appears that yon mega-media company is attempting to rip us off. Is that what's going on? Has this been going on for years? Are the money changers in the temple? Have they been kicked out by the messiah of P2P? Lance, are you actually defending the money-changers? Do you even know what you're up against?
Sharing resources like this always makes me think of the parable of the loaves and the fishes (no I am not a Christian, but I will not hesitate to use Christian literature against them). You see, The Original Hippie split loaves of bread and entire fish. Why he did not bring at least some of the fish back to life, to replenish the stocks in the lake/river/stream/whatever is beyond me. Perhaps his powers were weak, at the time. Anyway, everyone got enough to eat because Beardy basically did this matter transmutation thing with food.
This is essentially what we are doing now, with media. We copy one set of organiz
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
I've bought more DRM-free music than DRM music (Score:3, Insightful)
Trouble for music industry execs (Score:3, Insightful)
As my brother, a musician, tells me, he doesn't make that much money off recordings anyway. Most of his income comes from performances. I can steal the f*cking CDs for all he cares as long as I come to the concerts.
Keep this all in mind when deciding who will be getting screwed by DRM-free music.
Time Travel (Score:3, Insightful)
"... For 10,000 years musicians earned their money by playing in front of a live audience except for a short 80 year period in the 20th century. Before this period recording has not technically possible and after the period recordings had no commercial value because they could be universally disseminated at no cost...."
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, as has been said often enough, DRM does nothing but create bad customer relations. And while I agree that people have always been able to copy music, they have not always had such mind-boggling ease of access and storage capability. Society as a whole needs to remember that regardless of how they feel about the unfairness of the music industry's charging practices, if you don't pay your musicians, they aren't going to be able to make a living. If it was only so easy to replace DRM with the honor system, we wouldn't be having these discussions.
Of course the "digital economy" will collapse. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mod parent up (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like talking to a photography student about copyright. Their position is always an outraged sense of entitlement based around how hard they studied and how much they paid to go to school.
I imagine horse drawn buggy whip manufacturing students and executive managers sounded much like these people.
Analogy with publishing (Score:3, Insightful)
The music industry is going through changes analogous to the ones the publishing industry went through over time.
In the first era, publishing books was a laborious and time consuming process, and only one copy could be made easily. Books cost huge amounts of money, and were hand printed and illustrated. Then when the printing press was invented, it created a second era, which dramatically brought down the price of books due to mass production, and made it possible for countless people to read things they never would have been able to before. It also led to the rise of publishing empires who controlled what and who was published. If you could afford a printing press, you could publish what you wanted, but not many had the resources and wherewithal to become a major publishing machine. And lastly with the rise of the internet era, web sites and blogs, which are essentially free ways to publish and mass-distribute your work, it became possible for anyone to have their writing accessible to all, and to build a following, without the need for a publisher in the middle. Many blogs are now major writing outlets, and don't go through publishers they way they would have needed to in years gone by. Technology has created a whole new market and business model.
The record companies are in the same state the publishing companies were in during the rise of the third era; technology has made it possible to bypass them and they are running scared.
But you don't see blogs as a substitute for publishing books. People still buy books from book publishers. Yet blogs have become a huge global force just as important as books. Newspapers, being in between, have suffered and have been forced to become more like blogs. The difference between blogs and traditional printed media is that blogs are streams. The value people find in blogs is that they are a constant stream of creative content from the writer, i.e. a subscription. People see value in getting the latest thing from the writer, in a timely way, with predictability and quality. So what people see as the value of blogs is access to the talent on an ongoing basis, not an individual item of production. And there still is value in producing and buying books, because they are a different product meeting a different need.
So I see that the music distribution business will change in similar ways. It may become impossible to charge for individual songs, but people will pay for ongoing access to the talent. The musicians will be forced to actually be productive on an ongoing basis, and to create a stream of content, which has subscription value. They will no longer be able to build huge fortunes on a few moments of inspiration, and will have to work for their supper on a continuing basis. But in the end, those who have talent will be able to create that stream of value, though probably not on the scale that musicians get paid today.
And there will still be a market for high-production quality compilations of music, like CD compilations with good editorial judgment, and high-quality artwork and music. But along side them, as important or more so, there will be talent streams.
Things will be different, and talented musicians will be able to make a moderate amount of money, and the people who make fortunes today riding a few creative successes probably won't be able to do that. But is that such a bad thing?
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
First, computers are getting exceptionally cheap. The notion that we'd ever have to lease a computer in the future is fairly bogus (it wouldn't be tolerated by many, especially the
Concerning computers I don't see Linux going away anytime soon, and it is realistically impossible to place DRM into the OS - most people who use linux do so for the freedom and flexibility it offers. If one distro did it, you can be certain it would die quite quickly. (This also ignores the legal issues with incorporating DRM, almost always proprietary, with linux.)
Even having said that, I've got a nice monitor and I have no desire to go to HD. Perhaps in the future when 50" plasma screens are the standard I'll reconsider, but most movies aren't make or break based on being HD. Given the popularity of Mp3s you can be even more certain this holds for music.
Finally, if the environment is such that the consumer silently sits by while this happens, we'll have far greater things to worry about, such as the government.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wrong question... (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. If you could go to an easy to access reputable source and buy a DRM free song in whatever format you wanted for say a dime, people would do it rather than risk the problems and dangers of p2p networks. Music with DRM has no value to me so I don't buy it. Music without DRM has much more value. Add more value by having a web site that recommends other music based on what I bought and I might pay a little more. The bands can make their money the same way they make most of their money under the current regime, that is by touring. The RIAA leeches can make money by selling promotion contracts to bands. Technology has moved the industry beyond the need for gatekeepers controlling who gets to sell their music. CD's are only alive because the current regimes have payed off the government to pass laws keeping that market viable.
Re:Wrong question... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's ridiculous. There will be (or rather is, as DRM-free music is now mainstream) no increase in piracy. Piracy requires that only one DRM-free copy gets out for it to proliferate across the internet. And guess what: every song released by the big-5 labels has been released on CD--without DRM.
DRM is not about piracy and never was. That is how to labels and move studios chose to sell it to the public (artists are going to starve in a digital world without DRM!), but it actually provides no protection against piracy. It may be difficult for someone to get unencrypted data off an HD-DVD disk, but that doesn't matter. As long as one person can do it, the data will proliferate. In other words, if DRM were about piracy in order to be effective it wouldn't have to be merely difficult to break, it would have to be impossible.
But that's not why the content producers have pushed DRM so hard. What it's really about is control. Consumers have traditionally had a great deal of control over their media, but in this digital age the content producers perceived that they could shift the balance back towards themselves, opening up new revenue streams even as they watched their markets fall. After all, if consumers had control over their media, they could put it on any player they wanted, without paying any more money for their content. That won't do. Look at the nice racket they have: do you want to play your iTunes music on linux (or, more commonly, on a non-Apple mp3 player)? Pay more money for the same content in a different form. Want to play your DVDs on your iPod? You have to re-buy it.
Faced with declining interest in their products (a smaller market), there is only two ways to increase their revenue: get more people to buy their content, or get the people that do to pay more money. DRM lets the content producers take the second approach.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:2, Insightful)
This is coming from someone who reads more on a screen than 99% of the world. For the rest of the world reading a novel on a computer would be even more of a ridiculous idea. In summary, books will be the last thing to suffer from removing copyright simply because the people who buy books do so because they love reading. Otherwise they go to the library.
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
You see, that is something I just don't get, and you are making a good point.
How good the image of a movie is is very low on my list of priorities. I want a good story. Good actors, good acting. Some nice editing. In other words, the "human" part of movie making. And those things are each day more rare.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mod parent up (Score:4, Insightful)
If a book goes
Author -> Agent -> publisher -> printer (probably part of publisher) -> Distributer -> store
How will it compete with
publisher -> Printer -> Store ?
All non-functional art is reliant on copyright. Terms could be dropped to something like 10 years and the vast majority of the profits could be kept though (with a few exception, especially stuff aimed at children).
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
It could be absolutely disastrous for our culture, but we really don't know either way. How about a side-by-side study of the two models? We could have artists distributing by the "outdated" method and artists distributing straight to the public domain (if they want to), and compare who ends up more popular? Wait a sec, isn't that what's already happening? No, not really. The people out there who are illegally sharing copyrighted works are muddying up the results. If they stop, we could finally see what culture would be like without copyrighted media.
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
And ebooks don't come close to the readability, convenience, and utility of an actual book.
And if you think you're the only reader of books, how do you explain that every mall in American has at least one bookstore, and the internet is filled with book sellers (B&N, Amazon, Caimen, Powells... the list is endless).
I frankly see the TV Network most at risk since they seem to do their best at annoying viewers with endless commercials and taking 1/3 the screen space to remind you of the network name.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
You certainly don't need copyright in order to sell intellectual property, just a way of enforcing mutually agreed-to contracts.
No, you don't understand music (Score:3, Insightful)
Real music is a living breathing thing. It's people next to other people creating something right in front of you.
I don't mean in a concert hall, either. I'm talking about how most of us musicians got started. Playing in the local bar for $75 for 5 guys for 4 hours. It's about emotion, it's about a moment in time. Music in that setting *moves* people. A person playing Mozart sonatas live is riveting. On a CD, it's... nice. Chicago style polkas make you get up and dance *even if you hate polkas*. A smaltzy singer on the radio... wow... in person, you *get* it.
Yeah, you can make interesting sounds with synth and a sequencer and a recorder, and it's good, and entertaining, but people who just listening to music on CD's or their iPod and missing 3/4's of what music is all about.
Get up and dance. Move around. Laugh and cry with other people, marvel at a group of guys creating right there in front of you.
If you think that's sport, then you've probably never played sports or made music.
Now I understand why my daughter's age group would prefer a DJ to a live band.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll take copyright.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
It's easy to enforce a law preventing publishers from printing a book without permission from the author. It is much harder to enforce a law preventing me from sharing a music file with one billion of my closest friends. As long as books keep their dead tree format and not go digital, they will be ok. The music industry made its biggest mistake when they decided to use a distribution media that could be read by every computer. I remember back in the old days when people copied music onto tape with a microphone. It was a lot of trouble, you had to buy a tape for each copy, and the quality was bad, so it wasn't as widespread as music sharing is today. Right or wrong, people who would never go into a store and walk out with a CD without paying feel no guilt when they download music.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to say the real artists will be the ones making the money from live performance again, but what if I'm a songwriter but not a singer, or a playwright with no interest or talent for being a director/producer, or a novelist, or... you get the idea.
I don't have a good answer for that yet.
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
In a society with fair trade, value of a good or service is determined, to a large degree, by the time, effort, or ability (expertise, access to resources) involved in production of that good. In a large part, shelling out money is drawing from a stored representation of your value-- money-- in order to have work done that you don't wish to do. I can't be bothered to taking singing lessons or build a studio, so I'll buy a CD instead.
Consider the effort in creating an original master recording. The artists involved have to first have the natural or trained talent to be able to compose and perform a listenable work. The value of this prerequisite could be said to be shared among all the artists' works, but it still is a prerequisite. Then, the artist may need to have instruments, and certainly has to have some manner of recording and mastering technology. Then, of course, the artist must have something to eat and a place to sleep.
This doesn't even cover reproduction, promotion, and distribution of the final product.
All this is not going to happen for the $12 price of a CD, yet a single CD is priced at $12. How? By virtue of cheap reproduction, the artist can, in a sense time-shift, space-shift, and fragment the effort put into producing the master-- and the value of the performance-- into a form that allows many people to experience their "slice" of the value without having to be there at the same time (which would be the case for a $20 concert ticket, for instance). Since cheap reproduction works just as well for people who haven't put in the expenditure, copyright makes sure that the purchases recoup the value to the proper creator.
On the other hand, the value of a physical good is much simpler to calculate. The value of one physical good is set by the point at which the buyer would rather pay than do the work themselves. Physical goods need no artificial copyright, because to copy one, the same amount of work and resources must be used as to create the original. Physical existence is its "DRM".
I would not disagree that the potential value of intellectual work, as set by way of copyright term limits, is higher than it should be. However, this does not mean that all intellectual content should be free or that copyright should be abolished. The concept is sound. The system just needs to be tuned to a more reasonable level.
Also, about your comment regarding a live concert, consider the similar argument: "Why should an artist make more money playing to a sold-out arena than a smaller crowd? The band is doing roughly the same amount of work on stage."
Even in a concert situation, the true value of the work is subdivided into the individual ticket prices. The event is happening regardless of whether any individual is there, just as a CD is recorded regardless of whether you buy it or copy it, and instead of copyright law, it's trespassing law that forces people to buy in to see the event.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Insightful)
Strawman. As I've said before, only 12-year olds and complete hippie loons want to abolish copyright. The rest of us just want something a little more in line with actual human timespans. And possibly different lengths of copyright on different types of IP. Software!=Books!=Movies, etc. Different obsolescence half-lives.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:4, Insightful)
Technology is rapidly bringing us to the point where we can make every creative work ever made available to everyone on earth, at trivial practical cost.
Which means, if we found a different mechanism to promote and sustain creators that didn't give them any less but didn't require them to maintain copyright, we could do just that.
Making all this culture and knowledge available to everyone will inevitably make them more productive in the general sense, and thus make us all richer on the bottom line.
So, if you find a different mechanism than copyright to distribute the funds, we all can have more for less.
That's something even a hard nosed suit can appreciate, is it not?
As another hippie loon, may I add... (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, if you buy something on time, you make monthly payments until the time period is up. Then the thing belongs to you and you don't have to pay any more for it. Copyright works the same way. You pay during the copyright period. After the period is up, you don't pay because the formerly copyrighted item goes into public domain. It's yours because you have finished paying for it. In the case of items in the public domain, it's not only yours, it's everyone's.
When you pay off someone to extend the copyright period right before an item goes into to the public domain, you are stealing the public domain. You are making people pay you for things that they already own. That's fucking theft, not sharing files. Sharing files is what you do to protect the public domain from the fucking thieves that are stealing it!
Each time that the global media corporations extend the copyright period, they are stealing the public domain.
They are the fucking thieves, not us!
By the way, there are no 12-year-olds on Slashdot.
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
Uncrackable DRM isn't just impossible "currently". It's impossible, period. I like to refer to it as the "Bob is Eve" problem. You want to send a message from Alice to Bob without Eve intercepting it and using it nefariously. The problem is that Eve and Bob are the same person. (I'll let the ACs make the obvious gender jokes.)
DRM relies on the fundamentally flawed premise that you can give someone a piece of media that requires an encryption key to decrypt that media and then somehow magically prevent them from having the key but still be able to play the media, which, of course, is impossible. Put another way, it's based on the concept of giving them the media and the key but trying to hide the key in some way. While the mechanisms for hiding are getting more and more sophisticated, they are still all tantamount to security through obscurity, and thus the DRM-making emperors have no clothes.
Even systems that use authorization via a network are still subject to this same fundamental flaw: the unencrypted data must exist on the user's computer (or media player hardware or whatever) at some point, and therefore the encryption key must be there.
DRM also relies on another fundamentally flawed premise: the premise that preventing the average user from sharing their own content prevents the average user from receiving other people's shared content. Now that's a really critical flaw to understand. The premise is that by stopping my grandmother from sharing a Beethoven concerto with my uncle, he isn't going to be able to get that content in any other way.
Where this falls down (as you noted) is the "one house, many locks" rule of DRM: once the encryption on a single copy of a song or other piece of media has been cracked, there is no longer any value to having DRM on any copy of the content. As soon as it has been cracked, someone will distribute that cracked copy, and then the DRM no longer serves as a significant stumbling block to obtaining pirated content. In this way, DRM becomes rather like trying to stop a burglar by placing bars on all the windows but leaving the door wide open....
Finally, DRM is based on the fundamentally flawed premise that users are not buying music because of rampant piracy. If anything, the reverse is true. The popularity of most music was derived solely from airplay on radio stations, from which people recorded songs, copied them for their friends, etc. and if people liked a song enough, they bought the CD/album/cassette. Nothing is different here in the digital age except that we now have much broader access to a larger number of sources of music, and thus are more likely to be exposed to music that we might otherwise not have been exposed to. If anything, this should be driving music sales, not diminishig it.
So what's really going on?
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:2, Insightful)
There will always be amateurs, and people who do it for the enjoyment of it, but when people hone their skill and craft (often expending an extraordinary amount of time) to such a level that other people desire their works, then those writers and performers should be compensated for their efforts when they deliver.
To suggest that Bach and Beethoven's attainment of their skills had nothing to do with money is just an example of "Golden Age" thinking. There was no such thing.
-----------------
- How is it Slashdot thinks there's money to be made in space, but none in music?
Re:Mod parent down (Score:3, Insightful)
Used to be, to do even simple professional photography you needed a well-equipped darkroom, today that is replaced by a computer and professional printer. The price isn't even close, nor is the training required to use it well comparable in the least.
The cameras too, have fallen radically in price in real terms. You get a very good DSLR camera and a basic assortment of good-quality lenses today for a single months salary.
Let's face it, as work-equipment goes, $3 grand is a pittance, you're going to need more expensive equipment than that to be a damn taxi-driver or for opening a burger-flipping-joint...
To be fair, I think most professional photographers will want more expensive equipment than that, but it's sufficient for starting out. If you can afford it, you'll probably WANT to spend $10 grand if you photograph mostly outdoors, and that PLUS the cost of a decent studio if you do studio-work.
Nevertheless, today, entry into the world og high-quality photography is cheaper than it ever was. Especially when you include consumables. What did a day in the field taking 500 photos cost if you where using professional equipment 10 years ago ? What does it cost today to take 1000 photos for no other reason than to practice your art ?
Learning the skills required is ALMOST as hard as it ever was. It is *sligthly* easier, particularily in a studio-setting because you can look at the result IMMEDIATELY, get critiques and try again. Used to be that that required a round-trip to the darkroom so feedback was a lot less immediate.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:3, Insightful)
This sort of thing:
"Enforcing copyright law requires detecting copyright violations. Copyright violations occur when certain kinds of information are transferred between two private parties. So ultimately, enforcing copyright law requires monitoring communications between arbitrary pairs of individuals. This behavior is mutually exclusive with free speech. Free speech is more important than copyright, so copyright must go."
Like you, I believe that maintaining a legal/belief system that treats digital information like a scarce physical good keeps information away from people, which makes people immeasurably poorer. If we could duplicate food like we can duplicate digital information, imagine what the world would be like. "It would hurt farmers economically," would be a ridiculous reason to out outlaw food duplicators.
However, I find that when I express the above views, I get one of two responses:
1. Ok, smart guy. Why don't you come up with a way to pay artists without copyright? (These people then reject various schemes for compensating artists because they would result in less income than copyright.)
2. People mostly download pop culture entertainment, not a cause worth furthering.
So far, I haven't figured out where to go from here. Do you have much success extolling the virtues of abolishing copyright? If so, how do you do it?
drm (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, easy, Mr. Lance Ulanoff choose one of the following:
1:
- lower quality music
- works usually in one player, on one OS
- requires you to install crappy software, with bugs
- one day it might stop working alltogether
- if you change your os/pc/player - than bad luck
- you want to listen to it in your car - yeah right
- high priced
2:
- high quality (up to studio quality on some)
- lots of formats to choose from
- no additional software required
- works on any os/player
- free
- oh, right, the fat bastards selling No. 1 payed for laws which make it illegal.
I am sure you all will choose No. 1 so stupid *idols* and *stars* will keep having drug money and fat ceo's will keep getting richer for doing nothing.
Re:DRM is pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely true, the analog hole will always be there, but we're losing perspective and going around in circles here. Their real goal isn't to make perfectly hack proof DRM, any more that my goal is to have a perfectly impenetrable security barrier around my house. Sure, there are lock picks, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to lock my door. Sure, even if I get a burglar alarm, there are crafty thieves who know how to hack it or bypass it, but that doesn't make it worthless.
The key point is at the end of your sentence - "made it a lot easier". In the olden days, if you wanted to pirate your buddy's 100 album collection, you had to spend 100 hours at a tape deck, and even that made them nervous. Now you click "copy" on the folder and wait a minute or two for the files. The goal of all this DRM crap is to make it difficult enough to copy stuff such that the average consumer won't bother to, and they will just buy their own music.
Of course they don't always succeed at that goal, and of course they make legitimate use cumbersome and frustrating in the process, but to assert that their goal is to make hack proof DRM, and that therefore it's pointless, is either foolish or disingenuous.