Opinion - Digital Rights Management - DRM
By Wolfman
There once was a dinosaur that refused to die. Ripoffs in the music industry have been the norm since day 1. Stories like the one about publishers doing things like taking Frank Zappa's albums, accounting for 100% less than were actually pressed, sending the excess albums to Arizona to trade for used furniture, selling the furniture and reaping the clean cash abound.
Enter Digital Rights Management: DRM first appeared in response to early music sharing programs such as Gnutella, BearShare, Kazaa, Napster etc. Every conceivable scheme has been tried to keep people from sharing music. Encoding to lawsuits against 14 year old girls, to installing rootkits on PCs when you buy your music. None of these ideas have functioned.
In the 60s and 70s people recorded music on tape from the radio to give to their boy/girlfriends regularly, nobody cared. Nowadays it can cost you a bundle per song if the RIAA decides to sue. What's wrong with this picture?
The dinosaurs are trying like mad to keep hold of an old business model. A model that does not work; very similar to the one that tries to keep VCRs off the market. It's not so much the the idea of making a copy of a song, it's the idea of putting it in a folder where it is accessible to the world for sharing that scares the music industry.
DRM has never functioned. The idea that you can play a song on one, two or three computers maximum (if you are lucky. Some cases I've heard of the song won't play after being purchased from a reputable dealer) is ludicrous. When I buy music I expect to be able to play it anywhere I like.
Where are we now in this witchunt that really has done no good to protect artists? The major labels are jumping ship; leaving the DRM train. The RIAA is comprised of alot of labels you've never heard of at this point: 112 Records to Zoe. The point being the dinosaur's tactics are on the way out.
What we need is a total revamp of the entire copyright system to cover the emerging tech. Judges and Juries and Congress need to be skilled in the tech they are dealing with. It could be argued that if the person is not skilled in the area they are judging, they are not a peer; the whole idea of being judged by a peer then goes out the window.
No longer is the day you have to buy an album consisting of 8 or 9 songs you don't like in order to get the one or two you do. Music services such as Apple's iTunes, and the revamped Napster now let you pick the music you want, and leave the rest behind. I have no doubt this new way of doing things has stoked the flames of this crusade to "burn the witch".
Where does all this lead us? Of course we have to protect the rights of the companies and artists to protect their investment. But it doesn't have to be at the expense of the people that buy the music. It seems everyone got blind sided by how fast this tech pervaded the world. We have some catching up to do, both in law, and the way laws are interpreted.
Do I have any specific advice for the RIAA, MPAA and all other media outlets?
1) Lay off the lawsuits and draconian tactics. This will only hurt your customer and membership base, scare tactics only work so long with anything over base goods and services such as food. People buy music because they want something above existence, it makes them feel good.
2) Drop the idea of DRM completely. It's caused nothing but problems with sales, and machines. It's not worth it.
3) Continue on the natural evolution path of music sales. Cross each bridge as it comes. Don't try to force the old business model on a brave new world, because if we don't evolve and change with the environment, the environment will eat us alive.
We have to embrace the new technology as an ally. The best evidence in this vein is Apple's iTunes. They made their DRM very easy to get around. Then, they were the first to abandon it; sales are good!
To all the other problems associated with this brave new world, I don't know what to say. You are losing 8 bad songs off alot of albums on the average under the new rules. It's very hard to find bands/albums you want to include every song on an album from; maybe there will be alot more one hit wonders in the future or maybe the new model will become as big a revenue stream as VCRs did, only time will tell.
Hybrid Mode
