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Attempts To Stop Music Sharing Pointless?
job0 writes "An interesting paper (Word document) has been submitted by some Microsoft employees (although they are careful to state that that the views are theirs and not necessarily Microsoft's) to the 2002 ACM Workshop on Digital Rights Management stating that attempts by the record industry to stop music copying will fail simply because a) the growth and availability of affordable broadband and cheap data storage devices and b )ability of users to circumvent any DRM measures means that the number of people willing to swap is growing and will soon outstrip attempts to shut them down. The paper goes to suggest that the record industry should concentrate their efforts on trying music cheaper and easier to get hold off. I wonder if Hilary and friends have had a read. The BBC is also carrying the story." (OpenOffice has no problem with the paper, btw.)
A product like, say, a movie DVD gives the buyer a number of benefits. One of these, the ability to watch the show in high quality on demand, comes with the digital file, and this file will always be copiable.
The physical commercial DVD offers a number of other benefits though. There are the sleeve notes, photographs, the idea that the item is part of a collection, or provides some kind of link to the people who made the show or its stars.
There will always be people who just want the digital file, but there will also always be others who want the other benefits. Just as in the same way that some people will drink water from the faucet whereas others buy branded bottled water.
"Well, put a stake in my heart and drag me into sunlight."
Don't forget that most music companies are giants. While to us a year may seem an awful long time to a multinational it takes that long to decide on the brand of coffee machines installed in the cafeteria. You can imagine how long it will take them to come up with a complete revamp of their business model. If you don't believe me try finding an example where a industry has changed their way of doing business in less then a decade. About the only one I can come up with is that "Prepay" on mobile phones. And this was a bloody long development wich went from prepaid cards for phoneboots to now Prepay for landlines.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You should be no more ashamed for producing an album than for producing buggywhips. Production and sales are two completely different animals. Regulating file-sharing is about as effective as regulating the flight patterns of geese. Even if DRM prevents digital ripping, once the signal hits analogue it can be re-digitized at near-perfect quality. At that point, there is no more degredation. The industry is effectively at the mercy of the consumers at the moment, and they're going to have to come to grips with this. Just because a business model has been profitable for close to a century doesn't make it a god-given right. Oh, and I own a small record company ^_^;
Realize that it isn't the DMCA where this comes from, but rather from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and a treaty agreed to by some 38 countries. Few of those countries, oddly, are in the EU, even though the treaty was signed in Geneva. Article 11 of the treaty reads:
Article 12 is also interesting, but more or less a corollary. It requires contracting parties to make it illegal to remove copy management information from a work or knowingly transmit a work which has had this done to it. I'd love to see a good page listing to what degree this treaty has been put into force of law in agreeing countries.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara
I would gladly go to a music store and buy CDs at that price, instead of downloading anything. But why would I pay $15 for downloading the music that fits in a CD? Someone would get the CD itself, and everyone else would download it. Let's face it, if the full cost for producing and distributing a CD is less than $2, on-line music shouldn't be more than $0.10 / music.
Because irrespective if they do make a DRM system that is secure, you can still intercept the audio and video outside of the computer. With DVI video interfaces and fibreoptic audio outputs, the loss of quality would be negligable.
Or do they intend to make everyone use "sealed" computers...
Microsoft to Consumers: It is impossible to force restrictions on consumers! And we will provide the ability to break Palladium/TCPA! Forget that we have just invested trillions of dollars in developing Palladium/TCPA that will force new high restrictions on consumers in order to "protect" our incresing big profits from these consumers. Anyway we want you to believe that the system can be easily broken and that it is impossible to force restrictions. Now shut up, buy Palladium/TCPA & go to sleep. Palladium/TCPA is not about restrictions, it is not about DRM. Sweet dreams!
If the big labels continue to impose restrictions on CDs, the bands that are really into music will simply leave the label.
No, they won't. Because they have iron-clad contracts and they are not allowed to leave unless the label kicks them out. The labels have full control, and the artists will be just as trapped as the music lover. Look at Dixie Chicks, they tried to leave Sony, and after a long court case they finally settled and came to better terms (Sony realized how bad it would look to let them win, esp after earning over 200mil off of them while the girls only got 50k each). Anyway, they are still with Sony, that's how strong those contracts are.
Other than a slight degradation in signal, and a lot of sitting around waiting, what is so hard about taking an analog signal and re-digitizing it? Isn't this a pretty good low-tech way to get around any form of CD-based DRM?
cf Analog Hole.