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.)

Comments

Of course it's pointless

[Blackneto]

Trying to stop any popular activity brings more problems than intended. I'll use as an example Prohibition of Alcohol in the USA. It was a big boost to Organized Crime.
Who knows what kind of problems the MPAA is making for itself by going after something that has been done since recording devices were made available to consumers.

Re:Of course it's pointless

[mangu]

something that has been done since recording devices were made available to consumers

Well let's go back to the 1930s, during the Depression, when technology was very primitive, records were made of shellac, very noisy and easily broken, holding no more than 5 minutes or so of music on each side.

Imagine if, on those times, people were able to listen to music for free. Imagine a hypothetic technology, let's call it "radio" for lack of a better name, that could bring music for free to each home. Why would anyone buy a record, in those very hard times, if they could listen to music for free? Obviously, the music industry would never have developed, and one would be totally unable to get any sort of music today!

Re:Of course it's pointless

[raynet]

You're forgetting that listening music for free isn't nearly as good thing as listening to music you WANT to hear and WHENEVER you choose to listen it.

Re:Of course it's pointless

[dkhoo]

Your comparison to Prohibition is very apt. It is the professional piracy syndicates that the RIAA and MPAA should be most afraid of. The more effective their DRM, the more it plays into the hands of organized crime.

Let's say that PERFECT DRM were achieved, down all the way to the speakers, microphones and recording equipment. The only way to overcome this would be:

1. Get a soundproofed professional recording studio, the best possible DRM speakers. Strong encryption forces this.

2. Develop high-quality illegal non-DRM microphones and recording equipment.

3. Rerecord the tracks and burn them to non-DRM CDs.

4. Sell them on the black market to support the expense of the above.

5. PROFIT!

With digital technology (TM), generational losses are limited to just one generation!

Guess who are the ones who have the capability to do this? That's right. Organized crime. By using DRM to shut down file sharing, the RIAA and MPAA force the possible economic benefits from technology out of the hands of the consumer, into the hands of -- not themselves! -- but the mob.

Prohibition all over again. They never learn.

Re:Of course it's pointless

[Bios_Hakr]

I'm not really sure where you are going with this reference to radio. Radio has nothing to do with mp3. When I buy a CD (which happens rarely), I convert it to mp3 and drop it into a directory on my hard drive. When I go to a LAN party, it is shared out along with ISOs (I create custom ISOs of my games and include the latest patches and nocd cracks, mainly because I hate looking for a CD to play a game) of my latest games. If someone wants an mp3, they take it.

The difference between this and radio, is that the person obtaining the mp3 from me never paid the license fee to the copyright holder, but he still has a permenant copy of the song. OK, you could record the song from the radio, but the quality would be crappy and most stations talk at the beginning of the song and fade another song into the end. If you listen to the radio, the station is paying the copyright holder for you. If i'm not mistaken, the fee can be quite high for the broadcaster.

I guess you could make an argument about my purchacing the disc pays the license for all the people I give the song to, but that's not really true in relation to radio.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is: Radio is _not_ free. Your fee is being paid by someone else.

BTW, the reason I share anything I buy with someone else is: The people who pirate something would have rarely bought it to begin with. And on top of that, it's my way of dumping the digital tea into the harbour.

Music-sharing can't be stopped....

[Anonymous Coward]

... until all means of transfering files over the internet are stopped, and that isn't going to happen. Even if the powers that be manage to lock down everything technological down with DRM, there'll still be ways of bypassing it, and it only takes a single person to figure out how to bypass it for the file to spread around like the email 'viruses' did a couple of years ago.
As I've said a number of times, the music companies know that music sharing is actually increasing sales at the *moment*, but once broad-band becomes fast & standardised, sending a whole album will become as simple as sending a 5kb file... people will think "I'll download that" rather than spending half an hour downloading a file and thinking "I'll buy the album".
I can imagine albums being released, 'music warezers' cracking the DRM within hours, and the albums spreading like wildfire across every instant messaging client in sundry.

Makes sense....

[carlmenezes]

It's actually a case of stating the obvious. However, things never get accepted until someone "does a study" or "submits a paper".
It's the classic water leak problem...the RIAA is trying to bail out the extra water while what they should be doing is plugging the leak - ie. take out the root cause - expensive CDs.

This doesn't mean that file sharing will stop altogether. But it DOES mean that a LOT of people out there would cough up the cash because it doesn't burn a hole in their pockets. It also means that artists would get more revenue.

The problem though is that this means cutting all those profit margins - the RIAA would like to have their cake and eat it too. Sorry. Can't happen. In addition, trying to force the issue would just make sure that they end up with some super strict CD protection scheme which will hurt sales and basically backfire in the long run.

Also, it's not like CD sales have decreased. How many studies need to be published before they get it into their heads that sharing music also increases an artist's popularity?

Corporate greed makes you stupid and blind.

Re:Makes sense....

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is like asking a crack dealer to accept that crack is bad for youre health. But that is what he is therefore."

It is more like asking a crack dealer to give up dealing and work in a legitimate business while trying to make as much money as he did before with the same amount of effort.

Well gee whiz, like that wasn't obvious.

[Gldm]

I really don't see how anyone could think you CAN stop something like this, given the number of people involved in it. Ok let's try looking at it from a logical standpoint:

Given:
Anything someone can invent someone else can invent a way around

Alot of people are interested in file sharing.

Hardware adapts slower than software. (Software can just recompile, hardware needs to be fabbed, purchased, and installed).

Anything that can be read for "authorized" playback must be by definition readable, and therefore can be manipulated.

Therefore:

The contest of technology comes down to a battle of man-hours. Who can put more time in a war of outhinking the other? A team of 100 professional programmers, working 40-60 hour weeks, or 100,000 crackers working nights, weekends, and vactations? No contest.

Also, you run into the same problem as the clipper chip. If you try and hardware protect things, you're stuck with it until you can update hardware if a vulnerability is found. Unless people start buying new CD and DVD players every week, there's no way not to have a window in which someone has cracked your system so it can function as the users want.

Now if your total protected data was small, or you had unique protection for each piece of data, you could probably manage. But having a seperate encryption for each audio file in existance is absurd. Getting the player to work with it would be impossible, and if the player has to work, then there's a way for someone to get the data.

This isn't to say that no copyrighted material goes over filesharing networks, that would be impossibly naieve. However, there's not going to be much that can be done about it other than waging a war that's going to be impossible to win, just because of sheer numbers on one side.

Re:Sharing is not infringement in many countries.

[MoceanWorker]

right.. so i should be ashamed at myself for spending months upon months for producing a fifteen track CD with 3 other people and paying over $10000 for equipment and a studio, as well as recording the tracks to its perfection so that people would enjoy listening my music, to have you even have the decency to rip my music (without my permission) and share it willingly with anybody?

oh yeah.. i'm real ashamed now

The Future...

[5lash]

I haven't been able to read this paper yet (my 56k is bein lame) but i seriously think it'll only be 2 years max before the whole p2p thing blows up, and a major shake-up of the industry is required. If the big labels continue to impose restrictions on CDs, the bands that are really into music will simply leave the label. I find it astonishing that Cradle Of Filth, a very alternative Death Metal band, are actually singed on Sony. I'm sure that msot bands like this would quickly quit a label that insisted on releasing their albums so that they only play in CD players and Windows PCs. So two things will happen:

>Proper musicians (not Britney Spears) will leave their Corporate Label and simply distribute their own music. They'll make the majority of their profits from playing live gigs, something that pop acts aren't usually very good at.

>Music will be sold at a much cheaper price, perhaps free if thats what the band wants. I beleive that around £5-7 is a perfectly reasonable price for an album.

Unfortunately though, as much as the Record Companies would like it, i don't think that legal downloading of music from the net can ever became possible. The Net community has traditionally managed to crack and hack anything that requires paying for...

they don't need to "stop" it

[ryochiji]

As it's been pointed out before, they don't need to "stop" p2p networks to stop file sharing. I speak for my self when I say this, but I believe many others will agree: If the music industry gets off our backs (i.e. no excessive DRM), and sells music for a decent price (i.e. lets us buy songs individually and for less than $1.00 each), I will stop using P2P services.

Yes, people will always "illegally" share music. But if given good enough of an alternative, I think a large portion of current P2P users will go back to legitimate means of getting music. And the industry will still make money.

DRM promotes "piracy"

[thoth_amon]

Not only is DRM ineffective at stopping real hackers, it actually promotes filesharing. Why? Because of all the things you can't do with a DRM disc:

1. Back it up
2. Make a playlist from it
3. Play it in your car or DVD player
4. Play it on your iPod/Nomad/etc

It's far easier to download your song from any one of a dozen filesharing services. All that's needed is one guy who figured out how to rip it. Many CD-ripping programs, including open-source programs, have already developed ways to circumvent most common forms of CD copy protection.

All DRM schemes are horribly misguided because they make it difficult/unpleasant to be honest, because they are easily circumvented, and because only a few people need to circumvent them for the whole world to benefit.

The ONLY solution that I can think of -- the general solution to piracy -- is to make it not worth the trouble to pirate the songs. If you can get a 320-bit unencumbered MP3 from (say) EMI's site, for $1, without having to hassle with remote queueing, poor quality, getting the wrong file... Most people will pay the $1 and that will be that. I would. But I would never pay a dime for DRM material unless it was for a research project on how to crack it. If I can't put it in my MP3 collection, it's useless to me.

The record industry is like any other evolutionary system -- they'll either adapt or die. I have no doubt some companies will survive and prosper. But those who think they can keep pushing the '70s industry model forever, propping it up with DRM and other nonsense, will spend all their money and then die.

All the current legal efforts are the last desperate attempts of a doomed evolutionary niche to be relevant. They are fighting so hard because they have little time left.

Re:DRM promotes "piracy"

[DarkZero]

All DRM schemes are horribly misguided because they make it difficult/unpleasant to be honest, because they are easily circumvented, and because only a few people need to circumvent them for the whole world to benefit.

Exactly. There's a new rule of business that came with the internet that a lot of businesses haven't figured out yet: If the pirate version of something is substantially better than the version that you buy in the store, anyone with the means to get the pirate version will choose it. It applies to music, to movies, to games... just about any form of entertainment. Many (most?) people don't mind paying $15-$40 (depending on the product) for their entertainment, but when they're forced to choose between a $15-$40 product and a free version of the same product that has more features and less hassle, they start to think differently.

Re:DRM promotes "piracy"

[deblau]

I hate to be a broken record, but once again, repeat after me:

You can't solve social problems with technology.

DRM is already doomed to failure as an idea, because it's technology that attempts to solve a social problem. Security and encryption will be around for a lot longer, because they don't shaft well-meaning people, but rather target only intruders and thieves.

War on drugs

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the latest dismal failure: the war on drugs.

The result? It's given birth to powerful drug cartels (which is an even more vicious group of people than the mob during the Prohibition), crime, violence and prisons chock full of small time "criminals" like pot dealers.

Re:Sharing is not infringement in many countries.

[dago]

Just imagine that nobody shares your music. That nobody ever gave some of your records to someone else to appreciate.

(imagine)

I discovered many bands, small ones and big ones, that way, by copying tapes.

Music is sharing for me. Why do you think (some) people come to concerts ? For me, it's to share a moment of music with a band and all other people in the room. I don't think that just listening to music is the whole thing and that sharing doesn't play a role.

Also, I firmly believe that I have the right to do whatever I want with your music, including sharing it, as long as it's not commercial.

Anyway, that's no black and white issue (like many).

Re:Sharing is not infringement in many countries.

[Anonymous Coward]

damned right man. i haven't bought a record in years - why? because those records simply ain't worth even half of the sticker price. so i'll download a tune or two here, but you know what? if the free tunes stopped, i'd just listen to the radio more. i don't care enough to buy music i wouldn't have bought anyway. sharing doesn't reduce sales to people like me, and we're plentiful. so PPTHBBBT!!

Piracy has always been the same problem anyway

[91degrees]

People assume that they have certain rights, which legally they may not have. They will often wish to make a compilation tape (legally), and also often want to give the compilation tape to someone else (probably not legal)

In this case, the law doesn't matter to people. They know they're not doing anything wrong, and would be quite shocked to be accused of stealing. They aren't stealing. They bought the tape/CD. You can argue that they're wrong, but I'm not the person you should convince. Everyone else is.

The thing is that people want to be able to do this. Even if you can stop them with a perfect DRM system, people will not accept it. It prevents them from doing something that they want to do, and the vast majority have no moral qualms over. If the majority disagrees with the law, then surely the law is wrong, not the people.

Re:Piracy has always been the same problem anyway

[foniksonik]

Best arguement so far, by far. Supply and Demand. we live in a capitalist nation, when society wants something and can see no harm coming from it (to society) then society will have it. If you want to make money off this you must meet societies' expectations or the people will find their satisfaction somewhere else.

As it is people already feel like they are 'paying' for P2P because they pay for the bandwidth. What other incentive do they have for broadband? We would all do just fine browsing text and a few images with a 52k modem. Rich media isn't just what corporations and media want to provide because the internet isn't Cable TV.

The RIAA still doesn't understand the medium they would like to exploit, hence their problems.

Re:Piracy has always been the same problem anyway

[NineNine]

If the majority disagrees with the law, then surely the law is wrong, not the people.


In most cases, I'm glad as hell that "the people" don't directly make laws. The US would be a mess. Now in some cases, such as drug laws, it's a combination of the people demanding to be heard *and* there not being a good reason to have drug laws at all. With creative media, at least lawmakers realize that without copyright, there's no incentive to create any more. People have bills to pay, and if you can't pay your bills by writing, performing, etc., then most people just aren't gonna do it. Most people are incredibly stupid. They think in the short term, not the long (hence massive credit woes in the US, at least).

DRM Will Work- Too Much Money Already Invested

[frank_slashdot]

Big corporations have invested massively in developing technologies like Palladium & TCPA. They plan to sell huge quantities of the new restrictive hardware and software to idiot consumers during the next years, that will keep their big profits increasing. Consumers' refusal to buy the new restrictive hardware and software is the worst that can happen to their business plans.

Unfortunately many people are naive, credulous and easily fooled and it is likely that they will not resist a massive PR/disinformation/advertising/marketing campaign. Many of these fooled consumers will not even realize that they will not actually *buy* the hardware and software, but they will in fact *rent* them since they will lose full control over their software and hardware, handing over their control to Palladium/TCPA software and hardware providers.

Considering that DRM will not work just because Microsoft wants us to believe that Palladium & TCPA is not about DRM, is just wishful thinking and another PR move.

What Was Left Out

[MrSubtle]

Interestingly enough this analysis left out what I think is the most important factor in determining what will happen in this arena and that is whether there's a non-pirate alternative to the "darknet". The lack of a legal large volume, reasonably priced, non-crippled service that sells a gigantic library of stuff drives people to illegal sharing services (which offers all of that except the legal part). So much an issue that I think that this pressure toward piracy generated by lack of legal alternatives is even stronger than the fact that the file sharing systems are free!

I know that I would buy media online if the idiots who owned it would just bother to take my money. The problem here is not so much taht people pirate media, it's that the media companies don't provide any reasonable alternative. (Aside from "Wait for ten years until we get our act together and until then shut the hell up you whining customers!" that is.)

Re:Sharing is not infringement in many countries.

[mackstann]

intellectual property is a joke. the only moment that matters is NOW. trying to collect money for years and years, for something you did once, is just lazy. go out and play concerts, you will gain more fans, make more money, and everyone will be happy. just because the powers that be have screwed you doesnt mean you should screw others.

once again, intellectual property is a joke. information wants to be free, witholding of information is greedy and dangerous, and will not further the human race. if the human race destroys itself, it will be due to greed.

and please reply with your thoughts instead of modding me to hell, i think i am making perfectly valid points here. thanks

THE DARKNET WILL PWN JOO ALL!

[ArcSecond]

What a dramatic term: The Darknet. Rhymes with "Terrorist" and "Pedophile", I suppose.

Anyhow, my point:

Can anyone see how DRM will actually WORK work? Like, we end up with a stable set of technologies that make it very difficult (if not impossible) to pirate copyrighted media? I can't.

All I can forsee is a quicksand scenario where the DRM technology changes so quickly, in an effort to stay "one step ahead" (hah!) of pirates, that the average user experience is complicated beyond What The Market Will Bear. Who wants to buy a cd player for their car, when in two years they will have to replace it to play the New CDs?

I'm guessing the trend will be towards digital radio and play-once licences. Selling discs is like selling tapes is like selling vinyl. Once you've sold it, it's no longer under your control.

BTW: 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?

Will they awake?

[InrdZQdxdqn]

Will they music industry just stop these stupid efforts to play with their rules and finally addapt themselves to the new market?

Right now, because of copy protection systems, it is even more interesting for the users to buy a pirated CD. When they should be thinking of how to add value to their product -like including video images or extras with the cd- what they are doing is making their product lose value.

Have they ever thought of using new technologies - online distribution to retailers, CHEAP downloading services, online registration for cd owners to get some extras...- to make a better cheaper product?

How long does it take to any of us to get the songs through internet and then burn a CD? 15 min, half an hour? Don't they tell me they cant offer a competitive service given the massive economy of scale they are playing with...

Yes, this should be their way. Compete with file sharing networks.

Legitimate business

[Gary Franczyk]

I'm sure most persons here know that there is a large cost involved in the promotion and discovery of talent. It is probably true, that illegal file sharing is probably going to really hurt the music and movie industries in the future. Why not take this line of thinking to its final outcome?

When this happens, you will probably see the result of the reduced funding for things like:

MTV
radio stations
fewer new artists
less promotion
fewer gold and platinum records
fewer concerts

Yes, fewer concerts. With less money for promotion and advertising, and fewer people aware of in love with the record companies' artists, how are they going to fill the concert venues?

How are the "artists" going to live like millionaires after even the most popuplar cannot sell more than a few hundred thousand copies of their album? There will be less of a disparity between "discovered" artists and ones with record deals. MTV Cribs will be kind of boring.

Will MTV be able to pay for a Times Square office space for TRL? Probably not.

If the rappers were poor, think of what would happen to the 20" wheel industry alone! :-)

Re:Legitimate business

[Anonymous Coward]

(Sorry to be anonymous I haven't registered yet- luxomni)

Some of your points are valid, and some are not. The large cost of developement of talent is somewhat of a misnomer. How many of you can remember a friend's garage/small nightclub band coming home and saying "We got a record contract" and then nothing ever happened? I have known several. The deal is that the record companied in a Faustian move sign restrictive exclusive contracts with groups that keep them out-of-circulation for years. A very few of them ever get into a studio. (BTW, the labels don't pay the same for studio time as you) Less actually get recorded. An even smaller number get pressed. Fewer yet get released. And a tiny few get promoted. a Couple become million sellers and next contract have the power to negotiate a contract that actualy pays them anything.
The name of the game is restraint of trade. Your garage band is not a source of revenue for them unless you already have a very substantial regional following, and even then most likely you are more dangerous as a threat to their chosen preformers success.
Read the lyrics to Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the machine", or Courney Love's (Gawd, I never thought I would quote her) essay on Napster. This stuff isn't new. Frank Sinatra founded BMI because of the same restraint of trade from ASCAP. The performers are generally screwed on record royalties. No one makes money but the label.

* SO, fewer new artists? I think more and better.
Narrow-casting rather than broadcasting. We have hundreds of new TV stations on satellite/cable. Do we watch TV less? Not exactly. Do we watch ABC/NBC/CBS less? Absolutely! Wait, two of those are also record labels. Could that be a coincidence?

*You are right that there would be a bit less promotion money for concerts, but not necessarily less concerts. Performers now make their money from concerts and not record sales. (Record royalty is almost exactly the same as in 1955 when I was first aware of it.) Also, promotion money is an expense against the performers take.

*MTV won't be hurt as much as you think. Check the ads - Clearsil and Sanitary napkins far more than Record Labels. Maybe a bit less perks and payola for the producers. They might even have to buy their own coke. But MTV has evolved anyway. Music makes up a much smaller part of their world to culture in general.

* Radio Stations? It's a wash. A lot depends on their playlist. In many places oldies stations outdraw top 40. Wonder what that says about the product? In any event the coke ain't flowing as free as it did in the 80's.

* Fewer Gold and Platinum records? Hopefully, fewer award shows too. These things are just self-congratulatory. Besides, I can't speak for you folks, but aside from DSOtM and the Doors first album, nothing I like is that popular anyway. My tastes are more personal and less mainstream. (BTW, those gold records come from the same RIAA that we all love so much)

The record industry does have a few ligitimate points, but they have never cut a performer an even break - much less us of the great unwashed.

Why I buy CDs.

[Big Mark]

I have a fat unmetered broadband pipe to my PC. I can download entire albums in the tiume it takes me to fix a coffee. Yet I still buy three or four CDs a month. Why?

I'll tell you why.

1) CDs sound better.
Most Internet monkeys can not encode mp3s to save themselves. My sound setup cost me a bomb so I can tell the difference between 192kbps and the CD itself.

2) CDs are not just music.
Some album sleeves are works of art in their own right (e.g. Tool - Lateralus). There is also an assosciated boast factor in having proper CDs compared to home-burnt ones - like the difference between a beige box and a Cooler Master. There are subtle physical differences, but the Cooler Master owner is infinently cooler than Mr. Beige. And that's partly why he bought it.

3) If I didn't buy CDs, the artists would stop making music.
Even if I'm talking about purchasing demos straight from the bands themselves. Giving the band my money, no matter how indirectly, helps ensure that they will continue to make music in the future.

Hint: go get CDex and use the LAME encoder at 192kbps (or make it vorbis). All my CDs are ripped like that, and my WinAmp list all sounds great.

-Mark

Re:Why I buy CDs.

[deblau]

3) If I didn't buy CDs, the artists would stop making music.
Even if I'm talking about purchasing demos straight from the bands themselves. Giving the band my money, no matter how indirectly, helps ensure that they will continue to make music in the future.

One small issue: Your argument that artists wouldn't make music if they weren't paid is utterly false. How many bands do you think make their music without any real hope of making it? Maybe every single garage band?

People do art because people like doing art.

Re:Why I buy CDs.

[Idarubicin]

3) If I didn't buy CDs, the artists would stop making music.

What if you went to their concerts? You pay for the privilege of seeing them actually making music. If they want to get paid, they have to get up and perform. I know; it's a really old revenue model. Worked for minstrels, though.

Sharing is Communism. ;P

[ArcSecond]

Not to beat up on you any further (I see the other geeks have done a pretty thorough job of that), but I disagree. Your investment of time, talent, and money in making the album is just that: an investment. Nobody guaranteed you a profit.

Now, given the REALITY of the situation these days, you have a choice: sign a contract with a label, let them run things, and hope you get some money out of all their hype and networking. And get pirated, if anyone likes your stuff.

Or, you can go directly to letting people pirate your stuff, and with a little marketing effort of your own, hope that enough people want more of the same to make your money back.

I'd say the odds are pretty tight either way. Playing gigs aint exactly a goldmine either, though. So tough for you: you are finding out that being a musician/composer does not guarantee you a life of leisure and wealth. Join the club.

So cry me a river about your production costs. If you had a reasonable expectation of making money on it, you probably already did before the mp3s started flying around. And like everyone says: prove that pirating hurts sales overall.

Anyhow, it comes down to this: do you want people to hear your music, or do you want to make money. They can't BOTH be your first choice, man.

tyranny and rebellion

[Anonymous Coward]

what should be noted from history is that besides just the availability of the means to rebel, it is actually more important the cause. If DRM (or anything by a different acronym) interferes with law abiding consumers rights to their own property (like in "fair use") or just have to run circles merely to get the latest media to operate correctly, then said consumers will quickly tire of it. What is left is to A) quit buying the media or B) utilize alternative methods.

Many will not want to steal, that is a fact at least at this point (I won't say "most", just "many") that should be capitalized. There really are those that would use a system that pays directly to the artists and direct management even. What organizations like the MPAA and RIAA are more afraid of is NOT the theft of music, but the eventual rise of pay for play systems that would cut them out.

Think about it... what is the purpose of management, producers, lawyers, marketers, etc when it comes to music and movies? Answer: Very important, it is what actually puts the media out there in a usable format. It is what organizes the distribution and makes deals with various vendors (i.e. theaters and stores). These groups (RIAA, MPAA, etc) have like most bureaucratic organizations, mutated into a beast that spends more internally to keep their own infrastructure up (justifying their own existence) than performing their primary task. The end result is a reduction of efficiency (results or output) at a higher cost (input). Like all things in our society, it is the savvy industry that embraces the surrounding changes instead of running from them in order to reap the benefits. Had these groups spent their resources on adaptation instead of futile efforts to stop the media trading, then they would be in a VERY good position now. I think they realize that and like a child that made a mistake they are now throwing a temper tantrum for all to see.

To a band, movie producer (not publisher), etc... the only thing they want is an efficient method to create and distribute their product/service. If they can do this through the web (or at least utilize many parts of the web) and therefore bypass the more costly (in time, money, artistic freedom, etc) venue of a formal RIAA affiliated management organization then why would they want to stick around with the bloated management group?

In any socialist situation you end up inevitably with a welfare program that, as mentioned above spends more on internal infrastructure than in its primary function. The US government's steady fall into this system shows agencies full of internal bloat and inefficiency that has more internal support roles as it does the actual roles directly supporting their stated "customer." Why should the government have all the fun? Many companies would like to create such a self justifying organization that views its existence as a measure of sheer volume rather than actual output of goods and services. The problem is (much like with the government) that there is really only one road for such organizations... collapse from within. They will therefore lash out with all their collective might in an effort not to adapt, but to grasp and restrain the flowing waters of expectations tied to the observable change. Change is the only constant (and Death is the most constant of changes) yet these people live more for the static than the reality of the world. Why would you even TRUST such an organization that cannot even grasp the most basic tenets of the universe?

RIAA and MPAA are going down... sad thing is, they don't even realize that it is because of their own misguided efforts that it will happen.

lessons from porno

[Anonymous Coward]

surely the adult entertainment industry was more threatened by the internet than the record or movie industries were. so, where's the porno lobby that's trying to stop p2p?! it's all about embrace and extend. granted that sounds a little rude in this context... but i'm sure it's business rhetoric that movie and record industry execs have heard a thousand times before. how about putting it in to action? there're obviously insurmountable problems with the old business model, so here's another bit of biz-rhet for ye: adapt or die.

Re:therefore...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, it indicates that all Pd's effect on DRM will be is to limit the number of locations that unprotected copies of DRM-protected files are inserted from. They are aware that even Pd will be cracked at a limited number of points. The very best they can do is to try to make the crack expensive, troublesome and risky or destructive to the hardware, but at a budget of around $2,500 and one week of time for the first key (the price of the cheapest TCPA motherboard and much less time for subsequent keys and to foil even watermarking you only actually need two, although three helps), the hardware is breakable.

A correctly designed P2P network (for the canonical example, Freenet, although it sacrifices everything else, including efficiency, for this property and is therefore damn awful at swapping, say, OGGs and MP3s) masks these locations in any case, mirrors the file, and foils attempts to remove it.

This is analogous to the current situation with appz - vis a vis, skilled crackers in groups upload them, not random people. This is an improvement on the random P2P warez, because the average quality of the resulting material goes way up (quality is one thing that P2P isn't well known for).

Something I sent to the RIAA

[foniksonik]

Back when this first came up in major news... june 2001:

This is in regards to the proposed plan to 'protect' copyrighted audio recordings distributed via CD.

I think you are making a big mistake, as other consumers will confirm for you when your products are either boycotted or wholesale pirated as a result of this 'protection'. Regardless of what you do to 'protect' this material individuals will make recordings and redistribute to the demanding public. (Any CD player that supports your new 'protection' is certain to have a standard AV port, a really easy way to re-record audio data.)

Ever hear of a thing called supply and demand? Nothing you do will stop this. The only thing this proposed plan will do is take away any control you currently have.

The biggest problem you have created for yourself is pricing albums at $15 - $30 each. Consumers feel as if they are paying enough to justify redistribution to close friends, etc.. especially when they may only really enjoy one or two of the songs on the album. Selling singles of hits isn't enough.. the radio usually plays those particular songs enough.

Your only rational recourse is to create a distribution channel which adds value to your products which consumers will pay for. Obviously they don't feel the current situation provides enough.

One idea is to create a subscription service, wherein the user would get to pick out several songs or albums from the genre they subscribe to. Consumers might prefer to have a complete set of songs from which to make their selection instead of the mixed and potentially corrupted selection they have from online sources. For this service you could charge a monthly rate dependent on the genre or number of downloads, etc. use a focus group or something to decide how to bill people..

I think you'll find that all people want is the selection of songs they get to listen to without the overhead of buying every CD that comes out. People also like the fact that when they 'get over' a particular song they don't feel like they wasted their money. Some music does 'get old' rather quickly.

What I'm saying is that you need to abstract the value you are selling from individual recordings or artists. Music is an ephemeral sensation... what gets me going one day may change the next, that's why radio works, they can adjust for the current environment. Not to mention that there is sooooo much music available now, compared with 20 years ago. Personally I don't have the time to listen to it all but I can listen to the song a friend recommends or sends to me via ftp etc... do you get it. We don't have time to go to the store to buy the cd that has one song we like and if we're going to take the time to buy it online we may as well spend the same amount of time finding a free copy.

By providing 'free' access to all the types of songs that I like you would make it alot easier and quicker for me to find the music I enjoy. How about charging me $15 a month for access to 'hip-hop' or 'rock' genres with a full search on title and author so I can grab 20 songs I really want to listen to that month. What's to keep me from keeping them and trading them? Nothing, but why would I want to go to all of that trouble when I have the convenience of my monthly selection online. Storing all that data is a real pain. Keeping track of which song is on which cd is also a pain. Programmers have spent lots of time trying to make free software to keep track of that stuff and none of them do it right. Plus, you get $15 monthly from me just so I have access to new titles, old titles, whatever, in a convenient and time saving system, w/o the overhead of storing them all, etc.

Okay, do you get it finally. We want service, selection; added value. We won't pay for anything less (ie: cd's with just the songs on them)

Sincerely,

Avaliability of Tracks

[C_To]

Personally I have found numerous tracks that have been discontinued or have an incredibly high price tag, online through various means. The RIAA's business model is very old. What good is it to pay upto 40 dollars for an imported CD, when one can download it at a fraction of the price. Or, some of my favorite tracks are avaliable only on vinyl, as the industry has opted for greatest hits collections instead of re-issuing albums and singles to CD. And if someone has the track ripped from vinyl to MP3, they have already saved me time by doing the same process, as well as spending time just trying to find the rare release. Thats where P2P and sharing has helped me at least, no real loss of revenue because they are not distributing that track or album anyways. The RIAA has become a dinosaur, trying to save itself by forcing governments to pass laws to tax blank CDs. For the record, not all blank CDs are used to pirate music, and in fact, some businesses I work with use CD-R only for backup purposes for their databases. But at the same time, the RIAA is collecting money from the sale of these CDs, while the tech industry (who's software is getting pirated just as much), gets zilch. Frankly, if I bought a spindle of CD-Rs, and for each CD-R i'm paying money towards the record industry for the "possibility" that I'm pirating music, perhaps I should download some music to get my money's worth from paying the tax (since its assumed I'm guilty).

Not exactally a pointless venture

[nurb432]

It DOES make it difficult for the common non-techie person, which is 90% of their market..

Plus it adds more foolish restrictions and absurd laws that the rest of us have to deal with/work around.

When will they learn?

[grundie]

I agree toally with the whole DRM is pointless argument, simply because as long as record companies charge ridiculous amounts for music then people will look for a cheaper source of music elsewhere. In the case of music and movies its P2P systems that people turn too.

Recently it was announced in the UK that singles sales had halved since 1988, why 1988? IIRC 1988 was the year that CD sales started to make an impact on vinyl sales. I alse remeber noticing that a CD single cost £2.99 in 1998 but a vinyl single cost £1.99. The same trend applies to CD albums they are more expensive than their vinyl ancestors. We are also seeing it again with DVD.

Now I don't know if it is cheaper to produce a CD/DVD then their analogue ancestors, I would say it is, despite what some people say about patent royalties etc. All I know is that record and movie companies use every little excuse in the book to put their prices up and make more profit, completely oblivious to the fact that they are alienating consumers. Is it no wonder we turn to P2P systems when it costs £16.99 for a CD and £19.99 for DVD? There is also the irony that the costs of developing DRM and copyright protection technolgies is passed on to the consumer, alienting us even more!

They need to learn that if they reduce the prices of thier products, people will buy them rather than copy them, simple really? In fact I would go as far as saying the record companies are following a business model that is doomed to failure. Does a department store raise its prices and force people not to share clothes they buy when their sales drop? Nope, they reduce prices to encourage people buy more clothes. When will the record and movie companies learn the basic concepts of how businesses operate?

Re:Send $1 to the Artist

[aronc]

In other words, they remember they got into music for the money?

You missed the point. They will remember that they make music for people to hear it. Getting a letter from someone tells you that this person, this exact person not some hypothetical number in a mass but Mr. John Doe heard your music. And not only did he hear it he liked it. He liked enough to go out and find your address, put a pen to paper, and put five bucks from his pocket to yours. There is a huge difference both emotionally and spiritally between that and another few dollars at the bottom of an accounting statement.

Solution to piracy

[GabrielStrange]

I think another solution to piracy is to create something of genuine value that can only be attained if you purchase the CD legitimately. It amazes me that record companies are not conducting market research to determine what such "extras" would be best to motivate people to purchase their CD's. Case in point -- I know a lot of people who've purchased copies of Blizzard's new "Warcraft III" game because with a pirated copy of the game, you can't login to Blizzard's Internet play servers and play against other users across the world. And this is clearly a feature that almost any player of the game is interested in. Case in point -- Some DVD's contain things like extra angles for some scenes, dubs of the speech in the soundtrack into other languages or large photo galleries that can't be converted into JPG's automatically. This type of content can almost never be downloaded online, and people buy the DVD in order to get a hold of it. Case in point -- The latest CD from Garbage contains a unique ID that allows you to subscribe to their web site, where you can download software that allows you to create your own unique remixes of some of the songs on the disc. While this didn't motivate me to purchase the disc personally as the software is only available for Windoze machines, I know several people who did purchase it for exactly this reason. If record companies are concerned about CD sales, they should make this sort of thing the norm. They should be spending their money researching the best way to motivate people to purchase the CD, not on ways to stop people from downloading it. Unfortunately the problem with big business is that they almost never think about giving consumers more value for their buck. The idea is simply abhorrent to them. They can't wrap their tiny little minds around it.

new economic model needed

[CbZen]

I agree with this post, you'll never be able to prevent any file sharing. That's a fact, whatever a computer can see/hear it can pirate it..
The RIAA and the MPAA would be better off using their money into finding a new way of selling music.

Crosbie Fitch has an excellent article at gamasutra which, among many other great things, exposes his views about a new economic model for such materials :

"It's not a problem to ensure that communication is secure, from vendor to purchaser, but how do you prevent the purchaser from passing on that information for nothing and thus devaluing it?
(..)
Why should anyone produce a movie, album, or other easily duplicated work of art if only a single sale can be obtained?
Well, it's difficult to swallow, but the answer has to be that the single sale must cover the cost, even in spite of the fact that the work is unlikely to have a resale value."

In software development it is called the Ransom Model. It worked great for Blender, why wouldn't it work for music and movies?
(yeah there are lots of reasons but this is a viable solution..)

cb

My Favorite Quote

[GeorgeH]

While not from the paper in question, my favorite quote on the topic is "The marketers can compete with free; it just has to be better. Look at bottled water if you don't believe me," - Jonathan Potter, Digital Media Association.
(Found at http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/1982

Pretty much sums up my feelings on how the entertainment industry can survive.

Paper forgets quality

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so the paper's been out ages, since before the DRM workshop at all. This is Slashdot.

It's got big technical flaws.

It doesn't consider quality (except for the simple case - it works vs. it doesn't work because it's DRMed), and a lot of warez spread does, in fact, consider quality. Would you rather have a shakycam, a good telesync, a transcoded dvdrip or a true, non-transcoded progressive master from good quality film? Would you rather have an awful two-disc VCD, a two-disc SVCD or a one-disc XVID? A 64kbps mp3 encoded with Xing, a LAME VBR --alt-preset standard mp3, a q4 (128kbps nominal) Vorbis, a q6 Vorbis or a lossless FLAC, APE or SHN? Who'd want a crack that's less than 100%?

The warez scene values quality as highly as rareness or newness. A low quality preview is highly desirable because it's not ready yet, but high quality is always better - unless it's big and bulky, in which case it's often impractical.

Over time, warez scenes, of which P2P will eventually become one - hopefully, an inclusive, less dickhead-prevalent one - but isn't one of its own yet, develop groups which become trusted for high quality. While the groups can become targets (see DoD), one thing that P2P will add to the mix is the ability to hide amongst millions, and, eventually, protocols with good download anonymity (like Freenet) combined with performance and usability. For uploads, people want psuedonymity - you don't know what their names are, where they live or what their IP is, but you know they call themselves a certain name and that they're the same guys who did that last great warez release - and integrity, so you know it isn't damaged or incomplete.

People would not push for these in P2P schemes unless they reflected something highly desirable in the already existing warez distribution networks, or a clear way to improve over them.

Also, arguably, we are already in a multiple-connected-worlds scenario. P2P isn't where the warez often comes from, it's how it gets to Joe Bloggs, at the moment, because P2P still isn't great yet. They forget that the ancient, long dead BBSes, IRC DCC fserves, secret FTPs, Usenet binaries and the killer app of sneakernet, the LAN party are different worlds, and warez is primarily distributed by their described "superpeers" - aka couriers, you might be one too - who actively share (or in some, unfortunate dickhead cases, trade) amongst different circles. P2P is hardly touched by couriers yet, hence the often low quality, but as better systems become available, this will change.

One day, a good P2P system will arise. It will allow secure messages, chat in private and public groups, file sharing/storage, and God knows what else, it will be very well designed, secure against even directed, well-funded attacks, anonymous and encrypted to deter targeting, mirrored to deter mere leeching (even leeches have some upstream they could use to help other leeches without harming their download speeds, get the balance right and they won't mind), and very, very fast and complete. The search will actually work, and in a reasonable time, so it works for even obscure content. It won't care that it's vilified, blocked and persecuted, because it'll use good tunnelling to traverse hostile firewalls and ISPs. It will be so good, people will actually use it to communicate securely, perhaps discussing the release groups' relative merits and reviewing them, as well as get the latest hot releases, released onto the network by the groups themselves, well proof against fakes, partials and any possibility of tracking the originator from amongst six million or so users.

All these guys will have done is possibly provided a cool name for it when it eventually arises, and soon a mathematical model which might be used to optimise it. Darknet. It does rather roll off the tongue. Thanks, MS Research.

Re:Heh...

[job0]

This approach would only work in the short term because there are already file hashing applications like sig2dat that help p2p users share exact copies of files that they have verified as good.

filesharing is_not_free

[abe ferlman]

I guess the point I'm trying to make is: Radio is _not_ free. Your fee is being paid by someone else.

Well, when you download from someone, the person you download ripped the mp3's from a cd, so they have paid the license fee, or perhaps it was who they downloaded from - *someone* paid the license fee. Maybe they recorded the song from the radio, and so the radio station paid the license. But someone paid.

Re:If it's done correctly...

[stickyc]

Thus, the DRM has to be at the end source, at wher the final product is released(ie. the speakers, the TV screen, etc.)

So to support this new technology, you're asking consumers they have to effectively scrap their entire system?
The depressingly slow adoption of new consumer equipment to migrate to the "required" new HDTV broadcast standards in the US is good proof of this model failing in real-life. Arguably, high-definition TV is a lot more value-added than protecting the already-hated record industry's bottom line.

If it came to that, I'd go back to vinyl.

DirecTV commercial

[DickBreath]

I recently laughed myself silly when I saw a DirecTV advertisement for internet service.

The first thing in the commercial is a guy in a music store going to the counter holding several CD's. He says: "I'd like track 5 and 6 from this one, all of this one, and (several forgotten) tracks from this one." Then the ad breaks into promoting that you can make your own mix CD's by downloading all the mp3's you want.

If a big corporation can actually promote downloading mp3's in a national (?) advertisement, then what does this say about how mainstream, recognized, and accepted the phenomena has become?

Hillary Rosen would be spinning in her grave if she saw this ad.