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Labels Push for a Unified DRM Standard
thejoelpatrol writes "Bad news for Apple fanatics but good news for all the crazy slashdotters who want an iPod but feel dirty using Apple's DRM: the labels are getting together and insisting that online stores standardize their DRM methods. Being the providers of the music, the labels clearly wield a lot of power, but so does Apple: without iTunes, the online music business is next to nothing. Will Apple give in? Not if they can help it -- they're on top of the world. Before anyone messes it up, AAC is an open format, while the Fairplay DRM standard is not."
Actually its more the other way round. If the content providers are not happy they will tell Apple to fuck off and deal with MS or some other distributor to the exclusion of Apple. Hell they can even launch their own online distribution channels if they feel like it.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
From the article (emphasis mine)
But Mr Berman said it was vital for the industry to establish a single digital rights management technology as part of a strategy to popularise legal downloads among consumers.
and
While Apple has been widely praised for bringing online music into the mainstream market, some labels have complained it has priced tracks too low, making it difficult for them to make a profit from them.
If a single format will allow for competition between online music stores and at the same time increase the user base, I would expect the prices to drop. But given the second statement, I suspect they would like us to pay more.
This can only happen when the DRM-scheme they will be proposing is more restrictive then Apple DRM. So this has nothing to do with interoperability. It's about standardizing to a format they have more control over.
Do they ever learn?
It's interesting that the media industry, commonly accussed of not "getting it", does see the light on the issue of standards. This might even lead to DRMed content to be usable on open platforms! I think this is a Good Thing.
And before anyone starts "but the DRM will be used for all kinds of draconical restrictions": remember that you don't _have_ to use any particular product. If you think it's worth it, use it and don't bitch. If you think it's not worth it, use a different product and don't bitch. You make the choice, you get the pros and cons.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
"While Apple has been widely praised for bringing online music into the mainstream market, some labels have complained it has priced tracks too low, making it difficult for them to make a profit from them."
But they are making a profit. My question is, how much? Just once, I wish I could see a quote like this backed-up by a statistic (one that makes sense, mind you).
Once again: a monopoly by itself is not illegal; abusing one's position as a monopoly is.
If we can't get the different Browser makers to get the hint, what makes the labels think their going to accomplish such a feat? Sure, Apple and others like MS may jump on the label's wagon, but not everyone is going to play along with this. It's just going to be yet another lame battlefront the labels are going to waste their resources, and our patience on.
"We shall all rejoice!"
YEah!!! Only one technology to crack!
"Derp de derp."
One thing is clear, because Apple's iTunes Music Store has been successful, Apple has a great deal of clout during negotiations. If the music industry can make on line music a commodity with uniform standards, the music industry would be back in complete control.
Already, the music industry is getting full of itself with the success of iTMS. $.99 per track is no longer enough money for them. Rather than looking at the success of $.99 tracks, the music industry sees the success as a chance to raise prices, but Apple managed to stave them off. They don't want that to happen again.
"PS. I'm sure a lot of you will disagree, but at least I can claim to be a content creator myself..."
I'm a content creator myself, and my feeling is that it isn't good business to take away what makes your product interesting. If my customers want to rip the movie I'm working on so they can watch in on their laptop, why would I expect my sales to go up if I deny them that?
"Derp de derp."
But this way we only need to break one DRM scheme.
They made this mistake before an lost to the pc....don't make the same mistake twice.
So you are saying apple should make the same mistake that IBM made instead. Apple has somewhere from 3%-5% of the market share for Desktop Computers sold. While IBM has about the same market share now. Sure their platform is more popular but they made the mistake and their product became to command and to much competition. Apple has been pretty consistent with the 3%-5% market share for many years. Unlike the most PC guys who Shoot up to 25% they stay there for a few years then shoot down to 1 or 2% Gateway anyone? Apple is able to keep control of their product set and the technology they can go to and they are not bound to staying with one platform. Like the old macs to the PowerPC to the 64bit PowerPC. Any other PC manufacture would kill themselves doing this, but it works for Apple, the reason is because they didn't open up their Computing specs and allow anyone to use their OS (Well they did for a while but apple lost a Lot of money from that).
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
.at least that is the impression I get from reading your replies.
For example, I bought Deep Purple on vynil, several times cos they got fucked at parties, then I bought it several times on cassette, cos the tapes got chewed, then I bought it on an indestructible cd, and it died, then mp3 came along.
The music industry have NEVER EVER EVER been about selling music.
What they have ALWAYS sold and we have ALWAYS bought was the MEDIUM, eg vinyl, cassette, cd red book, whatever.
In the new digital age there is essentially no medium, only the data itself.
DRM in ALL ITS FORMS is quite simply nothing other than a DESPERATE (for failure = bankruptcy) attempt by these companies to impose pseudo medium characteristics onto medium free digital data.
I don't know why nobody gets this.
It's not just the RIAA, it is all big media business, hollywood as well as music biz as well as publishers as well as anyone who'se stuff can be distributed as digital data.
Talk of this version of drm vs that version of encoding versus this methods of copyright protection is all bullshit, because it is missing the point.
NOTHING LESS than imposing pseudo physical properties (the scratched vinyl, the chewed cassette, the skipped cd) onto digital media will satisfy these bastards.
Because anything less means their revenue stream crashes, permanently.
Wake up, this is essentially an American Big Media Corporation tea party vs the rest of the world and its consumers, you cannot afford to give these bastards even a nanometer.
America will end up as a digital cultural backwater, with everything inside its borders DRM'ed up the wazoo, and everyone outside the borders sticking 2 fingers up.
And this shit less than 24 hours after a post about the BBC (or rather hackers at the beeb before their bosses get tech savvy and twig) pushing for a open source codec in the community which by definition is not going to meet the needs of those who seek to make a fat living selling copy after copy after copy of the same thing to you, claiming to be selling you the media, but in fact merely peddling the medium itself.
wake up FFS
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
If one service ever got popular enough, major artists could sign directly to Apple and sell their music WITHOUT signing to a major label!
And they think they're going to stop that from happening by cutting the heads off the tall poppies?
Once online distribution gets big enough, all you'll need is *one* non-major label contracting with a significant fraction of the online distributors and that label will *be* a major.
The only way the music industry could pull themselves out of this is to start their own services and refuse to contract with any independents like Apple. And if they do that, it doesn't matter whether Apple uses "industry standard DRM" or not: they have to fuck Apple, AOL, Real, the whole shooting match or lose.
Wow, where are my hip waders? A friend of mine is VP of artist development at a record label. He seemed to feel that if they could sell CD's for five dollars each without producing the CD media, in his words, "We'd be rolling in money."
Using 12 tracks as an average for most CD's at a dollar a track makes it already hugely profitable for record companies and the first thing they want to do is try to squeeze you for even more. Okay, figure most people don't download whole CD's, they buy single tracks. They're still making a ton of money.
Amazing that it never seems to be enough for them. Then to come out and lie about their profit margin so brazenly just astounds me.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Apple wields no such clout as to what you purport here... true they might have about 50% marketshare or so, but as this [http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/8407] article (Your 99c per iTunes download belong to the RIAA) explains, Jobs admitted that Apple makes no revenue from the online download service they provide... so that the only real benefit Apple directly makes out of the service is it market's their ipods... the second point is the fact that apple commands no real clout when it comes to negotiations with the recording industry... as this article [http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/8514] clearly explains, "it would appear that they could negotiate better royalty rates with labels, but as the Music industry is composed of thousands of publishers and five major record labels, it still makes it difficult to get them all to agree"... and nobody wants DRM anyway... as says ballmer: "the most common format of music on the ipod is 'stolen'." [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/07/ballmer_d oesnt_get_it/ ]... of course, that's M$ and fud... what ballmer really wants to say is "people still download their music from elsewhere"... so that itunes is really just a facade to sell ipods
popularise legal downloads among consumers
Most of my downloads have no DRM at all, but they're perfectly legal. They're in MP3 format direct from the artists.
some labels have complained [Apple] has priced tracks too low, making it difficult for them to make a profit
Most of the 99c I pay to iTunes goes to the label, and their marginal cost for that purchase is zero. As near as I can tell, the only people making a profit from iTMS are the labels. And it's not at all certain that they'd make more profit at a higher price: they may make more money at a lower price, and they must know it... they're smart enough to have learned basic economics.
So, yes, it's all about control... but it's not necessarily about making more money directly from music sales. They want to make sure they are the ones pulling the strings so that online music distribution doesn't give artists a way to bypass the labels, and keep most of the 99c you pay iTMS for themselves.
All DRM as applied to the current market of devices are just security through obscurity. The "labels" can't have their cake and eat it too. You make a standard and whoops, you no longer control what happens to the content. DRM is a pipe dream. It's fundamentally flawed to think you can ultimately protect something from being copied while it can still be played. They should keep quiet and be happy that the more seperate obscure formats can delay the eventual open-source-then-soon-made-dmca-contraband release of each. The only way to have a "standard" drm is to delegate some government bureau as the authority to sell a propietary playback component to a select few very large tech corporations, which make the then only legal playback devices. And I only said it would be standard, not effective. We saw for how long that idea worked for dvds' css decoding keys. The only possible effective DRM method would require such a central bereau to issue UUIDs of some sort to the large enough online media retailer companies, with which the downloads of such a SocSecNum tracked sale will be permuted at the highest threshold of the digtal media format's quality level (wasting some bits that the codec could be using in order to sell you an inferior quality recording) so they could ultimately catch someone by finding an illegal copy and being able to reference when exactly who sold that track to whom. Of course this isn't necessarily effective DRM its just makes infraction prosecutable. Of course, to copy, people would have to lower the quality to below the threshold that the fingerprint can be identified or mix enough legit copies to obscure the fingerprints. And of course since anyone in the legal supply chain is a potential for corruption or leaks, each link in such chain would have to be fingerprinted in order to be effective, so as to compound the compromising of the quality.
Once again: a monopoly by itself is not illegal; abusing one's position as a monopoly is.
:D
Exactly. And the RIAA cartel has been consistantly and systematically abusing their monopoly power. They pretty well exterminated interet radio. They imposed a total restriant of trade against any online sales at all for half a decade. They imposed uniform and opressive terms on online sellers (Apple got a way with slightly less oppressive terms because Apply fought against any DRM at all and the RIAA could not afford an anti-trust smackdown for imposing a Windows-only monopoly on music sales. These slightly less opressive terms are also why Apple is the only semi-sucessful service.) The RIAA has been hit for CD price fixing, more than once if I'm not mistaken. I beleive they have also inflated download costs, and they admittedly intend to inflate them even more. I'm sure there are other examples, but I think I've made my point
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
While this is a strange development and I cannot predict what will happen, Apple still has the ability to use veiled threats and coercion. Apple has made it extremely easy for any band/group to record their own music, it would be simple for Apple to work directly with bands and handle publicity, this could ultimately cut the labels out completely. With the digital market moving the way it is actual distribution of cds is going to falter. Apple could probably very easily distribute songs in multiple formats. 128kbps and Apple Loss-less for people who want the extra "ummmfff." I personally like AAC very much, and see the need for cd quality digital tracks as well. Apple should fight this tooth and nail. Or the labels should recognize a format built by people who understand sound (dolby labs) over WMA which is utter shite
Abandon all hope ye who enter here...
Here's what happened:
Microsoft, whispering into RIAA's ear..
"You know that Apple DRM has been hacked, and blah blah closed system, blah blah, doesn't support artist's rights, blah blah, Windows Media Miracle Solution!"
RIAA:
"Good point."
Dead iPod
Microsoft: Profit!
Go shove it. As soon as they try to screw us out of affordable/iPodable online music sales, we'll go back to stealing.
The record companies will drop Apple in a second for any reason.
Actually the RIAA was fairly desperate to get Apple to sign on, that's how Apple was able to get the RIAA to budge a tiny bit and allw them slightly less oppressive DRM terms.
Why was the RIAA desperate to get (and keep!) Apple? Because the RIAA has been walking a careful line to avoid getting seriously smaked down for anti-trust abuses and collusion. Not only were they colluding to impose essentially identical and oppressive terms, but they would have effectively imposed a Windows-only restraint of trade. They were DESPERATE to maintain the illusion of competition.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
... but the good news is that, once this "unified DRM" is put into place it only has to get cracked once, which will make Rip, Mix, Burn almost as convenient has having no DRM at all. If the RIAA were as smart as they think they are, they'd push for as many wildly different encryption schemes as they could. Even if each particular scheme isn't particularly secure, by using a bunch of them it would make life more complicated for people wanting to listen to their own music, I mean, steal intellectual property. Heck, the DVD was released with a "unified DRM" system: it worked very well until the teenaged DVD Jon cracked the thing. Now look where they are ... DVDs for download all over the place. If the RIAA wants to repeat one of the MPAA's biggest mistakes that's fine: it won't have much impact on the quantity of online copyright infringement.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Why is the recording industry overlooking the obvious solution? Dont' use DRM at all!
Seriously. No form of DRM that allows you to listen to the music will prevent it from being digitized. Everything is already available in unencumbered formats through file sharing networks.
Get it free and unencumbered online, or pay to get an inferior product that you can only listen to on a handful of platforms, and that can disappear at will. And they're wondering why people still trade files online?
All DRM does is punish the honest users. I'd buy music online if it wasn't DRMed.
When I was reading 1984 I always wondered how they could instantly change all the newspapers and constantly rewrite history and make it up to date. Since all the newspapers would have already been distributed. There would be traces left.
A combined Hardware and software DRM seems to allow this. Since you are giving material to people without actually giving it to them, you can always change it. And distribution systems will definitely favor DRM instead of physical media because it is so much more 'convenient'. If a license to temporarily view something with various restrictions becomes the dominant form of ownership, freedom is definitely going down the tubes. It wouldnt be so much a dictatorship but the replacement of personal artifacts and memory by a culturally/centrally owned artifacts and memories. We wouldnt have a license to remember what we forgot. Pretty isn't it?
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever."
--from Nineteen Eighty-Four
>> Bad news for Apple fanatics but good news for all the crazy slashdotters who want an iPod but feel dirty using Apple's DRM: the labels are getting together and insisting that online stores standardize their DRM methods.
/K
Um, how is this good news? Apple's DRM is actually fairly innocuous in practice. I don't feel the least bit dirty using it. Do you honestly believe that something foisted on us by the labels will be more end-user friendly and less proprietary?
The revenues they get from Apple are laughable - all the way to the bank. And how exactly are the record labels going to benefit from Apple (and all others online stores, because all your reasons aply to them as well) stop selling music online? And you think Apple is fucked?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
The ironic thing is that that's insightful.
...
NO DRM scheme can ever work, so long as we retain control of our computers. You cannot simultaneously grant people access to the work and yet preclude it. And if we control our computers and are given any access to the work, it is merely a matter of expending the effort to extract that work in some form.
It's nothing but an artificial restriction, which is hardly unusual in the realm of intellectual "property," and it's why they need the DMCA to marginalize those who are able to free the works from society by making them "criminals"
Well, they sort of tried this on their own a few years back with SDMI. When was the last time you heard anything about SDMI?
Now that they've failed to deliver their own industry standard DRM they want tech companies to deliver one on their behalf? Given the failure of the SDMI working group it seems highly unlikely that an outsider will ever produce a scheme the labels can buy into.
Like it or not, iTunes is the closest anyone has come to this.
Labels don't want a unified DRM, what they want is *any* DRM that they can use to directly sell to consumers themselves. They can't use Fairplay, which rules out iPods. So unless they're going to go the Doomed to Fail Sony route of providing a whole soup to nuts system, they *need* an open DRM so they can bypass Apple and Microsoft and sell directly to consumers. I would rather have the labels die a quicker death.
I disagree. Apple's iTMS has been a great success among legal music download services, but legal music download services are only a very very tiny fraction of total music downloads. The labels have their eye on the big prize--the people who are not using any legal download services now. If they have to drop Apple to get a DRM standard that they think will be more attractive to that huge crowd, they will do it.
Why are "they" picking on Apple? Because Apple does not want to play fair (pun intended). They will not allow "Fair" play to be used by anyone else. They want to own the online music market to drive iPod sales. I am not a fan of MS, but at least with MS "if you pay you can play". MS _wants_ to license their DRM, they want the whole world to license it. Silly Apple is making another huge mistake that will eventually make iTunes a niche market like their other products. If they just allowed anyone to license "Fair" play, then they could not only make money from the sale of iPods, but also license fees for _every_ competing portable player out there.
The sad thing is that because of this dumb move by Apple, I bet MS's DRM will win out. That means MS DRM for MS OS'es only. MS will always lag with a Mac OS version and you can bet there will never be a Linux version. So all portable players out there suddenly become "MS only".
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
The iTMS sold a million songs its first week, so assuming it's tapered off by half by now, the one professional staff member would have to get paid $750,000 a year to take up that much money.
Man, I'd love to be that staff member.
Right. And let's face it, there is more to the RIAA than just "evil, evil, money, money, stomp on the consumer!!" mentality. Last I checked, there were at least a few hundred labels in the RIAA - obviously far more than just the "Big 5." Most of them are small labels who support really good music and aren't out to make a killing so their executives can buy 20 more Mercedes and 3 new mansions. My favorite label is also a member, and I don't hold it against them. They're in the business of getting incredible music out to be heard by as many people as possible, and the best way to do so is to enjoy the benefits of the RIAA without being one of the bloodsucking evil corporations that also are a part of it.
I wish we'd stop calling it the RIAA and say something else like the Big 5 or something like that. Those are the greedy assholes we should be fighting. Go on the RIAA website sometime and look at the huge list of member labels. I'll bet there's lots of tiny "indie-like" labels you didn't know were members, and they're probably good people too. I don't boycot the RIAA, I just boycot shitty music. Happily the vast majority of music I love can't be found in Best Buy and places like that (I was there yesterday and found ONE, only one CD from my wishlist of almost 200), and most of it's not released by the evil Big 5.