Slashdot Mirror
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."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Even though I do understand that content creators wish to protect themselves I believe that no DRM is the way to go.
The main thing is to focus on having a well working and simple delivery model, and to make sure the content isn't over-priced. DRM ultimately pretty useless, since it can always be broken eventually. If it's simpler to buy the content from a reputable store than getting it over P2P the model will work.
Tim O'Reilly wrote and excellent piece on the subject in 2002, and it still applies today: Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution
PS. I'm sure a lot of you will disagree, but at least I can claim to be a content creator myself...
.: Max Romantschuk
The labels can go fuck themselves.
Apparently there are some photos circulating the net demonstrating how that can be done, I hear.
This should be interesing, Apple is very good at being independent and wanting to be different, but this looks like that strategy won't work out. They must keep the studios happy or the studios will happily take away the music.
Personally I wonder how this would affect older devices (like iPods) that might not be able to play the standardized DRM. The article makes no mention of this, and while I can't see Apple in particular (and other digital music player makers) wanting to make their older products incompatible, I really would not be surprised if the studios could care less if that were to occur. If it does there will be quite a few incredibly angry folks out there!
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?
Not at all. Do you honestly believe that the labels are doing this for your (the customer's) good, to enable you to choose the mediaplayer and format you want? Then you're truly naive. Labels are greedy, greedy and greedy, in that order. The only reason that they are banding together on DRM now is that they are afraid that they will lose control (=revenue) over their digital music offerings to Apple, Microsoft or some other digital content provider. Which would serve them right.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
Records labels are doing a very good thing here. Thank god Real Networks saw this, and acted. All any of these 3 out of 4 companies haft to do, is license one and others DRM schemes, then develop software that allows them to decrypt the others DRM scheme into pure PCM and then convert the song with the others DRM.
OpenMG to Helix
Helix to OpenMG
OpenMG to WMA/Janus DRM
Helix to FairPlay
FairPlay to Helix
WMA to OpenMG
WMA to Helix.
OpenMG to FairPlay
FairPlay to OpenMG
WMA to FairPlay
FairPlay to OpenMG
WMA to FairPlay
FairPlay to WMA
OpenMG to Helix
Sony, Microsoft, Apple, and Real actually working together, WOW!!!
What's hard about this concept?
before the record labels are sued as being a monopoly? I imagine the indy labels all rising up in a class action suit, but I mean seriously, it's been 5 years of announcements like this on an average of once a week or more, I want my music, I want it free (of restrictions) I'll pay a resonable price for decent music I enjoy listening to, and if I want to buy something on CD I'll go to a used CD store. I'm not just on music burnout, I'm afraid I've burned up all the fuel I've used to burn the pyre of hatred for the acts of RIAA and MPAA.... someone help, I need a transfusion.
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).
They should use Creative Commons for part of a standardised DRM scheme. The whole concept of having XML data describe different licensing methods so that they can be understood by software would be the way to go.
I don't know what "open" means in this case, but AAC is patent-encumbered. If you want to distribute an encoder or a decoder you have to license those patents:
So, in a way, the submitter already messed it up.
The rest should follow the leader.....
After that Apple should open up their DRM to others.
They made this mistake before an lost to the pc....don't make the same mistake twice.
if your pants fit well, it's not only because of the pants
"but I can't run OS X if the proprietary ROM isn't there"
Incorrect. Mac OS Classic requires the ROM to boot, but Mac OS X does not. If you were to write the proper drivers (go ahead; the core OS is open-source, so it can't be too hard), you could probably run Mac OS X on an AmigaOne or even a GameCube.
It would, however, violate the license, which says you must not run OS X on non-Apple computers.
"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.
I guess the problem is that the ignorant media are saying that Apple's DRM is "proprietary" (which it is) but implying that other online stores are not (because they use WMA-DRM).
Of course the labels want a standard - a standard they control. they want to be able to raise the price when they want and sue anyone who breaks it. Sadly it's exactly this sort of promise that Ms will make for them.
So, AAC is open but patent-encumbered. Not a problem. The file format doesn't really matter anyway, the issue is the DRM. And by it's nature it's going to bug people whatever happens.
In my case, I'm not worried. I can use Apple's DRM'ed files and I don't need to worry about it. Definitely a case of "I'm all right, Jack"
M
Record labels have nothing to lose here. Revenues they get from Apple are laughable.
Apple, however, can't:
1. Make tracks more expensive - nobody's gonna buy them
2. Share the DRM format - bye bye iTunes revnues
3. Implement stronger DRM - nobody will buy tracks
4. Tell the record labels to fuck off - where are they gonna get the music then?
I think they're royally fucked.
But this way we only need to break one DRM scheme.
I for one am a Magnatune customer and find that this is all music I need. Creative Commons doesn't mean it does suck. The fine folks over at Blender chose one Magnatune artist for their SIGGRAPH demo reel. The rest ain't shabby either.
Try Cargo Cult, Curl, Brad Sucks or their shoutcasts for starters.
If you chose to buy, you set the price. Money is evenly divided between artist and label. Download options include wav, flac, vorbis and mp3.
Sure, I still buy the odd CD. But I only do this after a concert right out of the hands of the performers. Prefer my media handsigned and not watermarked, thank you.
I haven't listened to the radio in years.
20 minutes into the future
.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
And what's so funny about it is that O'Reilly *still* does not sell unbundled, non-DRM'ed, digital downloads.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
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.
The industry HATES Apple's $0.99 price point. If they could charge more, they would.
Of course, the industry could license Apple's DRM! And the license fees would likely be very very inexpensive. But Apple isn't likely to license their DRM without a stipulation that songs must be less than $1.00.
Yay Apple! I'm no Apple fan, but this is the GOOD THING FOR ALL... even if you're NOT an iPod owner!
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.
... 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.
I recorded a CD and released it online. I also allow some of the tracks to be downloaded for free at MacIdol. And here's what I've found...
As I have made more tracks available for free downloading, CD sales have INCREASED. I think I know at least one reason. We all can recall an artist that we sorta liked on first listening, but then liked more and more as we listened more and more. When you allow several songs to be downloaded for free, you increase your chances of this happening. If people dig the music enough, they might order the CD. If they don't, then you've lost nothing. But they still have your "free" songs out there and they have friends, and you never know.
And instead of releasing the worst songs from the disc for free, I released what I thought were the best songs. I wish big artists would do this.
I'm in line to get the CD into iTunes, but the waiting list to get in is long, so it can take months for a little guy to get in. But I just see iTunes as another way to get exposure. Once the CD is on iTunes, I will still allow free downloading of some songs, because I really believe it will help, not hurt, CD sales. My freely downloadable songs are located at:
http://www.macidol.com/jamroom/bands/999/music.php
Music - www.richardmac.com
"good news for all the crazy slashdotters who want an iPod but feel dirty using Apple's DRM"
What part of "I don't pay money for DRM" don't you understand? I don't care where in the equation the DRM came from, I will not pay money for either DRM software or the DRM hardware required to run it.
The only "exception" I have to this rule is with DVDs: I'll buy a DVD so long as it's not published by a member of the MPAA, and even then I play it on a region-free DVD player.
>> 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?
Why are they picking on Apple's proprietary DRM and open format? Microsoft uses a proprietary DRM AND proprietary format. So does Sony. And there's no other major DRMed formats other than those three. AAC is the least of the three evils, since it's the only one with an open format! (WMA, Sony's format that I forgot the name of, and AAC) Why not pick on Microsoft FIRST, or Sony, then Apple? Why single out Apple?
Most music stores are WMA- one is AAC- and they pick on the AAC one? Did Microsoft bribe them or something?
Previous engines were external combustion engines, namely the steam engine were the fire was outside and the force of the fire through steam was put inside the engine.
So someone thought Hmmm wouldn't it save a lot of trouble if we could remove all the steam and hot water and boiler and get the fire inside the engine.
The various ways in wich this has been done have been patented, giving the inventor of the way to do the idea several years protection BUT the idea itself could not be patented.
That is the original idea behind patents. To allow inventors a small amount of time to recoup their investment while at the same time making sure the invention would soon be available to the entire world. We now think that 1 year is a long time but when patents were tought up people thought in decades.
of course since then the patent system has gone to hell with ideas now being patented but that is because it is being abused.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
How about they all unify on one certain DRM standard, that will be absolutely interoperable among all players, without any key-distribution headaches, extra bandwidth, or market friction: NONE. It's backwards compatible!
--
make install -not war
Personally, I think we should get away from actually believing that a college student in Finland sat down and wrote an operating system.
A programmer from IBM passed the confidential trade-secret information for emulating UNIX to "Linux Tovald" who uploaded the program to an FTP site.
If you think a college student could just sit down and emulate an industry standard operating system, then you should go work for The O'Reilly Factor and not spend so much time trolling, troll.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
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"
download drm'd aac songs, export them to cd audio, then rip the new cd. no drm. lossless. sounds great to me. downloaded digital music is not going to be the absolutely highest quality. it takes $1000 stereo system to hear a tiny difference in quality of a $0.99 song. holy crap. apple's drm is the least invasive and lest restrictive. would you rather microsoft's drm?
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
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.
Because after all that transcoding all you'll hear is white noise.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.