Britons Frustrated by DRM

thesp writes "The BBC is reporting that UK music lovers are 'frustrated' with DRM restrictions and pricing of online music purchases. The confusion over file formats and player compatibility are being compounded with the desire to 'own' rather than 'license' an album or track, leading to widespread concern. This debate has recently been the province only of the technologists and the media companies, with the consumer being regarded as unaware and unwitting. Is this a sign that this picture is changing, with consumers begining to realise and leverage their own market power?"

Comments

Finally, but will it do anything?

[strider44]

Don't the RIAA have a virtual monopoly on music, and so can't they place restrictions at will?

I think that it's good that people are listening, but without competition, somewhere else to go to to get the music that you want, why would the music industry do anything?

Re:Finally, but will it do anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't France recently do this?

No. A recent judgement involving consumer watchdog associations said:
- companies have the right to put protections on their CDs
- consumers who experience problems reading these CDs are entitled a refund.
Now, circumventing encryption is still authorised in Europe. The problem would be a DMCA-like bill at the European level (such as EUCD).

DRM not helping

[antonpiatek]

I rarely download music, most of my friends buy CD's so they can do what they like with the music.

Some of my friends do download, but i can't think of any that download any drm'd music. They stick to sites such as audiolunchbox.com and alloffmp3.com and get drm-free mp3 files.

The only thing that bothers me is that if i want to listen to my flatmates cd, i will want to put it on my ipod for a while. He uses media player to rip his music, so it wont play on my ipod.

If music companies sat down and thought about what they are doing, they would realise that they are competing against the mp3 player market, because if they dont sell something that plays on most mp3 players, then people wont buy it!

Ownership

[smokeslikeapoet]

While I understand I don't own a copyright. I do think that if I buy a cd/dvd/download that I should have the right to copy/play/replay the media for my own personal use. Unless of course I agreed in advance that my use would be limited (video rental, pay-per-view). If I want to make a copy of my cd/dvd/download and convert it to any format that I deem necessary to enjoy the content then that is my right! I am claiming it as my right. It doesn't really matter at all what any law says. You can take my ipod out of my cold dead hands because I bought the freaking CDs!!!

DRM Alternative

[Luke Psywalker]

There is a DRM alternative in the way of an inaudible signature key inside a waveform. You can use the files as you see fit, however if they are found on a P2P network you will get busted because they will have your details from when you purchased the track. You can even burn the audio file, rip it, re-encode it and the signature will still be there.

Re:DRM Alternative

[Ckwop]

This won't work. Say each download has a different inaudible signature key inside the waveform. All I have to do is download it twice and compare the two files. I then set an bits to zero that are different in the two files.

There's a very high chance that i've totally destroyed the signature key by doing this.

Simon.

Re:consumers voicing their opinion?

[Dr.Opveter]

Well, for some consumers anyway. I stopped buying audio CD's a number of years ago, trying to show what i thought about the price/quality of CD's.
I haven't tried to purchase any music online yet but i will not buy any less than CD quality DRM files at high prices.
I mean if i can buy a full album cd package for a couple of bucks more than the DRM download version i would not even consider it a worthwile effort. It works for single tracks, but for people who want the whole album it doesn't make sense.

Who would have thought

[Groo Wanderer]

Once again, the mainstream media catches up to my rants. Sigh.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16999
For each of the people pissed off by DRM, they will warn off dozens of others, and the music industry will soon find themselves in a world of hurt. Oh wait, they are already there.

When you piss off your customers with draconian measures designed to suck money out of their wallets at your whim, they stop buying. Duh. The correct answer to this dillema is not to turn the knob up to 11, but to turn it down, or better yet off. The music industry can't seem to grasp this concept.

Maybe it is me, am I missing something? Has the whole strategy of 'make them hate us more than the Nazis' ever lead to greater profits?

-Charlie

Cory Doctorow was right

[Kartoch]

Remember me the speech of Cory Doctorow given to Microsoft's Research Group.:

Here's what I'm here to convince you of:
1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT

Nyeah, Told You So

[turgid]

Most of us here could see this happening. I really despair at mass media, the general public and big companies. No one listens.

So people are annoyed that they can't transfer the files they've paid for, the sound quality isn't that good and sometimes they've paid for something that didn't download properly so they paid to download it again?

More fool them: the consumers and the companies.

I'll stick to buying CDs (but not the Copy Protected ones) by bands I like and going to live shows.

The fundamental problem here is that the music industry wants to get rich off of simplistic, mass-produced music, i.e. the stuff that appeals to young kids with no money.

If they want a healthy, sustainable and profitable business they need to downsize and focus on producing a quality product.

Major Rant

[Anonymous Coward]

I posted this in my blog a hour or so ago, it goes off topic toward the end.

I won't be buying a significant amount of new music anytime soon. $15 for a CD is simply too much, and with high-speed Internet access there's no need to do so. Why should I pay for a $15 CD if I only want a song or two off it? There was (is?) a store that offered custom-burned CDs, but that was likely stopped by the music industry.

The music industry simply won't change in response to Internet piracy. They still act as it's 1990 and there is no alternate way to get music.

The simplest way to fight piracy is to lower the prices on downloadable music, to say 25 cents per song. This would replace the music industy's model of high priced / low sales with a low priced / high sales model. This would cause most of the downloaders of free music to switch to online stores, but it won't move everyone over.

The second step, which is required to get the advanced users into it, would be to stop using "Digital Restrictions Management." Fortunately, at such a low price per song, the volume would cover any loses to piracy while allowing any song to work with any device. I can't imagine the same numbers of these advanced users sharing music when it would be easier to download them at the low price of 25 cents.

Download sites should also increase the bitrate (quality) of the legal tracks online. Offering lossy formats doesn't provide a superior product. When I have the choice of two files online, I download the higher-quality one.

The last step is to offer "bootlegs" and "unreleased" tracks, which is an issue seldom addressed. There's a great version of Led Zeppelin's "No Quarter" that runs more than 10 minutes, but due to a very minor analog distortion that I didn't notice until a trained musician pointed it out to me, is not available for purchase anywhere. I'm a Zep fan and I would gladly pay for a CD of live and unreleased Zeppelin songs even if they weren't perfect in the ears of Jimmy Page. I imagine there's countless other examples of songs that aren't available any other way than "illegal" downloading.

The copyright system needs to be reformed, since copyright is:

" To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" - US Constitution (http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/a rticle01/)

I can't say music is a "useful art", nor is it a science. Copyright isn't for securing a permanant income stream for the author and his descentdants and corporations. (paraphrased from another /. poster)

For example, Disney's Steamboat Willy (a percursor to Mickey Mouse) is from the 1920s, and will never be "publick domain" in my lifetime thanks to the amazing power of corporations in our government. If one was a lawmaker and wanted to reform these laws, I'm sure ABC's (owned by Disney) stations and reports would take a bit more of a negative view of that lawmaker.

The movie industry is also worried about piracy, and since many movie studios are in corporations that also own music labels, they're not taking this issue lightly. It shouldn't be as big of an issue, as not nearly as many people expect to download free movies online.

The movie/tv industry needs to move now to take advantage of the Internet rather than viewing it as inherently evil. Don't wait until the masses discover downloading movies!

A full movie usually fits on a single DVD, and is between 2-4GB. If a site offered movies for 10 a piece I'd download some of them, provided there is no DRM involved.

Let's take any TV show, say "South Park" for example which is already out on DVD. There's countless ways to get it illegally online, which I prefer to do rather than watch it on TV and it's constant commercial interuptions.

There's no reason why a movie or show can't be released online after it's original primary airing. This woul

Re:it was bound to happen

[mustrum_ridcully]

Mind you Apple are being taken to the European Court because they prevent UK downloaders from using the French and German iTunes sites and getting cheaper downloads.

For those of you who don't know the EUs single market prohibits this, a person from one EU must be able to buy something from another EU state as if they were living there - no discrimination can be made on grounds of nationality - thereby ensuring the free movement of goods.

Cory Doctorow (Speaking to MSFT about DRM)

[putko]

Cory Doctorow (Speaking to MSFT about DRM)

... I speak from experience. Because I buy a new Powerbook every ten months, and because I always order the new models the day they're announced, I get a lot of lemons from Apple. That means that I hit Apple's three-iTunes-authorized-computers limit pretty early on and found myself unable to play the hundreds of dollars' worth of iTunes songs I'd bought because one of my authorized machines was a lemon that Apple had broken up for parts, one was in the shop getting fixed by Apple, and one was my mom's computer, 3,000 miles away in Toronto.

If I had been a less good customer for Apple's hardware, I would have been fine. If I had been a less enthusiastic evangelist for Apple's products -- if I hadn't shown my mom how iTunes Music Store worked -- I would have been fine. If I hadn't bought so much iTunes music that burning it to CD and re-ripping it and re-keying all my metadata was too daunting a task to consider, I would have been fine.

As it was Apple rewarded my trust, evangelism and out-of-control spending by treating me like a crook and locking me out of my own music, at a time when my Powerbook was in the shop -- i.e., at a time when I was hardly disposed to feel charitable to Apple.

I'm an edge case here, but I'm a *leading edge* case. If Apple succeeds in its business plans, it will only be a matter of time until even average customers have upgraded enough hardware and bought enough music to end up where I am.

Re:A good thing, too

[ajs318]

You get a surprising number of 'fair-use' privileges

Fair Use is a right, not a privilege. Copyright is a privilege; the "right" bit is just Doublespeak.

Re:it was bound to happen

[xtracto]

Halleluya! But I think thats not 100%, I live in UK and before arriving here I thought I would find cheaper CD's than in my country (I am from Mexico), to my surprise, while in MX the CD's (European Metal) where like $15 USD each one, here in UK they are at GBP 15 (darn pund symbol =oP), and in Spain, France and other EU countries they are cheaper (13 Euros)... that really pisses me off!

But, I think that is because Britons do not care about the price of things, when I come from a country where a $1 peso (like $.1 USD) rebate, is always welcomed!,

Darn, I have even seen people leaving .40 GBP (pences) in the chocolate vending machines!! it seems they put the pound and they dont like the change. I make the conversion and think "oh my god, it is $8.0 MXP!!! I can buy a chocolate with that =oD)

Replacing media

[CyrusSukhia]

So now that content is licensed the content, who do i contact to have my media replaced when it gets ruined? Certainly I shouldn't have to pay the full retail price for a new CD since I already have the license...

Fool me once, shame on you...

[sdo1]

... fool me twice, shame on me.

I bought and downloaded some .wmv baseball game footage from MLB.com (last year's playoff games). They even advertised that I could "burn it to CD!". This is the first time I've bought anything like that, so I'm figuring "Great! I'll be able to make a VCD of it.". Wrong. The things are so heavily DRM'd that even the fast-forward buttons are disabled.

Oh, and yes, I can burn the files to CD... as data. But I can't do a damn thing with them. I still need to be at my internet enabled PC so it can check for authorization any time I want to watch them.

I figured I'd give iTunes a try having read that their DRM isn't nearly as draconian. Well, it's basically the same issues though not to the same extent. And the sound quality sucks.

Fooled me twice... shame on me.

I hope the media companies hear this loud and clear... I will GLADLY buy high-quality un-DRM'd content. Let me repeat that... GLADLY. That means lossless compression for audio and DVD quality for video. They need to figure out their distribution model. I find it hard to believe that manufacturing discs and paying for shipping and retail overhead is a better cost model than allowing download. But for now, I will continue to buy CDs and DVDs because I can then rip the content and have the high-quality un-DRM'd files that I'm looking for. OR, they could increase their profit margin by allowing the same thing as a data transfer.

-S

Tell me about it...

[turgid]

Darn, I have even seen people leaving .40 GBP (pences) in the chocolate vending machines!! it seems they put the pound and they dont like the change. I make the conversion and think "oh my god, it is $8.0 MXP!!! I can buy a chocolate with that =oD)

There's a lot of snobbery here in the UK (not just England). If people drop their change on the ground, they often won't pick it up for fear of appearing cheap.

People here often go out of their way to buy the most expensive stuff they can because they think it must be better or to show everyone else just how rich and discerning they are.

Like you, I've often had many free snacks from vending machines because people have walked off and left their change. I've also almost managed to fund a night out from picking up the odd pund here and there off the floor...

I've had many useful computer parts from the local rubbish dump.

I'm not a miserable, stingy Scottish git for nothing :-)