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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?"
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?
It's called a "tea party". Throw your music into the Thames!
You know about tea, right??
Thank god consumers are "rejecting" DRM. It can only be a bad thing for manufacturers [such as Apple] (no flame intent) to have control over music files. What the people want is to be able to download a file and to use it like a file, not to download a restricted piece of music, which is only playable by specific players (hard- and software), only allowed on "x" computers, and unable to be shared around to friends. That is against the general undertone of "freedom" on the Internet and this non-acceptance by users can only be a good thing.
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!
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!!!
well actually what'll probably happen is the same thing as with everything else we brits have issues with, there'll be some whining and eventually the nation will roll over and accept it, same way we do with everythign else, seriously we're pretty much the most apathetic people ever!
I think file sharing would die down on its own if the industry stopped pissing about. Give people what they want at the price they want - thats how a market works. I'd say the most likely people to download music of kazaa etc are school kids and university students - neither group has any money and whatever new 'laws' or solutions the industry comes up with people of these ages are going to share music even if they have to go back to swapping and burning CD's with their friends. After a while people grow up and get jobs and disposable money, the music industry has to realise that theres a price range people want to pay and they can either take internet distribution or leave it. The only 'format' thats going to last out is un-DRM'd or a long-time cracked format (DVD for example) lets be honest with ourselves, the format of choice is mp3 and sooner or later mp3s will be sold cheaply online by all labels and they will still rake in the cash.
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It's the beginnings of a massive world wide revolt where everyone starts downloading their music from bittorrent.......
Oh wait....
Mod me up, mod me down, flame me, praise me -- whatever you do, you help prove I exist...
I see a lot of the comments echo my own worries with these online music stores; they're just too bloody expensive.
Partly it's that we're being forced to pay much higher download costs than the US or Europe pay for tracks, but it's also that with real CDs we can import. If you want a whole album, you can order it from most online stores (or sometimes even buy in your local supermarket) for around £9. When it costs at least £8 to buy the tracks from iTunes, and usually around £14 from the WMA sites, you're paying a hell of a lot for music in lower quality and covered in DRM that stops you using it on some devices.
In theory, at least, BMG and Sony are trying to force you to pay the high costs by ruining the CD versions with stuff that is meant to kill your PC. But I've got a bunch of these discs (it's hard not to when ordering discs online and so not seeing in advance if it will have "protection"), and not one of them has caused iTunes to bat an eyelid.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
What a novel concept. Those out there saying "well they should have read the fine print" don't seem to get it. It's not that they expected one thing and got another, it's that even people who know what the deal is don't have a legal option to OWN unrestricted files. It's not presented, at any price. That's where the real problem is.
I figured once DRM got widespread enough to start causing problems with mainstream devices the average Joe (or whatever the name in the UK is) would start taking notice. I've been hearing "But WHY can't I tape my DVD like I do my other tapes?" for awhile now, so I figured it was only a matter of time. The broadcast flag will likely have the same effect. A couple months of nothing major and then suddenly rising complaints of not being able to do the things that were always just fine.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
That's true.
We're British; we like to moan about things; that's what we do.
Hell, we've been moaning about the weather here for centuries but nobody does anything about it, what makes you think this will be any different?
We find something to moan about, we complain that "somebody" should Do Something about it, and then we get on with our lives.
We never actually intend for Something to be Done - we'd lose something to moan about!
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
Once again, the mainstream media catches up to my rants. Sigh.
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.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=16999
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
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.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
They have no DRM controls and have always had top quality mp3s. They are now starting to implement FLAC as well. If you like the type of music they provide, indie electronica / rock / hip hop etc, then I thoroughly recommend them.
I posted this in my blog a hour or so ago, it goes off topic toward the end.
/. poster)
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
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
Copyright owners don't want to give user rights to 'own' the song.
Listeners don't want to 'rent' song, they want to 'own' it.
I guess it will be all the time.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
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)
...
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.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
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!
.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)
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
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
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...
The thing is, there is nothing to stop you going to france/spain and getting it for the cheaper price, and so its ok.
Even if you were to go to France, you couldn't use the French iTunes store, as it won't let you without a french registered bank account. Thats whats infringing.
"Success is based on knowing how far to go in going too far"
i quit buying music as soon as the RIAA started sueing music downloaders, i have not spent so much as a penny on any music since then, vote with your wallet...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
... fool me twice, shame on me.
.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.
I bought and downloaded some
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
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
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 :-)
Stick Men
I've been under the impression the whole time that the DRM and every other anti fair use law is aiming at one thing. Locking down the music to a point to where they can charge you for each time you play it.
If it's not stopped hard in it's tracks, one day you'll go out and buy a CD, and after so many times listening to it it'll stop playing. Reading the fine print you really only licensed the music to play it 50 times. If you would like to listen to it some more, pay some more.
*DrugCheese rants*