EFF Releases Music DRM Guide

Chris Chiasson writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently created a plain English guide to several fair use restrictions that major online music services, such as Apple's iTunes, force on their customers via Digital Rights Management (DRM) laden music files and End User License Agreements (EULAs). An excerpt from the guide follows: 'Forget about breaking the DRM to make traditional uses like CD burning and so forth. Breaking the DRM or distributing the tools to break DRM may expose you to liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) even if you're not making any illegal uses.' The EFF also lists four alternative music services which sell unrestricted files."

Comments

Missing from list

[overshoot]

They missed at least one unrestricted-music site: MagnaTune -- nice people. Don't miss the founder's comments.

DRM

[eneville]

Any form of DRM sucks, and I'll do whatever I can to avoid entering into any DRM agreement.

Re:DRM

[Coniptor]

You are an idiot!
People on the greater average do NOT know the limitations ahead of time nor what DRM is. Walk down a street or hall in your local mall and randomly ask people if they know what DRM is.

People who research and are aware what they are buying are the minority.

People who go buy the next new toy because it's the latest fad tech/music toy because so and so has it and now they must have it to keep up with the Jonses don't research and educate them selves. That's too much trouble, they just want it to fill like equals to everyone else who's gone out and bought it. It's more of a indirect peer presure sort of thing.

So please shutup and do trip down a flight of stairs so I and others don't have to read your ignorant words and so there is more oxygen for the rest of us. Your taking up space!

Independent music recommendation services?

[RAMMS EIN]

Ok, so I've had it with the musicians who have sold their souls to the corporations. With the advert of the Internet, they don't need anyone else to publish and distribute their music to the world. So now I want to get my music from independent artists. The problem is: I know what kind of music I like, and I know which mainstream bands make this kind of music, but I don't have time to go listening to every indie artist to find out what they make.

What I'm looking for is a site where I can enter or select names of bands or songs that I like, and get independent music recommended to me. You like Alanis Morisette? Try Jen Pitch. That sort of thing. Does anybody know of such sites?

By the way: the example above is just an association I know from the top of my head; I'm not very much into the kind of music at all.

Re:Independent music recommendation services?

[cortana]

cdbaby has a useful genre/category/mood browser.

Re:Independent music recommendation services?

[servoled]

Allmusic is a good starting point for reccomendations. You can search an artist and it will give you similar artists along with artists who influenced that artists and artists who were influenced by that artist. It also is a good source for biographical and discography information.

The Yahoo subscription service also has a neat feature where you can queue up songs which are similar to a song/album/artist and listen to those songs, plus at $60 a year it is a pretty cheap way to find new music. I wouldn't reccomend it for building a music library due to the subscriptionyness of it though.

Derek Slater

[turnstyle]

fwiw, the DRM guide was written party/mostly (I don't know) by hard working blogger, Derek Slater.

Oddly, I couldn't seem to find credits on that EFF page.

preaching to the choir, blah blah

[Anonymous Coward]

the EFF need to get their guides printed onto paper and distributed to the public, buses, trains, in the street , through doors, offices, trams, subways, parking lots, schools , youth clubs, community centers ,even TV (get those cheques written) basically anywhere the public might see it and read it and understand it

otherwise nothing will change, we (technologists/gurus/nerds etc) all know the ramifications of DRM and the threat it poses to society, but society doesnt know or even care about what they dont understand sick profiteers are trying to do

educate people, lots of them, quickly, using traditional methods, because this inteweb is not the answer to this problem

Re:Forget about breaking the DRM

[TheSpoom]

But see, I don't want to burn CDs. I want music that will play anywhere. And I don't want to have to go through some complicated process like burning to CDs first then ripping the CDs, or using some obscure program to strip the DRM.

This is not a flame; this is simply why I won't buy something from a service encumbered by DRM restrictions.

Re:Bad reporting

[Lord Byron II]

All they were doing was giving an example of how Apple could change your rights. The argument was not "Apple is bad because they lowered the burn rights from 10 to 7", but "Apple is bad because they *can* lower the burn rights from 10 to 7".

If they were attempting to provide complete details on how iTunes works, then yes, things like the number of authorizable computers would have been important to have. But since they were only trying to show how the consumer can have a purchased product taken away from them, the example they provided was sufficient.

Get rid of Apple DRM on Linux [thnx to DVD Jon]

[drgonzo59]

My brother gave me an iTunes gift certificate. So bought some albums. After my windows hard drive died with a "click-o-death" I just re-installed Linux by itself and am using that now for about a year. But the problem is when I went to play the music that _I bought_ from the iTunes, I couldn't! I payed money for the freakin' songs, I want to play them. Why do I have to install windows or buy an Apple computer to play the music that I bought?

I found Jon L. Johansen's site and his two programs :

1. FairKeys - to get the keys from Apple's site

2. DeDRMS - uses the keys to DeDRM the files.

The site is here (no html hyperlink, copy and paste if you want):

nanocrew.net/?page_id=59

You also need to install mono for linux as the programs are in C#. After that just run with "mono programname options". No I can play my albums again. Thanks Jon!

It's a choice... but for how long?

[sound vision]

Sure, you can go out and buy a CD today, but what about in 10 years? 5? CDs will eventually be replaced by SACD or DVD-A, both of which have DRM schemes. If we don't stop DRM now, there will be no alternative.

Sure, DRM can and will be cracked, but that's not what it's about. The iTunes DRM can be cracked, too. It provides a major inconvenience, many hurdles for us to jump over just to use something we already bought & payed for.

About DVD-A's encryption being cracked, it wasn't What happened was a patch was released for WinDVD to redirect the output to a file instead of a sound card. You can bet the RIAA is working on a way to neutralize this.

Fair and unbiased

[shmlco]

"... fair use restrictions that major online music services, such as Apple's iTunes, force on their customers via Digital Rights Management (DRM) laden music files..."

Wow. Sounds like a balanced, fair, and unbiased review of the issues to me.

Re:Forget about breaking the DRM

[RAMMS EIN]

``Honestly. Buy a bloody CD then. You use a DRM'd music service you abide by the T+C's - what's so damn complicated about that that so many people just don't get it.''

The problem is that the ones selling the DRM'd content make every effort to conceal the restrictions. That's why people don't know they're paying but not buying. People expect that when they pay for something, they can do whatever they want with it. Now, these music stores are not going to tell them up front that this assumption is very much not true for the music they "sell". The media are not publishing anything about it. So how is J. R. Person supposed to know?!

``While I'd never like to see DRM'd files as the sole distribution method as this is to open to proprietry player lock-in, I have zero objection to it as an alternative method of purchasing music.''

The problem is that DRM is slowly becoming the standard. Most of the large online music stores that used to sell MP3s have either quit or switched to DRM'd formats. DVDs have protection mechanisms on them. Even CDs are often crippled these days (intentionally fscked up so that CD-ROM drives will barf on them).

All of this is happening under the radar, where J. R. Person doesn't notice it. After all, it still plays on his CD player or Windows machine! And when I tell them, they don't care, or they think it's not gonna be that bad. But I'm afraid their favorite music and movies are only going to be available in a very restricted format in the not too distant future.

Of course, there will still be people publishing things in unrestricted format. I'm supporting these people even now, and steering clear of any materials that have restrictive DRM or even just proprietary formats. But that does exclude a lot of popular music, movies, sofware, and information.

Re:Take it on the other side.

[cnerd2025]

I agree that no one is *forcing* anyone to use the DRM'd music, but the way things are going, we will have no choice but to use DRM'd music and video.

Big Tobacco is completely different. Tobacco is addicting (rather nicotine in Tobacco is addicting) and once you're hooked it's hard to be unhooked. Of course, no one forced you to get hooked in the first place other than yourself. But the point is once you're on cigarettes, it's hard to get off of them.

DRM is no such thing. It is not a product and it isn't something that consumers would want at all. I don't like Apple's DRM because I'd like to store my music in a format that I like and not be restricted by it. I don't 'illegally' share it or anything like that. I use the JHymn software to remove the FairPlay DRM from it. Doesn't really hurt much, it's my Fair Use right to do so. The courts have determined that.

The problem with DRM is that companies will soon impose it on us. If you have been following the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray wars at all, you will know that the two camps are trying to say that they have *better* DRM than the other, stating that their format is effectively more DRM'd than the other. Microshaft has stated that in Vista, it will be handling media files much differently from how they are handled today. This will limit users' fair use rights. DRM is going to be imposed on us. It is not like tobacco which is only imposed on us if we use tobacco products or live with those who do.

The time has come to make a choice. Do we want software that, while preserving the 'rights' of select few (mainly the RIAA and the Five labels), arguably infringes upon our rights as users and as consumers? The US Constitution, Article I, Section 8 Clause 8 enumerates that Congress has the right "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;" This is the legal stem of copyright. In the words of (former) Surpreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor:

The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but [t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts...To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art.

Copyright is not an end for artists, it is an end for the immortalism of art and science.

enough iTunes bashing

[TRRosen]

enough already with the iTunes bashing just because its the most popular. iTunes has by far the least restrictive DRM of any of the (drm) services. And lying about those who are fighting to keep as many rights available to the consumer as possible accomplish nothing.

how many of these articles come out and say iTunes is bad because it has DRM and DRM prevents you from burning CDs (but failing to mention that iTunes does not do this).

and adding misinformation such as this-

"Restricts back-up copies: Song can only be copied to 5 computers"

You can copy iTunes song to a billion computers if you want but you can only play them on 5 computers at a time. It should be noted that with a CD you can only legally use one copy at a time (first sale doctrine says you have a license for ONE COPY). In this instance iTunes actually expands the rights of its users.

PS changing the number of times IN A ROW one can burn a PLAYLIST is a nonissue - if your making more than 7 copys of a song your not backing up your pirating. and if you really need to have 60 copies just recreate the playlist and start over.

THIS JUST IN:

[Twid]

Many public foundations employ "copyright" and "licenses" -- also known as "legal restrictions" -- that prevent you from doing things like reproducing or distributing their works. Forget about breaking the license with a copy machine. Breaking the license is a violation of the law and could expose you to prosecution.

The EFF says:
"EFF is a nonprofit group of passionate people -- lawyers, technologists, volunteers, and visionaries -- working to protect your digital rights."

But buried in the source to this very article is the following secret code:
License rdf:about="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc/1.0/"
requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Attributi on"
permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Reproduct ion"
permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Distribut ion"
permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Derivativ eWorks"
prohibits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Commercia lUse"
requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Notice"

This "code" restricts your rights to use the article. Even worse, each article might have a different license! Future articles might change their license at any time!

The facts: you read it, they still own it. Sounds like 1984? Read on.

Additional EFF article restrictions:
- Prohibits commercial re-use or re-mixing into a new article.
- Requires that the license and copyright be reproduced with the article.
- Requires that you credit the copyright holder and/or author.

Other articles using this same "licensing" could be even more restrictive!

Looking for alternatives? Here are some sites that don't use restrictive "copyright" and "licensing".
- Project Gutenberg http://promo.net/pg/
- Public Domain Music http://www.pdinfo.com/