Former Apple Exec Speaks Against DRM

Wysz writes "Mike Evangelist, former Director of Product Marketing for Apple's "Pro" applications, has blogged his thoughts about DRM. Like many of us, he is offended by the fact that the record labels and movie studios treat their customers like criminals. While he notes in the comments section that iTunes is the best of the worst, he admits to using third-party tools to remove the DRM from iTunes tracks."

Comments

Re:He removes it...

[(startx)]

Yet I bet it comes with more protection next release.

It already has. Hymn and JHymn are unable remove the FairPlay "protection" from videos and music purchased from iTunes 6. Videos can only be downloaded in iTunes 6. Want to downgrade to iTunes 5 to buy your music? Too bad, once you buy something from the iTMS with 6, you can no longer use 4.x or 5 to make purchases. Hello DRM!

Keep Buying Music, Avoid the RIAA

[tyler083]

http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/

Re:Disturbance in the Matrix

[Scrameustache]

disturbance in the Matrix?

Glitch.

Glitch in the Matrix; disturbance in the Force.

Re:Good luck!

[hackstraw]

Oh really. Everybody knows that you say?

In a retail store that enables tags like the GP mentioned? Yup.

Employee Theft 48.5% $15.1 billion
Shoplifting 31.7% $9.7 billion
Administrative Error 15.3% $4.8 billion
Vendor Fraud 5.4% $1.7 billion

From another source:

According to the University of Florida 2002 National Retail Security Survey, employee theft was estimated to be responsible for 48% of store inventory shrinkage. That represents an estimated employee theft price tag of about 15-billion dollars per year. This astounding figure makes employee dishonesty the greatest single threat to profitability at the store level.

The study found the average dollar loss per employee theft case to be $1,341.02 compared to $207.18 for the average shoplifting incident.

Or another

Employee theft made up 42.7 percent of the total losses, shoplifting 34.4 percent, administrative error 17.6 percent and vendor fraud 6.3 percent.

I have never heard of any data to the contrary, but _everybody_ might not know that as you implied.

Re:Good luck!

[Catbeller]

"You don't buy the music you buy permission to experience it."

No. I bought the music, the media it was recorded on, and the right to copy and remix it any way I like. What I don't have is the right to copy and redistribute without permission from the *copyright* owner, which is NOT the same as the owner of the music. Music is not property, and it cannot be owned any more than an idea can be owned. The idea of illegal redistribution was envisioned to be illegal CD manufactories and suchlike, NOT Joe Suburban copying records onto tape.

I have fair use rights to copy the music for personal use, which by common law for over thirty years meant, among other rights, the right to make copies and share it with friends. Music companies have tried to outlaw this, but legislatures and courts had skillfully ducked around finding such copying "unlawful". Up until recently, the infraction was a civil one, not criminal, which meant the infringer was liable for civil damages limited to actual monetary damages caused to the copyright holder -- less than a few bucks per album copied. Record companies didn't bother suing people for dozens of dollars, so massive copists like Metallica's band members, who copied thousands of other people's albums from vinyl to tape when they were young and poor, got away clean.

Now, with skillful placement of bribes to congressmen and a 30+ campaign to put Federalist Society judges on the bench, it's criminal to copy music, and the "damages" per individual copist is judged in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars -- obvious horseshit.

I don't mean to drown out your other points, as they are worthy. But we can't let them own this "license to experience on the correct media" meme. To win a semantic war, you can't let the enemy redefine the terms of the argument.

Re:I have a solution

[Total_Wimp]

I'm one of those generally honest people you speak of. I buy CDs regularly and I avoid "file sharing." I have hundreds of albums worth of MP3s that came straight from the CDs I bought.

I'd like to buy music online, but I'm faced with some problems. I prefer higher quality music than iTunes offers. They don't have a choice of spending a bit more for better quality; it's just one size fits all. Then there's the fact that I have to use their media players to play my music. My cell phone and PSP will all of a sudden become useless as music players unless I go through the cumbersome burn/re-rip process that will give me even lower quality than I started with.

Even though I'd love the convenience of downloading, I still have good ol' CDs. I can get universally playable MP3s at any quality I want. I'm happy. Except now they're putting DRM on those too. I can no longer assume that the CDs I buy will ever be playable on my PSP without jumping through a whole grab-bag of hoops. I have to explain to my teen-age daughter that the reason daddy's computer is chock full of hacking software is just so I can listen to the music I legally bought in the store.

And the worst part is that if I really was a "file sharer" the music companies have not stopped me from sharing their music with my favorite P2P client. All they've done is made an honest guy's music listening experience an exercise in frustration.

Thanks.

TW